Just for you Stogie: What Hard Drive Should I Buy?
01-22-2014, 10:13 PM
#1
Sanest Florida Man
Thread Starter
Just for you Stogie: What Hard Drive Should I Buy?
What Hard Drive Should I Buy?
My last two blog posts were about expected drive lifetimes and drive reliability. These posts were an outgrowth of the careful work that we’ve done at Backblaze to find the most cost-effective disk drives. Running a truly unlimited online backup service for only $5 per month means our cloud storage needs to be very efficient and we need to quickly figure out which drives work.
Because Backblaze has a history of openness, many readers expected more details in my previous posts. They asked what drive models work best and which last the longest. Given our experience with over 25,000 drives, they asked which ones are good enough that we would buy them again. In this post, I’ll answer those questions.
Drive Population
At the end of 2013, we had 27,134 consumer-grade drives spinning in Backblaze Storage Pods. The breakdown by brand looks like this:
sdfkn2s.png
As you can see, they are mostly Seagate and Hitachi drives, with a good number of Western Digital thrown in. We don’t have enough Toshiba or Samsung drives for good statistical results.
Why do we have the drives we have? Basically, we buy the least expensive drives that will work. When a new drive comes on the market that looks like it would work, and the price is good, we test a pod full and see how they perform. The new drives go through initial setup tests, a stress test, and then a couple weeks in production. (A couple of weeks is enough to fill the pod with data.) If things still look good, that drive goes on the buy list. When the price is right, we buy it.
We are willing to spend a little bit more on drives that are reliable, because it costs money to replace a drive. We are not willing to spend a lot more, though.
Excluded Drives
Some drives just don’t work in the Backblaze environment. We have not included them in this study. It wouldn’t be fair to call a drive “bad” if it’s just not suited for the environment it’s put into.
We have some of these drives running in storage pods, but are in the process of replacing them because they aren’t reliable enough. When one drive goes bad, it takes a lot of work to get the RAID back on-line if the whole RAID is made up of unreliable drives. It’s just not worth the trouble.
The drives that just don’t work in our environment are Western Digital Green 3TB drives and Seagate LP (low power) 2TB drives. Both of these drives start accumulating errors as soon as they are put into production. We think this is related to vibration. The drives do somewhat better in the new low-vibration Backblaze Storage Pod, but still not well enough.
These drives are designed to be energy-efficient, and spin down aggressively when not in use. In the Backblaze environment, they spin down frequently, and then spin right back up. We think that this causes a lot of wear on the drive.
Failure Rates
We measure drive reliability by looking at the annual failure rate, which is the average number of failures you can expect running one drive for a year. A failure is when we have to replace a drive in a pod.
4drunZd.jpg
This chart has some more details that don’t show up in the pretty chart, including the number of drives of each model that we have, and how old the drives are:
RiXNjSW.png
The following sections focus on different aspects of these results.
1.5TB Seagate Drives
The Backblaze team has been happy with Seagate Barracuda LP 1.5TB drives. We’ve been running them for a long time – their average age is pushing 4 years. Their overall failure rate isn’t great, but it’s not terrible either.
The non-LP 7200 RPM drives have been consistently unreliable. Their failure rate is high, especially as they’re getting older.
BE7YG2E.png
The Seagate Barracuda Green 1.5TB drive, though, has not been doing well. We got them from Seagate as warranty replacements for the older drives, and these new drives are dropping like flies. Their average age shows 0.8 years, but since these are warranty replacements, we believe that they are refurbished drives that were returned by other customers and erased, so they already had some usage when we got them.
Bigger Seagate Drives
The bigger Seagate drives have continued the tradition of the 1.5Tb drives: they’re solid workhorses, but there is a constant attrition as they wear out.
4V7gb3e.png
The good pricing on Seagate drives along with the consistent, but not great, performance is why we have a lot of them.
Hitachi Drives
If the price were right, we would be buying nothing but Hitachi drives. They have been rock solid, and have had a remarkably low failure rate.
yZGytf7.png
Western Digital Drives
Back at the beginning of Backblaze, we bought Western Digital 1.0TB drives, and that was a really good choice. Even after over 4 years of use, the ones we still have are going strong.
