Most reliable standard hard drive.

[Niku]

A friend of mine wants his birthday gift this year to be a reliable 500GB drive for storage. Id like it to be the most reliable hard drive $60-$70 can buy. Is there ONE hard drive above all others that pops out as the most reliable 500 GB for $70 or less? Its for long term media storage. read speed can be sacked if it will last that extra year. What are your thoughts?

 

[Russwinters]

I am a Data recovery tech, so I see all kinds of drives and I am very familiar with their internals and types of failures that are occuring for each manufacturer.



There is NO 100% safe hard drive. All manufacturers and all hard drives have a chance to have mechanical failures because they are composed of mechanical moving parts, and this means there is always a chance for failure.


That being said.



As of right now the two safest desktop hard drives are:


Samsung, or Hitachi.

Stay away from Seagate especially, WD is OK reliability wise, but not great.

 

[Zensal]

For $60-70, it doesn't really matter. It's not enough money to buy a higher tolerance enterprise class drive, and the QC between all the major manufacturers are almost the same. WD Black drives are warrantied for longer, 5 years instead of 3 years, which means supposedly the MTBF is longer.

Seagate is the only sketchy one right now, because of all their problems with the 7200.11 firmware. 7200.12 is supposed to have fixed it, but I wouldn't trust them just yet.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Zensal
Seagate is the only sketchy one right now, because of all their problems with the 7200.11 firmware. 7200.12 is supposed to have fixed it, but I wouldn't trust them just yet.

I suspect it was more than a firmware problem, since many folks seem to be having failures even with "fixed" firmware.

In any event, ALL HARD DRIVES FAIL at some point. And that point is pretty much unpredictable. If you can't afford to lose your data, then backups of some sort are required. There are tons of good backup solutions these days.

 

[Niku]

I don't want a bullet proof hard drive. I am just saying that i am willing to sacrifice every thing statistically possible if it means ive bought a drive that is less likely to break. Thanks, every one, for your input.

 

[Niku]

Well, i thought i would share this since you were helpful for me. I know none of you probably order hard drives from newegg, since their shipping method seems to actually be about as thin skinned as actual egg shells, but for some reason, they dropped the price of the 500GB WD black drives down from $75-80ish shipped to $60 shipped. I didn't expect them to come down in price that far. I couldn't pass it up. I theorize it might be to help some thing related to windows 7 sales since the official release is tomorrow.

 

[Elixer]

Originally posted by: Niku
Well, i thought i would share this since you were helpful for me. I know none of you probably order hard drives from newegg, since their shipping method seems to actually be about as thin skinned as actual egg shells, but for some reason, they dropped the price of the 500GB WD black drives down from $75-80ish shipped to $60 shipped. I didn't expect them to come down in price that far. I couldn't pass it up. I theorize it might be to help some thing related to windows 7 sales since the official release is tomorrow.

The egg is *supposed* to be in the process of getting better packaging.

Hmm... $5 more and you can get the 640GB black edition from newegg's sister company.
*****/Product-_-ProductDetails.cv_-_Item--CE00155521010060
(edit, since for some odd reason chiefvalue is filtered? anyway, the url should be chiefvalueDOTcom
($65 shipped)

Russwinters, I tend to think that sammy & hitachi are not really well sold, and WD & seagate are much, much bigger so the sampling of people who send in those drives tend to skew the figures.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: Niku
I don't want a bullet proof hard drive. I am just saying that i am willing to sacrifice every thing statistically possible if it means ive bought a drive that is less likely to break. Thanks, every one, for your input.

"enterprise" hard drives go through significantly more reliability testing. Some of these places have thousands of drives installed in one place, and a 1% failure rate is enough for someone to have a fit (30 drives failed? even if it's 30 out of 3000, the sheer quantity is what's noticeable). In a typical retail situation where those same 3000 drives go to 2500 different customers, 1% is perfectly acceptable, but when they're all in one person's hands, it's more noticeable, so they are built to different tolerances.

This is coming from someone who works at a manufacturer.

I would generally agree with Russ that any company has their issues. I wouldn't necessarily agree with his ranking, not because I know what the right ranking could be, but because it's difficult for someone in his position to look at how many of what comes in the door without taking into account how many of what is being sold. It just so happens his rankings are the inverse of the overall marketshare (Seagate largest, WD, with Samsung and Hitachi having relatively small pieces of the pie), so without followup, I would assume that he's looking at numbers that are more-or-less representative of the overall quantity of each in the market, and you might expect similar representation in failures.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Elixer
The egg is *supposed* to be in the process of getting better packaging.

Last drives I purchased from Newegg were some Samsungs. They were in the typical plastic clamshell from Samsung, but Newegg wrapped them in bubble wrap and put them into small cardboard boxes. This is a bit better than how they used to do it (just bubble wrap) and a whole lot better than how Tiger Direct does it (just in a clamshell) but not as good as Zip Zoom Fly (in a foam "coffin") or Dell (individually boxed with molded inserts).

