Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: woof75 on April 08, 2008, 01:18:30 pm
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Maxtor, Lacie, Seagate, western digital?
First off, after looking at amazon reviews they all fail, I've had WD drives fail, my Lacies and Maxtors are fine and have never failed, many people's have. Some say Seagate, amazon reviews say they often fail.
They all fail, and none are great but I have to buy 2 new 500GB drives.
What to get, anyone know anything I should know?
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Western digital and maxtor in my experience have both been pretty good, personally I wouldn't touch Lacie (heard to many bad things) As you say they can ALL fail, anything with moving parts has a finite lifespan, backup, backup, and backup again (then pray) Wayne
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Lacie packages hard drives. They do not make them.
They all fail. I've had warranty replacments on Seagate, Maxtor (owned by Seagate), IBM (division now owned by Hitachi), and Western Digital. My samsungs have not failed me. Haven't owned a deskstar since hitachi bought them.
I buy seagates but that has as much to do with the number of people I know who work there as it does the drives reliability. (And the fact that my Seagate options made me a ton of $$ some years ago.)
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Since they all have to be made with cost competition in mind and knowing that all will fail, one option is to simply get the cheapest and plan for failure.
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Since they all have to be made with cost competition in mind and knowing that all will fail, one option is to simply get the cheapest and plan for failure.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=188004\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
One thing I did learn is getting 2 different brands of drive each time. My two WD drives both failed in the same way after about a week at the most.
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I've bought 5 LaCie drives the 250GB porcsche drives and 2 have outright died on me, 1 is dying and the rest... it's only a matter of time. I bought them because they were cheap and I have been burned. They have experienced very light use under optimal conditions. Attempting to retrieve data has been an expensive and time consuming nightmare. Needless to say, I tell everyone to avoid Lacie drives like the plague. The quality control is horrific with less durability than dixie cups.
I've had good experiences with Seagate, Western Digital and Hitachi. Knock on wood. Now I have everything triple backed up on different manufacturers' drives.
Maxtor, Lacie, Seagate, western digital?
First off, after looking at amazon reviews they all fail, I've had WD drives fail, my Lacies and Maxtors are fine and have never failed, many people's have. Some say Seagate, amazon reviews say they often fail.
They all fail, and none are great but I have to buy 2 new 500GB drives.
What to get, anyone know anything I should know?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=187988\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
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I've had WD, Seagate and Maxtor fail on me. I buy maxtors because it gave me plenty of warning! I'm not sure there is so much a correct answer as a line of superstition to follow.
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I had 2 WDs fail simultaneously in my RAID array.... a pain-in-the-ass to say the least.
I've also had two of the LaCie Porsche portable drives fail, but both were powerboard failures, so the drives were fine.
My one Maxtor portable has taken a beating and kept on going just fine
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Funny, I just ordered a 750GB Seagate today. My two year old Maxtor is failing while my IBM drive (manufacturer unknown, probably Hitachi) has been humming along for five years.
I went with the Seagate Barracuda on the basis of warranty (five years), MTBF numbers (750,000 hours - 50,000 contact events) and an annual failure rate quoted at 0.34% or 34 failures for every 10,000 drives.
We'll see...
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Speaking as someone who runs a computer repair business as his day job, I have a large pile of failed hard drives in the back of my shop. I've been saving them so I can salvage the magnets from them. I'm planning to use the magnets for a wind generator I'm building this summer. Anyhow, here's the stats on the pile:
1 Seagate (killed by lightning strike on house)
3 Western Digitals (1 killed by power surge, I think)
17 Samsungs
68 Maxtors
This matches my own personal experience of Seagate drives being the most reliable and Maxtor being the least (if you're unfortunate enough to own a Maxtor, make plenty of backups). The only thing I'd buy with the Samsung name on it is a computer monitor -- I'd run as fast and as far as possible from anything else.
My 2 cents.
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They all fail. I've had warranty replacments on Seagate, Maxtor (owned by Seagate), IBM (division now owned by Hitachi), and Western Digital. My samsungs have not failed me. Haven't owned a deskstar since hitachi bought them.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=188001\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Same here. Samsung are my choice these days. Very quiet too. And Fast.