We wish we had more of the Western Digital Red 3TB drives (WD30EFRX). They’ve also been really good, but they came after we already had a bunch of the Seagate 3TB drives, and when they came out their price was higher.
gusb4oQ.png
What About Drives That Don’t Fail Completely?
Another issue when running a big data center is how much personal attention each drive needs. When a drive has a problem, but doesn’t fail completely, it still creates work. Sometimes automated recovery can fix this, but sometimes a RAID array needs that personal touch to get it running again.
Each storage pod runs a number of RAID arrays. Each array stores data reliably by spreading data across many drives. If one drive fails, the data can still be obtained from the others. Sometimes, a drive may “pop out” of a RAID array but still seem good, so after checking that its data is intact and it’s working, it gets put back in the RAID to continue operation. Other times a drive may stop responding completely and look like it’s gone, but it can be reset and continue running.
Measuring the time spent in a “trouble” state like this is a measure of how much work a drive creates. Once again, Hitachi wins. Hitachi drives get “four nines” of untroubled operation time, while the other brands just get “two nines”.
EldFVak.png
Drive Lifetime by Brand
The chart below shows the cumulative survival rate for each brand. Month by month, how many of the drives are still alive?
wIo6ABH.jpg
Hitachi does really well. There is an initial die-off of Western Digital drives, and then they are nice and stable. The Seagate drives start strong, but die off at a consistently higher rate, with a burst of deaths near the 20-month mark.
Having said that, you’ll notice that even after 3 years, by far most of the drives are still operating.
What Drives Is Backblaze Buying Now?
We are focusing on 4TB drives for new pods. For these, our current favorite is the Seagate Desktop HDD.15 (ST4000DM000). We’ll have to keep an eye on them, though. Historically, Seagate drives have performed well at first, and then had higher failure rates later.
Our other favorite is the Western Digital 3TB Red (WD30EFRX).
We still have to buy smaller drives as replacements for older pods where drives fail. The drives we absolutely won’t buy are Western Digital 3TB Green drives and Seagate 2TB LP drives.
A year and a half ago, Western Digital acquired the Hitachi disk drive business. Will Hitachi drives continue their excellent performance? Will Western Digital bring some of the Hitachi reliability into their consumer-grade drives?
At Backblaze, we will continue to monitor and share the performance of a wide variety of disk drive models. What has your experience been?
http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21...-should-i-buy/
I thought this was good enough that it deserved it's own thread
Your welcome BlackAck!
My last two blog posts were about expected drive lifetimes and drive reliability. These posts were an outgrowth of the careful work that we’ve done at Backblaze to find the most cost-effective disk drives. Running a truly unlimited online backup service for only $5 per month means our cloud storage needs to be very efficient and we need to quickly figure out which drives work.
Because Backblaze has a history of openness, many readers expected more details in my previous posts. They asked what drive models work best and which last the longest. Given our experience with over 25,000 drives, they asked which ones are good enough that we would buy them again. In this post, I’ll answer those questions.
Drive Population
At the end of 2013, we had 27,134 consumer-grade drives spinning in Backblaze Storage Pods. The breakdown by brand looks like this:
sdfkn2s.png
As you can see, they are mostly Seagate and Hitachi drives, with a good number of Western Digital thrown in. We don’t have enough Toshiba or Samsung drives for good statistical results.
Why do we have the drives we have? Basically, we buy the least expensive drives that will work. When a new drive comes on the market that looks like it would work, and the price is good, we test a pod full and see how they perform. The new drives go through initial setup tests, a stress test, and then a couple weeks in production. (A couple of weeks is enough to fill the pod with data.) If things still look good, that drive goes on the buy list. When the price is right, we buy it.
We are willing to spend a little bit more on drives that are reliable, because it costs money to replace a drive. We are not willing to spend a lot more, though.
Excluded Drives
Some drives just don’t work in the Backblaze environment. We have not included them in this study. It wouldn’t be fair to call a drive “bad” if it’s just not suited for the environment it’s put into.
We have some of these drives running in storage pods, but are in the process of replacing them because they aren’t reliable enough. When one drive goes bad, it takes a lot of work to get the RAID back on-line if the whole RAID is made up of unreliable drives. It’s just not worth the trouble.