 

[RebateMonger]

I agree with Zap's ranking of shipping care. I've purchased disks from Tiger Direct, Zip Zoom Fly, and Newegg this past year. Tiger Direct was pathetic. Newegg is generally "OK". Zip Zoom Fly's shipping containers are fantastic.

Note that my rankings only represent MY shipments, and the next shipment could be very different.

 

[taltamir]

no such thing as a "safe" drive.
make backups AND raid1... that way when (not if) the drive fails, you do not lose data.

 

[jobz]

Exactly, I have a 1TB Seagate 7200.12 in an external case for backup. I plan to buy another hd (different brand) to enable backup rotation.

BTW, does any of you perform backup rotation, in case your only backup drive fails?

 

[Russwinters]

Indeed failure rates can seem scewed because of marketshare, but my rankings are based of heavy research on the current mechanical design and firmware functionality of each individual manufacturer, and not so much the amount of failures that I am seeing.

I can break this down into an advanced report if you would like, but it will take some time, and at the moment I do not have that large of a chunk of time to dedicate until this weekend.



Regards,

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Russwinters
Indeed failure rates can seem scewed because of marketshare, but my rankings are based of heavy research on the current mechanical design and firmware functionality of each individual manufacturer, and not so much the amount of failures that I am seeing.

I can break this down into an advanced report if you would like, but it will take some time, and at the moment I do not have that large of a chunk of time to dedicate until this weekend.



Regards,

Russ, I think it is safe to say that your "word" should simply be more than enough for anyone here to take as truth.

You are a professional, you know what you are doing, and if you sum up your professional opinion on the topic to be "avoid xyz, go with abc" then that really is all you should ever need to say.

The report would be cool, but personally all I expect it will accomplish is the validation of your prior statement while simultaneously not materially changing the spirit of your message.

People who seek "free" advice should be happy when they get it from a qualified source.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Zensal
For $60-70, it doesn't really matter. It's not enough money to buy a higher tolerance enterprise class drive, and the QC between all the major manufacturers are almost the same. WD Black drives are warrantied for longer, 5 years instead of 3 years, which means supposedly the MTBF is longer.

Actually, I was checking yesterday and you can get a WD 500 GB Enterprise SATA disk (the RE series) for about $20 more (at Newegg) than the $70 max that the OP asked for. True, it's more than asked for, but still not an outrageous price.

As far as warranties implying higher MTBF, I've never believed that. I used to argue that Seagate's five-year warranty was pretty much meaningless. Especially since the value of the disk is so low and the value of the data is so high. And the 7200.11 series kinda' proves that.

 

[Old Hippie]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: Russwinters
Indeed failure rates can seem scewed because of marketshare, but my rankings are based of heavy research on the current mechanical design and firmware functionality of each individual manufacturer, and not so much the amount of failures that I am seeing.

I can break this down into an advanced report if you would like, but it will take some time, and at the moment I do not have that large of a chunk of time to dedicate until this weekend.



Regards,

Russ, I think it is safe to say that your "word" should simply be more than enough for anyone here to take as truth.

You are a professional, you know what you are doing, and if you sum up your professional opinion on the topic to be "avoid xyz, go with abc" then that really is all you should ever need to say.

The report would be cool, but personally all I expect it will accomplish is the validation of your prior statement while simultaneously not materially changing the spirit of your message.

People who seek "free" advice should be happy when they get it from a qualified source.

IDC speaks the truth as I see it and I'm seconding his emotion.

I appreciate your insight.

Thanks Russ! :thumbsup:

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: jobz
BTW, does any of you perform backup rotation, in case your only backup drive fails?

Of course. Having a SINGLE backup of data is dangerous when, for instance, a business depends on it. If something goes wrong with your system, the next backup will replace the previous "good" backup with the bad (or missing) data in your current system. Or if the new backup is somehow corrupted when it's written, you now have no backup at all.

If the data is "important", there should be multiple backups, with at least one verified backup kept off-site.

 

[Old Hippie]

BTW, does any of you perform backup rotation, in case your only backup drive fails?

I use my WHS as one backup and mirror the important data on a single external 1.5TB drive.

 

[Elixer]

Originally posted by: Russwinters
Indeed failure rates can seem scewed because of marketshare, but my rankings are based of heavy research on the current mechanical design and firmware functionality of each individual manufacturer, and not so much the amount of failures that I am seeing.

I can break this down into an advanced report if you would like, but it will take some time, and at the moment I do not have that large of a chunk of time to dedicate until this weekend.

Regards,

It would be interesting to find out what part(s) fail the most for each manufacture.
No need to rush, this is all for curiosity

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Russwinters
Indeed failure rates can seem scewed because of marketshare, but my rankings are based of heavy research on the current mechanical design and firmware functionality of each individual manufacturer, and not so much the amount of failures that I am seeing.

I can break this down into an advanced report if you would like, but it will take some time, and at the moment I do not have that large of a chunk of time to dedicate until this weekend.