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As a former long time employee of Circuit City Stores Inc. and as an owner and builder of many PC's and Macs over the last 20 years, I have to give my vote for the least amount of HD failures to Western Digital.
Joe Bossuyt
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so here goes, I bought 2, Maxtor one touch 4 500GB and a WD home edition 500GB drive. I have my fingers crossed.
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I have built/serviced/maintained/repaied hundreds of systems over the past 10 years. I currently run 9 drives on my main system.
All are Western Digital.
I have had a smattering of brands fail over the years, but only a batch of older IBM drives (now Hitachi) were attributed directly to poor design. They were eventually known as the Deathstar (Deskstar) drives, and I had over 15 fail within a few months.
The number 1 killer of drives, no matter the brand, is heat. I have an original 40GB LaCie ext. enclosure drive (maxtor drive in it) and it's still going, but I just sold it because it's too small to be useful anymore. LaCie has a reputation like Apple - great looks, exotic design. Unfortunately that exotic design - aluminum heatsink/enclosure is finiky. It MUST have clearance all the way around for adaquate airflow. It gets HOT. Many people stacked them, put them under other equipment, etc. - and they will fail doing so. The same is true of many external enclusures with no fan.
I recently killed two of my drives due to me being a dumbass, and not cleaning my drive fan intake filter. It was packed with dust, and the two farthest drives cooked themselves. Luckily they were not critical drives, and I didn't lose anything.
I also use the new GP drives in my 4TB array - they are specifically designed for low heat, spining at 5400 or 7200 on demand to save power.
Keep the drives cool, and you won't have problems, is the bottom line.
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I have had a smattering of brands fail over the years, but only a batch of older IBM drives (now Hitachi) were attributed directly to poor design. They were eventually known as the Deathstar (Deskstar) drives, and I had over 15 fail within a few months.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=188274\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
That wasn't bad design, it was a bad batch. Specifically ones made in the Hungary factory.
Unsurprisingly there isn't much poetry regard hard drives, however.....
I once bought a 75GXP,
made in the fair land of Hungary.
One morning, straight out of bed,
I wrote a file that could not be read.
I heard a weird noise, and scratched my head;
I said to myself, "This drive is DEAD!"
I mourned the loss of sundry data,
yet very soon (and not much later)
that doomsday theory I rejected,
as my other files were unaffected.
My OS and data I promptly withdrew
to a Samsung drive, brand spanking-new.
The IBM got a firmware upgrade--
I bought it a twin, and made it RAID!
for DVD rips and various trinkets
one often downloads from the "internets".
This week the old DeskStar did it again
I stamped my feet; I tore my mane.
But then I quickly recollected
the scandisk run that I'd neglected.
The surface error check took forever;
the heads scraped loudly throughout the endeavor.
But when it was done, it had placed a lock
on every bad sector and corrupted block.
I then took every known fix to heart:
ran DFT's "Clean Disk"; enabled SMART.
I wiped the drive and repartitioned it,
and ran a long stress-test to condition it.
All this it passed with flying color,
leaving me with a gnawing thing to mull o'er:
Will such "Deathstars", thus redeemed
continue to render service esteemed?
Or will they hew to their nomenclature
By living true to their fail-prone nature?
There's no certain answer to my query, hence
I thought I'd tap your collective experience.
Should these notorious drives fall within your ken,
then what say you, O newsgroup denizen?
Adam Cole
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OK, that was just too dorky even for me.
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That wasn't bad design, it was a bad batch. Specifically ones made in the Hungary factory.
Unsurprisingly there isn't much poetry regard hard drives, however.....
I once bought a 75GXP,
made in the fair land of Hungary.
One morning, straight out of bed,
I wrote a file that could not be read.
I heard a weird noise, and scratched my head;
I said to myself, "This drive is DEAD!"
I mourned the loss of sundry data,
yet very soon (and not much later)
that doomsday theory I rejected,
as my other files were unaffected.
My OS and data I promptly withdrew
to a Samsung drive, brand spanking-new.
The IBM got a firmware upgrade--
I bought it a twin, and made it RAID!
for DVD rips and various trinkets
one often downloads from the "internets".