The drives that just don’t work in our environment are Western Digital Green 3TB drives and Seagate LP (low power) 2TB drives. Both of these drives start accumulating errors as soon as they are put into production. We think this is related to vibration. The drives do somewhat better in the new low-vibration Backblaze Storage Pod, but still not well enough.
These drives are designed to be energy-efficient, and spin down aggressively when not in use. In the Backblaze environment, they spin down frequently, and then spin right back up. We think that this causes a lot of wear on the drive.
Failure Rates
We measure drive reliability by looking at the annual failure rate, which is the average number of failures you can expect running one drive for a year. A failure is when we have to replace a drive in a pod.
4drunZd.jpg
This chart has some more details that don’t show up in the pretty chart, including the number of drives of each model that we have, and how old the drives are:
RiXNjSW.png
The following sections focus on different aspects of these results.
1.5TB Seagate Drives
The Backblaze team has been happy with Seagate Barracuda LP 1.5TB drives. We’ve been running them for a long time – their average age is pushing 4 years. Their overall failure rate isn’t great, but it’s not terrible either.
The non-LP 7200 RPM drives have been consistently unreliable. Their failure rate is high, especially as they’re getting older.
BE7YG2E.png
The Seagate Barracuda Green 1.5TB drive, though, has not been doing well. We got them from Seagate as warranty replacements for the older drives, and these new drives are dropping like flies. Their average age shows 0.8 years, but since these are warranty replacements, we believe that they are refurbished drives that were returned by other customers and erased, so they already had some usage when we got them.
Bigger Seagate Drives
The bigger Seagate drives have continued the tradition of the 1.5Tb drives: they’re solid workhorses, but there is a constant attrition as they wear out.
4V7gb3e.png
The good pricing on Seagate drives along with the consistent, but not great, performance is why we have a lot of them.
Hitachi Drives
If the price were right, we would be buying nothing but Hitachi drives. They have been rock solid, and have had a remarkably low failure rate.
yZGytf7.png
Western Digital Drives
Back at the beginning of Backblaze, we bought Western Digital 1.0TB drives, and that was a really good choice. Even after over 4 years of use, the ones we still have are going strong.
We wish we had more of the Western Digital Red 3TB drives (WD30EFRX). They’ve also been really good, but they came after we already had a bunch of the Seagate 3TB drives, and when they came out their price was higher.
gusb4oQ.png
What About Drives That Don’t Fail Completely?
Another issue when running a big data center is how much personal attention each drive needs. When a drive has a problem, but doesn’t fail completely, it still creates work. Sometimes automated recovery can fix this, but sometimes a RAID array needs that personal touch to get it running again.
Each storage pod runs a number of RAID arrays. Each array stores data reliably by spreading data across many drives. If one drive fails, the data can still be obtained from the others. Sometimes, a drive may “pop out” of a RAID array but still seem good, so after checking that its data is intact and it’s working, it gets put back in the RAID to continue operation. Other times a drive may stop responding completely and look like it’s gone, but it can be reset and continue running.
Measuring the time spent in a “trouble” state like this is a measure of how much work a drive creates. Once again, Hitachi wins. Hitachi drives get “four nines” of untroubled operation time, while the other brands just get “two nines”.
EldFVak.png
Drive Lifetime by Brand
The chart below shows the cumulative survival rate for each brand. Month by month, how many of the drives are still alive?
wIo6ABH.jpg
Hitachi does really well. There is an initial die-off of Western Digital drives, and then they are nice and stable. The Seagate drives start strong, but die off at a consistently higher rate, with a burst of deaths near the 20-month mark.
Having said that, you’ll notice that even after 3 years, by far most of the drives are still operating.
What Drives Is Backblaze Buying Now?
We are focusing on 4TB drives for new pods. For these, our current favorite is the Seagate Desktop HDD.15 (ST4000DM000). We’ll have to keep an eye on them, though. Historically, Seagate drives have performed well at first, and then had higher failure rates later.
Our other favorite is the Western Digital 3TB Red (WD30EFRX).
We still have to buy smaller drives as replacements for older pods where drives fail. The drives we absolutely won’t buy are Western Digital 3TB Green drives and Seagate 2TB LP drives.
