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Anyone notice a drop in Hard Drive Quality lately?

Scarpozzi

Scarpozzi

Lifer
I bought a Dell system 2.5 years ago with a SATA drive in it. Well, last Fall it failed. I replaced it with 2 Western Digital SATA drives and one of those failed last week.

Since then, I had an external USB SATA drive fail on Wednesday and my Dell Optiplex at work had its drive go out on Saturday when I came in and it should be replaced tomorrow.

What ever happened to the GOOD QUALITY drives that would last 5 years easily. It sucks because these things don't even spinup to a state that they can be mounted with Knoppix or Trinity. I'm convinced that you basically need to backup your data to either tape or 2-3 disks to make sure you're covered.
 
hmm. sounds to me like you've just had a spot of bad luck. when you consider the percentage of bad drives to good drives, i imagine it's rather low.
 
Originally posted by: ForumMaster
hmm. sounds to me like you've just had a spot of bad luck. when you consider the percentage of bad drives to good drives, i imagine it's rather low.
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True... But I'm referring to the difference between SATA vs ATA and SCSI drives.

From what I've seen through desktops and servers that I support, the SATA drives have a higher failure rate by at least 30%. So far, I haven't had an SATAII disks fail yet, but I just got 3 shelves (45 Disks total) of them this summer so time will tell.

I'm kind of putting a recommendation not to run SATA for anything important due to its lack of performance. They make great backup disks though....I'm just not impressed with their failure rate.
 
Originally posted by: Scarpozzi
I'm convinced that you basically need to backup your data to either tape or 2-3 disks to make sure you're covered.
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Almost ALL of the hard drive problems I've seen lately involve mechanical or electronic problems with the drive. Meaning that software isn't going to be able to recover the data.

Multiple backup copies (such as rotating tapes or backup drives) has always been a good idea. I'd never erase or reformat a primary data drive unless I had two independent backup copies of any important data.
 
Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Originally posted by: Scarpozzi
I'm convinced that you basically need to backup your data to either tape or 2-3 disks to make sure you're covered.
Click to expand...
Almost ALL of the hard drive problems I've seen lately involve mechanical or electronic problems with the drive. Meaning that software isn't going to be able to recover the data.
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That's what I've noticed too. I think the manufacturers are getting cheap on us since they're not making nearly as much money as they used to on hardware. I guess competition may be working against us in some aspects.

 
google the google drive study
its just bad luck after your good luck streak
i've seen drives fail from all years
 
Haven't noticed any problems at all - have gotten about 5 new HDDs, both 2.5 and 3.5-in, mostly SATA and have seen no problems. Maybe there are more problems with these large capacity drives? I don't exceed 200 GB deliberately.
 
Buy your drives from a place like Newegg that ships their drives in a couple layers of bubble wrap and there would be no surprise if their longevity wasn't that great. But I don't know if anyone else packages them any better. People that I've bought used ones from on eBay do a better packaging job than the Egg.

.bh.
 
Anyone notice a drop in Hard Drive Quality lately?
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Nope, You just ain't livin' right. :laugh:



Buy your drives from a place like Newegg that ships their drives in a couple layers of bubble wrap and there would be no surprise if their longevity wasn't that great. But I don't know if anyone else packages them any better
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My new Raptor from CompuVest came snuggled in foam. The same stuff WD includes with their advanced RMA. Nice.
 
Originally posted by: Zepper
Buy your drives from a place like Newegg that ships their drives in a couple layers of bubble wrap and there would be no surprise if their longevity wasn't that great.
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Zep! I get most of my drives now from ZipZoomFly - they are all packed in reusable foam cases, which are in turn well placed in a nest of peanuts. ZZZ's selection is a bit better than NewEgg and they ship free just about all the time.

 
Can't tell. Newer drives are not as quiet. I use the famous Barracuda for reference. They don't build them like that anymore. Course the latest drive is also a lot faster. My oldest WD and Seagate drives are still humming after three years. I replace them around 40 months. Don't believe in OEM drives cause they don't come with the G-absorbing shock plastic. Perhaps I'm stupid, but no dead drive so far.
 
Anecdotal evidence.

I've not had much trouble since a few years ago but I don't replace drives that often. When I was working tech support we noticed the newer seagate drives tending to be more reliable than older maxtor ones but obviously this is again just anecdotal evidence. Everyone gets bad and good batches.
 
If you suffer repeated, frequent drive failures like the OP is, I think you should check to make sure you don't have really bad electrical wiring. It sounds to me like drives are frying out due to poor power input. If you're not running on an AVR UPS, then you should get one ASAP.
 
I buy as many drives as ever (several a year for many years running). Used to have drives die frequently back in the day when 8GB was considered pretty big, but for the last few years I don't remember having any issues at all.
 
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