Black Raven Dragoons

[Zancarius]

This article deals exclusively with mechanical drives: http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/

I'm rather shocked by the attrition rate of Seagates. I suspect that post-flood drives, primarily having been manufactured in China, are simply not up to the task. To say nothing about Seagate's quality control having languished over the years.

I used to avoid Western Digital like the plague--of the 5 I've ever owned, every single one of them died within 18 months--but this article is making me rethink that consideration. Of the major brands, Hitachi appears to have the lowest failure rate (and the highest price). It's disappointing, because the latest generation of 1TiB+ Seagate drives are the fastest mechanical drives on the market, beating out the fabled Western Digital Black label. But, like DPS characters (dead DPS is zero DPS), a dead drive is a slow drive.

Consider this a PSA for those of you who might be buying new hardware in the future. Companies like Backblaze that provide large scale personal cloud storage over literally tens of thousands of drives have sufficient purposes to make reasonable statistical comparisons like this one.

I'm also considering replacing my new primary (and ST1000DM003-9YN162, like linked above). Seagate has recently been adding laptop-class hardware to desktop drives. The head parks after a period of inactivity unless you disable the features, and the firmware doesn't allow this setting to persist between reboots.

How the mighty have fallen.

[Grimblast]

That is unfortunate.

[Zancarius]

Hitachi was bought by WD about a year and a half ago, which might be why finding their disks is something of an exercise in frustration.

[Tirian]

I've had WD externals for about three years. I had a similar thought as you prior to that, but when I was first looking for a 1 TB drive the WD MyBook of the time seemed to be getting great reviews, and I had had one or two (I forget) Seagates go bad in college.

My older drive, the 1 TB, is still going strong -- despite a guy literally covering it in wine at a house party about two years ago. If I run it all day, it does smell a bit of red wine in the living room, though.

[Zancarius]

My older drive, the 1 TB, is still going strong -- despite a guy literally covering it in wine at a house party about two years ago.

I hate to break it to you, Cole, but I think your hard drive might need an intervention.

To be truthful, I have a few 34k hours+ hard disks sitting around (one's in my server at present) and probably in need of a replacement. I'm likely to buy either a Hitachi (now owned by WDC) or a Western Digital. I suspect--though I can't prove--that the inclusion of laptop-style or laptop-grade hardware in desktop drives is what's killing Seagate, particularly the load/unload ramps.

Code: Select all

9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       1411
12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always       -       97
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022   074   067   045    Old_age   Always       -       26 (Min/Max 19/26)
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       20
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       428

428 "load cycles" in just 1400 hours of run time and just shy of 100 power cycles with a max rated peak of 300,000 or less. If I park myself in Windows for any length of time, that value creeps up by about 5 every hour if I forget to disable it, and using hdparm for Windows doesn't seem to work at start. Sigh.

Apparently the only ones worse than the Seagates are the WD Greens because of their significantly more aggressive power management and lower spindle speed. It's just a shame that the Seagate drives are the fastest mechanical drives on the market, regardless of what anyone says of the WD Black. But... a dead drive cannot be considered fast.