A year and a half ago, Western Digital acquired the Hitachi disk drive business. Will Hitachi drives continue their excellent performance? Will Western Digital bring some of the Hitachi reliability into their consumer-grade drives?
At Backblaze, we will continue to monitor and share the performance of a wide variety of disk drive models. What has your experience been?
http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21...-should-i-buy/
I thought this was good enough that it deserved it's own thread
Your welcome BlackAck!
Last edited by #1 STUNNA; 01-22-2014 at 10:20 PM.
01-23-2014, 10:45 AM
#2
Needs more Lemon Pledge
Thanks for posting. I know you are aware of my fondness (ok, virtually exclusive use) for Seagate drives, but you should know that I don't (unless under duress) use the Barracuda line. I only use the SV line (SV35) or higher. I generally buy in quantities of 5 or more at a time in the 1TB size. I am waiting to see how the 2TB version of this drive fairs in the long run before using it for my desktop attached storage devices (Micronet RaidBank)for large data collections, etc.
When I eventually pony up for a Synology NAS I will most likely fill it with Seagate NAS drives.
When I eventually pony up for a Synology NAS I will most likely fill it with Seagate NAS drives.
01-23-2014, 10:48 AM
#3
Needs more Lemon Pledge
From the article you posted:
Makes sense for them with their level of redundancy, but I would not want to rely on the longevity of the base model drive from any manufacturer for a high demand environment with little to no tolerance for data loss. 
Why do we have the drives we have? Basically, we buy the least expensive drives that will work...
We are willing to spend a little bit more on drives that are reliable, because it costs money to replace a drive. We are not willing to spend a lot more, though.
We are willing to spend a little bit more on drives that are reliable, because it costs money to replace a drive. We are not willing to spend a lot more, though.
01-23-2014, 12:16 PM
#4
Needs more Lemon Pledge
Just ordered five more ST1000VX000 from newegg...
01-23-2014, 10:09 PM
#5
Senior Moderator
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Every hard drive that has died on me over the years has been a Seagate.
The following users liked this post:
mcflyguy24 (04-05-2014)
01-24-2014, 02:29 AM
#6
Go Giants
Not enough graphs....
01-27-2014, 07:33 PM
#7
Needs more Lemon Pledge
Just for you stunna:
Trending Topics
01-27-2014, 10:55 PM
#8
Sanest Florida Man
Thread Starter
01-27-2014, 11:57 PM
#9
Sanest Florida Man
Thread Starter
How does the 3TB SV35 compare to the Western Digital 3TB Red (WD30EFRX)
01-28-2014, 12:00 AM
#10
Needs more Lemon Pledge
Dunno, have only used the 1TB SV series.
02-12-2014, 06:12 PM
#12
Needs more Lemon Pledge
You have used hundreds of them?
Or you have had a few fail?
EVERYONE has had one or two drives fail.
Thing is, most people only every buy a handful of drives.
I literally am looking at my desk with 20+ seagate drives on it and I can tell you that they do not fail more or less than other drives, and their higher level drives are nearly rock solid. I use the SV series or better, not the standard barracuda desktop series.
I will continue to buy Seagate drives, thank you.
02-12-2014, 06:53 PM
#13
Needs more Lemon Pledge
I will say, though, that there are many more complaints about drives made in China than there were about drives made in Thailand.
During the flooding, drives were hard to come by and most manufacturers opened or ramped up China manufacturing. I just don't know if the tolerances are the same in China as they were in Thailand.
During the flooding, drives were hard to come by and most manufacturers opened or ramped up China manufacturing. I just don't know if the tolerances are the same in China as they were in Thailand.
02-13-2014, 11:56 AM
#15
Race Director
Totally worthless statement...
Good info!! Confirms what I've read about the WD Red drives in a NAS. Confirms my decision to use the Red 4TB in my NAS (4 x 4TB, 12TB Raid 5 with 5 year replacement warranty). But I have to admit, the Hitachi failure rate is impressive. Will have to keep my eye on them.
Good info!! Confirms what I've read about the WD Red drives in a NAS. Confirms my decision to use the Red 4TB in my NAS (4 x 4TB, 12TB Raid 5 with 5 year replacement warranty). But I have to admit, the Hitachi failure rate is impressive. Will have to keep my eye on them.
Last edited by nfnsquared; 02-13-2014 at 12:01 PM.