Regards,

well... it is still not SAFE...
Seagate had the lowest failure rate for a time... then suddenly they released a drive generation that experienced far higher failure rates than anyone else... and people who trusted their data to a "seagate drive" were disappointed... especially since they paid a hefty premium for the privilege.
Those who had proper back and/or redundancy lost no data and were happy..

 

[Elixer]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: Elixer
The egg is *supposed* to be in the process of getting better packaging.

Last drives I purchased from Newegg were some Samsungs. They were in the typical plastic clamshell from Samsung, but Newegg wrapped them in bubble wrap and put them into small cardboard boxes. This is a bit better than how they used to do it (just bubble wrap) and a whole lot better than how Tiger Direct does it (just in a clamshell) but not as good as Zip Zoom Fly (in a foam "coffin") or Dell (individually boxed with molded inserts).

While at a neighbor's house setting up their machine, a packaged arrived from the egg, TN warehouse. They have brown paper on one side to fill the void of the big box, then they had a smaller white box, and in that, it was a HD wrapped in bubble wrap.

They did a much better job packaging this time around. The only issue is, the small box isn't protected on one side, the brown paper wad was all on one side. They should have wrapped the paper around the smaller box.

They are getting better.

 

[Russwinters]

well... it is still not SAFE...
Seagate had the lowest failure rate for a time... then suddenly they released a drive generation that experienced far higher failure rates than anyone else... and people who trusted their data to a "seagate drive" were disappointed... especially since they paid a hefty premium for the privilege.
Those who had proper back and/or redundancy lost no data and were happy..

Two very good points: There is no safe hard drive.

The two manufacturers i have pointed out, Samsung and Hitachi (for desktops ONLY)
happen to be, in my professional opinion the "safest" right now. This is of course subject to change in future drive families as the manufacturers change the way their drives work all of the time.

You are correct that seagate at one time (up until alittle after they aquired maxtor) had a very good build, not perfect, but much fewer failures then today.

There is more then one series of drives *cough 7200.11* that are having mass failures with seagate, although the 7200.11 (along with the enterprise, and maxtor variants) are the most well know, they are having huge issues with their momentus line right now where the substrate material on the platters is coming off....yes....coming OFF. This is significantly worse then the firmware failure with the 7200.11 drives because if the substrate comes of you are not getting any data, period.

Most of us in the industry attribute seagates increased failures to their move to cheaper manufacturing facilities in china (not trying to spark any issues here, but it's known that chinese facilities usually spawn lower quality products)

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: jobz
Exactly, I have a 1TB Seagate 7200.12 in an external case for backup. I plan to buy another hd (different brand) to enable backup rotation.

BTW, does any of you perform backup rotation, in case your only backup drive fails?

I have a file server that we use for things like documents, MP3s and videos so we can access them from any of our computers (mine, wife's, kids').

It runs linux, which makes backups a simple cron job that runs in the middle of the night. If the boot drive fails, I switch cables and use the other and it boots up just like nothing happened. On top of that I have an external drive that I backup to ~monthly that I keep in either a fire safe or take to work in case of a catastrophe.

2 extra hard drives are cheaper than tape backup solutions used to be. There's very little reason not to have at least 2 copies of your data.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
As far as warranties implying higher MTBF, I've never believed that. I used to argue that Seagate's five-year warranty was pretty much meaningless. Especially since the value of the disk is so low and the value of the data is so high. And the 7200.11 series kinda' proves that.

Warranties are largely a business decision. Is the increased confidence worth the additional expenditure from late life-cycle returns.

I doubt there was much behind that 5 year warranty aside from trying to build (buy?) consumer confidence and name recognition in the retail sector (Seagate was very 'enterprise' focused and had very poor representation in the retail sector... retail not being people like you and me, but the people we build computers for who would typically go buy stuff at Best Buy if they didn't know people like you and me)

It's the same reason why Toyota and Honda have 3 year / 36k mile warranties and Hyundai has 10 / 100k. It's not because Hyundais are built better, it's because Hyundai needs a selling point to get people to even look in their direction.

Once Seagate had more recognition in the retail sector (and bought Maxtor to have another name on the shelves) the warranty disappeared. It didn't need to pay for the recognition anymore, so it didn't.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: Russwinters
Most of us in the industry attribute seagates increased failures to their move to cheaper manufacturing facilities in china (not trying to spark any issues here, but it's known that chinese facilities usually spawn lower quality products)

Seagate doesn't manufacture disks in China. They assemble drives there, but the disks are all in Singapore or purchased from external media suppliers.

WD disks used to be almost all from external suppliers, but they bought Komag a couple years ago and turned them into their internal media supplier. Komag manufacturing was mostly in Malaysia.

There are lots of components in the drive, and while assembly may happen in China, I can't see how that would affect something like de-lamination, which would all be dependent on what happened just prior to and during the vacuum coating process at the media plant.

Also, I'd expect delamination issues to be isolated to glass substrate drives (should only include 2.5" drives, not normal desktop size drives. You can generally tell from the operational shock spec. Glass drives have far superior operating shock specs, which is the reason they're used in notebook size drives.)