Most Reliable Drives

[mansr]

16 minutes ago, Miska said:

I use only drives that have 5 year warranty.

I suspect that's just a statistical game. The premium you pay for a longer warranty matches the chance of the drive failing during that period. The actual hardware is probably exactly the same, and on average you end up paying the same amount.

[The Computer Audiophile]

11 minutes ago, mansr said:

I suspect that's just a statistical game. The premium you pay for a longer warranty matches the chance of the drive failing during that period. The actual hardware is probably exactly the same, and on average you end up paying the same amount.

Just save time not replacing it more frequently over the long haul?

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Just save time not replacing it more frequently over the long haul?

No, the failure rate will be the same. The only difference is whether you pay for the replacement upfront or when it fails, if during the 3-5 year window. That's my suspicion, anyway.

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 minutes ago, mansr said:

No, the failure rate will be the same. The only difference is whether you pay for the replacement upfront or when it fails, if during the 3-5 year window. That's my suspicion, anyway.

Ah. Now I get ya. 

[fas42]

On 5/2/2019 at 1:45 AM, davide256 said:

Heat is a big enemy of electronics. Proper cooling changes numbers for the better... good spacing between drives and front/back fans will create an optimal environment for drive longevity.

 

Get the dust out of them, any way you can. The laptop or desktop, that is - the heatsinks and cooling fins get clogged with muck so fast; thorough, regular housekeeping that actually shifts the gunk at least for a while can only help.

[Miska]

8 hours ago, mansr said:

I suspect that's just a statistical game. The premium you pay for a longer warranty matches the chance of the drive failing during that period. The actual hardware is probably exactly the same, and on average you end up paying the same amount.

 

Different drive models already look different outside... And at least they claim the NAS models for bigger arrays have better vibration tolerance and more acceleration sensors to control the head fly, etc. They also claim differences in the drive firmware. But you can check the specs on their pages.

 

Non-pro consumes 7.6W on idle, while pro consumes 4.4W on idle. Non-pro weights 722g and pro weights 650g. So there are some differences... And I think the non-pro doesn't support hot-plug.

 

Usage limits rated for non-pro is 180 TB/year and for pro 300 TB/year.

 

For example on Samsung SSD drives, non-pro uses TLC flash while pro uses MLC flash.

 

[mansr]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

Different drive models already look different outside

Last time I was shopping for serious hard drives, I could get the same Seagate "enterprise" model with (IIRC) either 3 or 5 years warranty. The only difference was the price. "Consumer" models are likely to built to a lower standard.

[Miska]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Last time I was shopping for serious hard drives, I could get the same Seagate "enterprise" model with (IIRC) either 3 or 5 years warranty. The only difference was the price. "Consumer" models are likely to built to a lower standard.

 

Non-pro is consumer model with 2 or 3 year warranty, pro is company/corporate model with 5 year warranty. Then they have separately enterprise/datacenter drive category where for example 10 krpm drives land nowadays.

 

In their enterprise category, the economy versions have 3 years warranty and the performance versions have 5 years warranty.

 

For example in the desktop category, consumer Barracuda model has 2 year warranty and business Barracuda Pro model has 5 year warranty. Consumer Barracuda drive capacity end up at 8 TB while business Barracuda Pro goes up to 14 TB capacity.

 

In consumer/business category they have Barracuda (desktop), Firecuda (gaming), Ironwolf (NAS) and Skyhawk (surveillance) drives. In enterprise category they have Exos X and Exos E product families. Exos X is always 5 year warranty, Exos E is either 3 or 5 years depending on model.

 

[Sal1950]

12 hours ago, mansr said:

Last time I was shopping for serious hard drives, I could get the same Seagate "enterprise" model with (IIRC) either 3 or 5 years warranty. The only difference was the price. "Consumer" models are likely to built to a lower standard.

I've always had the same suspicion for many (most) products when several very similar products are sold at different price points and higher prices bringing longer warranty's. How much actually difference is there between them or does the higher price just cover the costs of products failing over a longer time period.

With autos over the decades we've seen new car warranty's vary from 1 year to 5 or even 10.  I don't believe the cars (same models) have been built to varying standards. The warranty term is used for different sales promotion depending on the market at the time.

[Ralf11]

may be more testing or selection for specs. of more expensive units

[Miska]

1 hour ago, Sal1950 said:

With autos over the decades we've seen new car warranty's vary from 1 year to 5 or even 10.

 

Different car manufacturers have different warranties. Minimum 2 years, but many have now longer 3 or 5 year warranty (usually capped to 100 000 km though).

 

The more expensive ones tend to have 2 year warranty while the cheaper brands have longer.

[Sal1950]

18 hours ago, Miska said:

The more expensive ones tend to have 2 year warranty while the cheaper brands have longer.

What does that say about warranty length vs build quality?

I believe much of it is based on a marketing/sales strategy.

[Miska]

On 12/6/2019 at 9:46 PM, Sal1950 said:

What does that say about warranty length vs build quality?

I believe much of it is based on a marketing/sales strategy.

 

Yes, that's the case for cars. Although knowing quality of engines produced by VAG, even two year warranty is a bit too much, but they cannot go lower.

 

For servers, I've found that disks designed for 24/7 server use last longer in 24/7 server use than disks designed for consumer desktops which are not designed for 24/7 use.

 

I also don't mind lower power consumption and better performance of the server drives. Just in case I replace the drives when they go out of warranty. I much rather spend my money on these, rather than expensive audiophile cables. I get many drives for the price of a single cable.

 

The failed SSD was using TLC type memory, while the MLC type SSD's seem to be lasting longer.

 

Sure, if someone wants to go for the lowest price consumer desktop drives and believe they are as good as the more expensive ones, by all means keep using those. I don't...

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 minutes ago, Miska said:

The failed SSD was using TLC type memory, while the MLC type SSD's seem to be lasting longer.

I still have an SLC drive around :~)

[Miska]

1 minute ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I still have an SLC drive around :~)

 

I guess finding such in terabyte capacities may be challenging? I'm running 2 TB SSD drives at the moment so that I can keep occupied space around 50% which is a challenge in itself too. That is of course important from the wear resistance point of view. Bigger the drive, more TB's of writes it can take before going out of business... Doing for example my OS image builds massages some ~32 GB of data every time, so having enough RAM for disk cache and large enough SSD is essential. Especially in CI (continuous integration) type of environments.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, Miska said:

 

I guess finding such in terabyte capacities may be challenging? I'm running 2 TB SSD drives at the moment so that I can keep occupied space around 50% which is a challenge in itself too. That is of course important from the wear resistance point of view. Bigger the drive, more TB's of writes it can take before going out of business... Doing for example my OS image builds massages some ~32 GB of data every time, so having enough RAM for disk cache and large enough SSD is essential. Especially in CI (continuous integration) type of environments.

 

Ah yes. I haven't even seen an SLC in normal channels for years. 

[Miska]

One challenge with regular spinning HDD's is that for example I would like to make full image backups of the SSDs nightly. But that exceeds specified TB/year usage limits of even most server drives. So have to relax a bit to fit to the drive specs.

 

..so not writing 730 TB/year which it would take..

 

[Miska]

Performance-wise, something to consider:

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/20/04/24/1952222/wd-sets-the-record-straight-lists-all-drives-that-use-slower-smr-tech

 

So if you are concerned on performance, keep eye on what you buy.