02-13-2014, 12:45 PM
#17
Needs more Lemon Pledge
02-13-2014, 02:52 PM
#18
Actually no. I've ran Seagates in custom rigs/NAS storages by choice for years and very few made the cut. I have two Seagate's at the moment, one is on its way out (after 5 years) and the other is a Maxtor( if that counts as a Seagate) from the windows 98 era that still beats. As far as Seagate's go, I've had a host of barracuda(7200.11)failures and DOA's. As for my NAS, those ran the ST1000VX000 (Cheetahs) and 3 of 4 of those failed. Three failed within the 1st year (one within 2 months) and the warranty replacements were DOA. Thanks but no thanks, I'll stick with my WD Black's/Red's and the most often overlooked Samsung HDD's which have ran flawlessly through out the years.
Last edited by whudini3000; 02-13-2014 at 02:54 PM.
02-13-2014, 04:37 PM
#19
Needs more Lemon Pledge
Everyone knows the base model barracudas are a crap shoot, just like the baseline WDs are.
Your NAS was EITHER running Cheetahs (15,000RPM) OR ST1000VX000 which are the SV VideoServer drives. The latter have a MTBF of over 1M hours, so unless you (a) effed them up yourself or (b) got a batch from a flood in Thailand, I highly doubt 3 out of 4 SV35 series drives failed within one year. Seagate would want to talk with you if that were truly the case. I exclusively run those exact drives, have 20+ on the desk in front of me and in various RAID arrays, enclosures and workstations (and ~20+ more on the shelf) and have had very good longevity and performance from them.
You either screwed them up or you had a bad batch from the floods, which every manufacturer had.
I don't get paid anything to use or recommend Seagate drives, but when people make baseless remarks without a substantial data set or empirical data, it makes them look stupid.
Your NAS was EITHER running Cheetahs (15,000RPM) OR ST1000VX000 which are the SV VideoServer drives. The latter have a MTBF of over 1M hours, so unless you (a) effed them up yourself or (b) got a batch from a flood in Thailand, I highly doubt 3 out of 4 SV35 series drives failed within one year. Seagate would want to talk with you if that were truly the case. I exclusively run those exact drives, have 20+ on the desk in front of me and in various RAID arrays, enclosures and workstations (and ~20+ more on the shelf) and have had very good longevity and performance from them.
You either screwed them up or you had a bad batch from the floods, which every manufacturer had.
I don't get paid anything to use or recommend Seagate drives, but when people make baseless remarks without a substantial data set or empirical data, it makes them look stupid.
02-13-2014, 08:27 PM
#20
'13 Hyundai Sonata
So yesterday at work a professor on the campus (I work on a local campus in IT) come in and is frantic because his hard drive failed on both of his externals and his desktop. After this long story about how his wife threatened a divorce if he can't get it fixed since he was the last to use the computer, I tore down all three devices to only discover seagate drives in all 3. He also bought all 3 items at the same time almost 2 years ago.
But in all honesty, in the 4 years that I've been doing this I've seen more Toshiba drives fail more often than anything else. I normally just throw in a Western Digital and everything seems to be working fine.
To the OP thought, have considered a combo drive with SSD and HDD?
But in all honesty, in the 4 years that I've been doing this I've seen more Toshiba drives fail more often than anything else. I normally just throw in a Western Digital and everything seems to be working fine.
To the OP thought, have considered a combo drive with SSD and HDD?
02-13-2014, 10:20 PM
#21
Everyone knows the base model barracudas are a crap shoot, just like the baseline WDs are.
Your NAS was EITHER running Cheetahs (15,000RPM) OR ST1000VX000 which are the SV VideoServer drives. The latter have a MTBF of over 1M hours, so unless you (a) effed them up yourself or (b) got a batch from a flood in Thailand, I highly doubt 3 out of 4 SV35 series drives failed within one year. Seagate would want to talk with you if that were truly the case. I exclusively run those exact drives, have 20+ on the desk in front of me and in various RAID arrays, enclosures and workstations (and ~20+ more on the shelf) and have had very good longevity and performance from them.
You either screwed them up or you had a bad batch from the floods, which every manufacturer had.
