Reliability of 7200rpm HDDs

[Soundmanred]

That should cover it.

 

[Ben90]

For what its worth I have 8 RE2's in RAID0 on my computer. My friend has a RAID0 of 4 in his comp as well. Still chugging along quite nicely although i wouldn't mind a SSD for some lower power consumption.

Whats sad is my data is still a lot more secure than the majority of setups. The few things that are moderately important get backed up.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

If you're unlucky enough to experience a HDD failing, you'll probably also be unlucky enough to be struck by a falling clown who accidentally fell out of an airplane and you won't live to care much about the HDD.

You're doing people a disservice by stating this.

There are three types of hard drives:

1. Hard drives that have failed.
2. Hard drives that will fail.
3. Hard drives that aren't being used.

That's it.

Hard drives are one of the least reliable components in a PC because they involve moving parts with tight tolerances. It is always prudent to assume that a drive will fail at any moment, and take appropriate precautions.

I had a WD drive fail in my desktop machine just a few months ago. Out of the blue.

As for which brand is best, that's easy to figure out as well: the bad brands are the ones I personally have had a problem with, and the good brands are the ones where I haven't. 🙂 This is why threads like this are always filled with "brand X sucks" and "really, I've had good luck with brand X". Most of the big makers are pretty similar in terms of reliability.

 

[pauldun170]

The only HDD's I buy are WD black drives. Have 5 or 6 of them purchased between 2008 and just last week.
Health checks on every one, including the oldest show up with a clean bill of health.
500gb used as OS drives and 1tb used for storage. All get regular use.

Seagate - trash
Maxtor (remember those?) I have stacks IDE maxtor drives.
Hitachi - Loud short lived trash
Samsung - I have one samsung sata 1.5 250GB from when those were brand spanking new. That still runs like a champ and gets heavy use

 

[Soundmanred]

The only HDD's I buy are WD green drives. Have 5 or 6 of them purchased between 2008 and just last month.
Health checks on every one, including the oldest show up with a clean bill of health.
500gb used as OS drives and 1 &2 tb used for storage. All get regular use.

 

[pauldun170]

The only HDD's I buy are WD green drives. Have 5 or 6 of them purchased between 2008 and just last month.
Health checks on every one, including the oldest show up with a clean bill of health.
500gb used as OS drives and 1 &2 tb used for storage. All get regular use.

Every time I'm in need of storage I take a look at the green drives and get scared away by user reviews.

Then along comes someone who has the good luck with them.

Wonder how the blues hold up?

 

[Revolution 11]

The only HDD's I buy are WD black drives. Have 5 or 6 of them purchased between 2008 and just last week.
Health checks on every one, including the oldest show up with a clean bill of health.
500gb used as OS drives and 1tb used for storage. All get regular use.

Seagate - trash
Maxtor (remember those?) I have stacks IDE maxtor drives.
Hitachi - Loud short lived trash
Samsung - I have one samsung sata 1.5 250GB from when those were brand spanking new. That still runs like a champ and gets heavy use

Bah, anecdotal evidence at best. So many people will claim that a particular hard drive brand sucks and just as many people will claim it's the best in the industry.

CharlesKozierok has it nailed. All drives will fail, there's no good way to predict the failure of a specific drive (Google has tried, believe me), and backups are the only protection against drive failure.

I just check for certain features I want in a hard drive (noise, warranty) and then get the largest capacity for the highest price I can tolerate paying.

@pauldun170, only get a green drive if you can tolerate the ultra-low speeds. If you are ok with that, just get the cheapest drive with the most space and don't worry about "blue", "green", or "black" drives. If you need more speed, do the same as above but exclude greens completely. Rinse and repeat if blues are too slow as well.

 

[pauldun170]

Bah, anecdotal evidence at best. So many people will claim that a particular hard drive brand sucks and just as many people will claim it's the best in the industry.

CharlesKozierok has it nailed. All drives will fail, there's no good way to predict the failure of a specific drive (Google has tried, believe me), and backups are the only protection against drive failure.

I just check for certain features I want in a hard drive (noise, warranty) and then get the largest capacity for the highest price I can tolerate paying.

@pauldun170, only get a green drive if you can tolerate the ultra-low speeds. If you are ok with that, just get the cheapest drive with the most space and don't worry about "blue", "green", or "black" drives. If you need more speed, do the same as above but exclude greens completely. Rinse and repeat if blues are too slow as well.

I'll replace my entire post filled with anecdotal evidence with
"Buy the drive with best warranty" which turn out to be WD black drives.

 

[bononos]

Every time I'm in need of storage I take a look at the green drives and get scared away by user reviews.

Then along comes someone who has the good luck with them.

Wonder how the blues hold up?

Greens are fine. They have problem models just like blues. Performance of greens aren't that bad as well. They are perfectly serviceable as primary drives and not simply as backup drives.

I think the EARX and the most recent model of WD greens are ok. There was one earlier model which was problematic.