This week the old DeskStar did it again
I stamped my feet; I tore my mane.
But then I quickly recollected
the scandisk run that I'd neglected.
The surface error check took forever;
the heads scraped loudly throughout the endeavor.
But when it was done, it had placed a lock
on every bad sector and corrupted block.
I then took every known fix to heart:
ran DFT's "Clean Disk"; enabled SMART.
I wiped the drive and repartitioned it,
and ran a long stress-test to condition it.
All this it passed with flying color,
leaving me with a gnawing thing to mull o'er:
Will such "Deathstars", thus redeemed
continue to render service esteemed?
Or will they hew to their nomenclature
By living true to their fail-prone nature?
There's no certain answer to my query, hence
I thought I'd tap your collective experience.
Should these notorious drives fall within your ken,
then what say you, O newsgroup denizen?
Adam Cole
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=188330\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Brilliance or insanity?
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both, mixed with a pinch of nerd. :-)
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both, mixed with a pinch of nerd. :-)
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=188734\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I'd say there is a full cup of nerd in that.
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Some reading material: http://www.diglloyd.com/diglloyd/free/HardDrives/index.html (http://www.diglloyd.com/diglloyd/free/HardDrives/index.html)
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I see nothing of interest on that website. I just see a couple reviews with a little bit of data on a couple drives the guy likes - nothing comparing any drives against each other, and it's pretty dated material too.
What about it do you see that I'm missing?
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Here is a link to a web site that has some info on hard drives, including a reliability survey.
http://www.storagereview.com/ (http://www.storagereview.com/)
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Basically, as said before, it comes down to heat. Like measuring fan loudness, manufacturers rate their drives based upon having it on a workbench with open air around the drive.
There are two ways to handle this.
1:Get low heat drives that spin as slowly as possible. Laptop drives are actually ideal for this and put into a typical desktop machine will never generate enough heat. They will almost always die when their electronics or bearings go out.
2:Get a fan. I have 300 gig Maxtors in my old system. These were the hottest drive ever, or nearly so. Horrible reliability, yet mine are three years old? I have my intake on my computer sucking in air over the drives. I removed the drive bay cover and turned off the intake fan. They get up to maybe 85 F(!). Put these same drives in a typical tightly closed box or server room and dead in 3-6 months, tops.
Any drive kept to under 100-120 F will last essentially forever. It's often cheaper to buy a good fan than special low heat/low power drives.
That said, there are only two companies of note in the drive business any more. Hitachi and Western Digital. Western Digital is better overall, IMO, because they use more advanced technology, which means in some cases, single platter drives. The GP series isn't single-platter, but they spin at 5200rpm and are very quiet and cool. Blow a little air over them and you'l never have a problem. Hitachi is a bit better in the laptop area, IMO, though WD doesn't make bad drives, either.
That said, important stuff should be run in raid 1(redundancy mode). Drives are cheap enough now that you really are smart to do this. The chances of both drives dying at once and both being unrecoverable are virtually zero. Cheap insurance for as little as $60-$80 extra(cost of the second drive).
I just set up a new machine this weekend. Two 160Gb drives. Raid 1. Fast and stable. $65 each from WD.
Note - if you want to run Raid, use special drives meant for it. These often cost as little as $5-$10 more than the consumer models, yet have a longer warranty and extra features. WD's Raid drives aren't meant to run as single drives, though, and vice-versa. Their Raid drives are the Raptors and the RE2 currently. Their consumer drives are their GP series. I used RE2s for the Raid(system) and a GP for the data drive. The program and data I can recover or reinstall(it also gets backed up). The system, if it goes, I'm down for two weeks. This way I suffer no real downtime.
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That said, there are only two companies of note in the drive business any more. Hitachi and Western Digital.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=189520\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Ahem, Samsung!
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Basically, as said before, it comes down to heat.
Interestingly, that is not what Google's conclusion was in the survey of their datacenters.
In the lower and middle temperature ranges, higher
temperatures are not associated with higher failure rates. This
is a fairly surprising result, which could indicate that datacenter
or server designers have more freedom than previously thought
when setting operating temperatures for equipment that contains
disk drives. We can conclude that at moderate temperature ranges
it is likely that there are other effects which affect failure rates
much more strongly than temperatures do.