I don't get paid anything to use or recommend Seagate drives, but when people make baseless remarks without a substantial data set or empirical data, it makes them look stupid.
Your NAS was EITHER running Cheetahs (15,000RPM) OR ST1000VX000 which are the SV VideoServer drives. The latter have a MTBF of over 1M hours, so unless you (a) effed them up yourself or (b) got a batch from a flood in Thailand, I highly doubt 3 out of 4 SV35 series drives failed within one year. Seagate would want to talk with you if that were truly the case. I exclusively run those exact drives, have 20+ on the desk in front of me and in various RAID arrays, enclosures and workstations (and ~20+ more on the shelf) and have had very good longevity and performance from them.
You either screwed them up or you had a bad batch from the floods, which every manufacturer had.
I don't get paid anything to use or recommend Seagate drives, but when people make baseless remarks without a substantial data set or empirical data, it makes them look stupid.
Last edited by whudini3000; 02-13-2014 at 10:24 PM.
02-14-2014, 06:49 AM
#23
Race Director
Speaking of Hitachi low failure rates:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822145912
4TB for $190, code EMCPHWF28
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822145912
4TB for $190, code EMCPHWF28
02-14-2014, 10:04 AM
#24
Needs more Lemon Pledge
I don't know what more hilarious, you being an apologist for Seagate or doubting the story. One fact remains, the majority of the Seagates I've owned and installed in various enclosures failed. The Cheetahs were replaced with Raptors and not a single one has failed. At the end of the day, I could care less about Seagates excuses. They're terrible. I want a hard drive that works, and if I'm betting with my dollar, then that bet lies with WD and Samsung. As I stated before in a previous post," If it works for you..." well then it works for you. Getting your panties in a bunch over shitty hard drives isn't time well spent.
They are not 'terrible', just as WD is not terrible and Hitachi is not terrible. A small percentage of ANY manufacturer's drives will fail, you just don't seem to understand statistics. When your WD drives fail, which they eventually will, will you return here to say that WD is "terrible?"... Stop being a drama queen...
02-14-2014, 10:58 AM
#25
Three Wheelin'
I believe WD Blacks are one of the very few desktop drives that still come with a 5 year warranty. I recently bought a Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 for it's speed, but it only came with a 2 year warranty. I hope it lasts more than 2 years, but I have my doubts.
02-14-2014, 12:42 PM
#26
Race Director
iTrader: (1)
A few years ago we bought a bunch of those 7200s for work. And I'd say two-thirds of them are dead now.
I don't know if I have EVER had a WD drive fail on me. And I'm going 15 years back.
I don't know if I have EVER had a WD drive fail on me. And I'm going 15 years back.
02-14-2014, 01:04 PM
#27
the overexplainer
i've worked at an AASP and have seen several more seagates fail than WDs. Both brands have been used by Apple from the factory.
In recent memory Segate/Apple has had to extend warranty/recall hard drives twice for crappy Seagate drives. Never has this happened for Western Digital.
http://www.apple.com/support/imac-harddrive/
http://appleinsider.com/articles/07/...seagate_drives
Western digital has also never had a massive recall recently. Google for it. Seagate on the other hand has had several bad runs of drives in recent years.
yeah, seagate sucks. I've personally dealt with many failed ones in Macbooks.
In recent memory Segate/Apple has had to extend warranty/recall hard drives twice for crappy Seagate drives. Never has this happened for Western Digital.
http://www.apple.com/support/imac-harddrive/
http://appleinsider.com/articles/07/...seagate_drives
Western digital has also never had a massive recall recently. Google for it. Seagate on the other hand has had several bad runs of drives in recent years.
yeah, seagate sucks. I've personally dealt with many failed ones in Macbooks.
02-14-2014, 01:13 PM
#28
Race Director
iTrader: (1)
I'll be perfectly honest...
I've never seen a WD or Seagate drive OEM in an Apple computer. They've all been Hitachi. :/
I've never seen a WD or Seagate drive OEM in an Apple computer. They've all been Hitachi. :/
02-14-2014, 03:53 PM
#29
the overexplainer
In the older white macbooks (non unibody) seagates were in almost everything. I've seen several students lose data, talked to their parents over the phone saying we couldnt really do anything as their kid cried.
i also had a fujitsu in my 2007/8ish Macbook Pro.