 

[bononos]

Bah, anecdotal evidence at best. So many people will claim that a particular hard drive brand sucks and just as many people will claim it's the best in the industry.

CharlesKozierok has it nailed. All drives will fail, there's no good way to predict the failure of a specific drive (Google has tried, believe me), and backups are the only protection against drive failure.
.......

I think its possible to finger certain unreliable models. Manufacturers were squeezed badly for the past 2 decades and some brands dropped out and their quality suffered in their last days. Maxtor had a noticeably shabby looking exterior in its dark days when it was staving off its creditors until its revival under Hyundai. Or their quality suffered momentarily when they shifted production to lower cost countries.

IBM was a long timer in the harddrive business, for the best part of 40-50years they made top quality drives, put out many whitepapers, made more innovation in the harddrive industry than any other competitor. The brand had a legendary stamp of quality like the older Intel G2s or highend NEC monitors. But a bad misstep in the Deskstar line killed their reputation. The return rates according to IBM in the lower single digit, but even if they breached the 2 digit mark, the polarizing internet environment and hyperbolic opinion makers made it sound as if every single deskstar was a limping basket case just waiting for the click of death.

Samsung looked like a good deal back then when it alone kept longer warranty periods compared to Seagate and others who slashed theirs to 1yr and made people happy with its reliability and performance. Now with the reputation of Samsung on par with the other big makers, they can afford to cut corners like their recent lcd tv scandal.

 

[Revolution 11]

Of course customers should avoid known hard drive problems. But the problem is that hard drives are a mature product category so there is no real difference in quality. It's all about the race to the bottom. That's why I say don't worry about the brand and focus on capacity/cost. Do avoid known problem drives.

 

[thelastjuju]

Seems like hard drives from about 2010 on are the LEAST reliable they have ever been. I have an entire stack of dead drives from this period on, including their RMA replacements that died after a few weeks.. and only two dead Seagates from before this period, back to a decade when I started building computers.

I also agree that the WD Green drives ARE getting better with the newer models, but I dislike how they are intentionally trying to mislead the customer with an absurd amount of derivative forms of that model.. the old ones were just garbage.. I'd avoid ANY hard drive with only a 1 year warranty, that seems like a huge red flag to me.

I'm always wondering why more people aren't pissed off with the direction the HDD market is going in. Seems like now that WD owns Hitachi and Seagate owns Samsung, they've colluded easier than ever, and decided to not only fix prices, but to agree that failure rates between 10-20% are perfectly acceptable.

 

[Revolution 11]

Snip.

You are entirely correct. But remember that hard drive reliability took another dive when the tsunami hit for the affected manufacturers. Whether this is because of the retooling and recalibration of sensitive processes or because the drive companies are trying to save a penny by reducing quality control, I don't know. We probably won't see pre-flood reliability until the end of the year if it is the former reason.

 

[thelastjuju]

I highly doubt it.. nobody cares enough.. everyone's attitude seems to be really defeatist about this stuff. Its like we should all just accept that we are powerless and at the whims of these corporate overlords who can do or charge whatever they want.

I bet even a simple investigation into HDD manufacturer's practices would result in a laundry list of fraud.

 

[skyking]

Not powerless, just, don't ever trust a single spinning doohickey with valuable stuff. I prefer a couple of the thingamajigs in a couple of different zip codes, but I'm strange that way.

 

[Dadofamunky]

That should cover it.

LOL

I heart my Spinpoint 3's. I do wish they were roomier though.

 

[Dadofamunky]

I highly doubt it.. nobody cares enough.. everyone's attitude seems to be really defeatist about this stuff. Its like we should all just accept that we are powerless and at the whims of these corporate overlords who can do or charge whatever they want.

I bet even a simple investigation into HDD manufacturer's practices would result in a laundry list of fraud.

It's simpler than that. There are two basic tiers: the drives that manufacturers sell to the enterprise market, at a huge markup and with better warranties, and the ones they split out of the same manufacturing lots, that you buy at Fry's/Micro Center. That's it. All of them operate this way. Since you probably don't have enterprise drives in your hot rod PCs, you need external drives for imaging. That's all.

Now Wall Street investment products - there's a laundry list of fraud.

 

[Revolution 11]

I highly doubt it.. nobody cares enough.. everyone's attitude seems to be really defeatist about this stuff. Its like we should all just accept that we are powerless and at the whims of these corporate overlords who can do or charge whatever they want.

I bet even a simple investigation into HDD manufacturer's practices would result in a laundry list of fraud.

There probably is some fraud but it is much more simple than your conspiracy theory. Hard drives are hard to make, we have been making them for about half a century, and they sell for pennies on the dollar considering other storage solutions (besides tape). Much of the "innovation" possible in hard drives has been accomplished decades ago.

The natural market tendency is to reduce hard drive compeition to a monopoly/duopoly and that is what is happening. This will continue until the companies are split into smaller fragments. This will not happen because hard drives are a dying business (though more slowly than many doom-sayers like to predict here at Anandtech).