See their publication: Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population (http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf)
Atricle that summarizes Google's findings: TG Daily - Google doubts hard drives fail because of excessive temperature, usage (http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/30990/113/)
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Basically, as said before, it comes down to heat.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=189520\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Interestingly, that is not what Google's conclusion was in the survey of their datacenters.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=189621\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
If you just cared to actually read Google's survey then you'd see that it is in perfect agreement with Plekto's statements ... takes a bit of reading comprehension tho'. High temperatures kill hard disks.
However Google's survey also suggests that too low temperatures aren't healthy either. There seems to be a sweet spot around 30 - 35 °C, or 85 - 95 °F.
-- Olaf
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If you just cared to actually read Google's survey then you'd see that it is in perfect agreement with Plekto's statements ...
High temperatures kill hard disks.
I wouldn't say that it's ALL down to heat. From the results you can conclude that if your drive fails within 2 years (a usual warranty period, except for Seagate?) it most probably wasn't due to excessive heat. Excessive heat will shorten the lifespan of any hard drive though.
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From [Google's] results you can conclude that if your drive fails within two years (a usual warranty period, except for Seagate?) it most probably wasn't due to excessive heat.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=189652\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
No, you cannot.
Instead, from Google's results you can conclude that if your hard disk drive was running at a temperature below 45 °C (110 °F) and failed within two years then it most probably wasn't due to excessive heat.
Excessive heat will shorten the lifespan of any hard drive though.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=189652\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Exactly. And that also is what Plekto said. So why do you think Google came to another conclusion?
-- Olaf
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To set the record straight, in an earlier post here I stated that my Maxtor had failed. Wrong. I since have discovered that due to an arcane cableing arrangement the drives were incorrectly reported in the Event Log. It was not the Maxtor but an older Hitachi that failed.
Heat was not the cause as the drives are in a case with three fans and no drives are ever more than warm. One event that, outside of six years of use, may have contributed was a series of power outages.
I use a power strip to turn on the system so that it restarts after power returns. One evening two years ago we had six or seven power on/off events in a period of about 15 seconds. One drive was lost that evening, likely by a series of "contact enents" (a.k.a. crashes), but the Hitachi survived, at least for a couple of years.
If you use a power strip and the BIOS is set to turn on the system when powered you had better use an uninterruptable power supply to protect the system or be there whenever it is running to protect it.
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Everything electronic worth over $100 is on a APC in my home. That's pretty much a given!! Power strips are nothing as far as protection. Going direct to your home wiring is asking for trouble.
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To set the record straight, in an earlier post here I stated that my Maxtor had failed. Wrong. I since have discovered that due to an arcane cableing arrangement the drives were incorrectly reported in the Event Log. It was not the Maxtor but an older Hitachi that failed.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=190057\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
I had no end of problems with a computer a few years back and eventually discovered it was a intermitently flaky IDE cable.
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I've bought 5 LaCie drives the 250GB porcsche drives and 2 have outright died on me, 1 is dying and the rest... it's only a matter of time. I bought them because they were cheap and I have been burned. They have experienced very light use under optimal conditions. Attempting to retrieve data has been an expensive and time consuming nightmare. Needless to say, I tell everyone to avoid Lacie drives like the plague. The quality control is horrific with less durability than dixie cups.
I've had good experiences with Seagate, Western Digital and Hitachi. Knock on wood. Now I have everything triple backed up on different manufacturers' drives.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=188008\")
The LaCie Porsche drives fell into the category of the prosumer, designer end of their product line. They were always the least reliable of the line. The D2's were more reliable. Recently, we've seen a rise in LaCie quality control and rate of failures. In addition, LaCie has expanded the warranty coverage on most of their drives across the board.
We have sold quite a few of the LaCie Quadra RAID Box's and so far - dating back to last summer - have experienced one drive failure out of about 80 - 100 drives.
[a href=\"http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10950]http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10950[/url]
This particular product is an example of a sophisticated, reliable, and well thought out product from a mainstream supplier.
Steve Hendrix
www.ppratlanta.com/digital.php