02-14-2014, 03:55 PM
#30
Race Director
iTrader: (1)
Yea I've seen some of the fujitsu's too.
02-14-2014, 04:16 PM
#31
Needs more Lemon Pledge
I have seen those WDs with the temp sensors in the iMacs, too. PITA.
It's funny, every relative who has ever sent a drive to me to get data off it after failure has sent a WD. Not accurate data points, albeit, but it's interesting how personal experience can color your perception of reliability.
It's funny, every relative who has ever sent a drive to me to get data off it after failure has sent a WD. Not accurate data points, albeit, but it's interesting how personal experience can color your perception of reliability.
02-14-2014, 05:02 PM
#32
Nom Nom Nom Nom
I have seen those WDs with the temp sensors in the iMacs, too. PITA.
It's funny, every relative who has ever sent a drive to me to get data off it after failure has sent a WD. Not accurate data points, albeit, but it's interesting how personal experience can color your perception of reliability.
It's funny, every relative who has ever sent a drive to me to get data off it after failure has sent a WD. Not accurate data points, albeit, but it's interesting how personal experience can color your perception of reliability.
02-14-2014, 08:40 PM
#33
The illustriously pedantic part of this is actually your gross generalization based on a sample set of what, ~6 total drives? They are not 'terrible', just as WD is not terrible and Hitachi is not terrible. A small percentage of ANY manufacturer's drives will fail, you just don't seem to understand statistics. When your WD drives fail, which they eventually will, will you return here to say that WD is "terrible?"... Stop being a drama queen...
They are not 'terrible', just as WD is not terrible and Hitachi is not terrible. A small percentage of ANY manufacturer's drives will fail, you just don't seem to understand statistics. When your WD drives fail, which they eventually will, will you return here to say that WD is "terrible?"... Stop being a drama queen... What is it you don't understand about the statistics that have been supplied via Blackbaze? You want to throw on your belt and suspenders and demand stats from an individual who has no reason to keep them. You've specifically neglected and erroneously assumed I've only had 6 Seagate failures. But in reality, I've experience several via personal and work life as previously stated.. Your stats have been supplied via Blackblaze from a 3year study and surprise; Seagates suck! 
Nonetheless, I bid you well on irrecoverable data loss, Firmware errors and Death clicks. ~Godspeed
02-15-2014, 11:17 AM
#34
Needs more Lemon Pledge
it is you who has not actually READ the Backblaze stats... All of them.
02-15-2014, 11:23 AM
#35
Race Director
I've read the stats and after doing so, I'd buy WD red NAS drives or Hitachi NAS drives over Seagate NAS drives....
02-15-2014, 01:28 PM
#36
Team Owner
I recently had a WD Green drive go bad on me. WD replaced it with a Black Drive. WTF? Does the RMA team just take what is on top of the pile of refurb disks and ship it?
Before you all go and say "well you got a better disk". I didn't want a Black Drive. Green drives will spin down when not in use. As far as I can tell, black drive don't. The spin down is a nice feature to have in my NAS. I guess I have to call and complain.
Before you all go and say "well you got a better disk". I didn't want a Black Drive. Green drives will spin down when not in use. As far as I can tell, black drive don't. The spin down is a nice feature to have in my NAS. I guess I have to call and complain.
02-22-2014, 08:22 AM
#37
Race Director
Damn, great price for WD 4TB Red, $169.99 shipped:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822236599
Use code: EMCYTZT5752
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822236599
Use code: EMCYTZT5752
02-22-2014, 09:01 AM
#38
Team Owner
Nice, maybe I should replace my 2TB drives.
02-22-2014, 10:02 AM
#39
Race Director
Best price I've seen on them in a while. I paid $196 each a few months ago, but that included the 2-year extended replacement warranty (total of 5 years replacement warranty).
02-22-2014, 10:51 PM
#40
'13 Hyundai Sonata
How good are the reds compared to the blacks, blue, and greens?
At my office we normally just repair with WD black drives and was trying to figure out the spec differences for each but I couldn't pinpoint the major differences.
Unless I completely overlooked it
At my office we normally just repair with WD black drives and was trying to figure out the spec differences for each but I couldn't pinpoint the major differences.
Unless I completely overlooked it