Interesting Study on HD Failure Rates

[billf]

A cloud service company has posted some interesting stats on drive failure rates that they encounter, so I thought I'd post it here in case anyone is interested:

[bayswater]

It's been fairly widely known that Seagate has had some serious problems in the past few years.

[BKK-OZ]

eeke!
now, when did I last do a proper backup...?

[mikehalloran]

I don't like the heat generated by Hitachi drives and warranty isn't as easy as with WD. I will only use WD Green drives in Apple Time Capsules - as does Apple nowadays.

WD is absolutely no hassle, no questions asked. Out of the 30+ that I've purchased, I have replaced one in the last five years.

Seagate, unfortunately, has become so bad that replacement drives sent to me under warranty fail after a few months. I no longer bother to spend the postage or waste time sending them in.

Time Machine is a great indicator of hard drive problems. If it is giving you any grief, you have a bad drive that should be replaced. These drives will usually pass the SMART test but, if examined by TechTool Pro, you will see the problems. Unfortunately, you need EIDE (PATA), SATA or eSATA to read SMART status or graph it. It cannot be read through ethernet, FW, USB or TB. Time Machine errors are indicators enough and, with WD, I'd just send it in.

These drives all pass SMART and had problems with Time Machine. They are all Seagate. Replacing these drives made the problems go away. None of these should have passed. The last two pictures are of a replacement drive after 2 months and then 5 months.

[Prime Mover]

Wow, only thing I can think of is that smaller drives are typically older, maybe Seagate is improving?

I only have HGST (hitachi) and WD drives, thankfully. HGST is supposed to have the longest warrenty. I believe apple uses only HGST drives in their laptops. I've been advised to stay away from green drives, I've heard they're a lot slower and are prone to break more frequently. They're simply more energy efficient, but I'm told their no better in other areas. I'm no expert though.

[HCMarkus]

I just have lots of backup drives.

[Gravity Jim]

I'd heard this, and it was borne out by the fact that every Seagate Drive I bought in the past 10 years (haven't had one in a LONG time) failed prematurely.

Right now, I have 3 Samsung SSDs and a Western Digital 2Tb in my MacPro. I'm not doing anymore Seagate or Maxtor drives (do they still make those?)

[wylie1]

don't forget the failure rate increases dramatically with age and eventually all mechanical drives will fail.
I try to replace mine about every 6 years.

[BKK-OZ]

don't forget the failure rate increases dramatically with age...

and not just for hard drives!

[cuttime]

The thing I don't understand is that there are very few actual HD manufacturers. Essentially the same disks in different branded enclosures. I've had several different Thai drives in the exact same branded enclosures. Is the enclosure the X factor? Or the power supply? I tend to go with the enclosure theory, as I have revived supposedly dead drives by putting them in other enclosures.

BTW Seagate (which I believe is also Lacie, now) has been at the bottom so long that the only direction to go is up.

[HCMarkus]

Pretty sure these figures are for actual drive death. Power supply failure, which is common in external enclosures, is a different matter entirely, as is interface demise.

Interestingly, a cost analysis offered by one commenter to the linked site actually puts a Seagate at the top of the performance/price heap. Regardless, the moral is clear: you can't count on keeping data unless you have at least three copies on three different drives. Whatever drive you choose, Clint would say "Do you feel lucky?"

[mikehalloran]

I've been advised to stay away from green drives, I've heard they're a lot slower and are prone to break more frequently

As I mentioned, I use the WD Green drives for Time Machine only where I have had excellent performance - except for the very first one I bought which I replaced under its 3 year warranty. Speed isn't an issue with TM while low heat output usually is - especially in Apple Time Capsules which run much cooler with Green drives installed. With other drives, TCs are very hot to the touch and are prone to power supply failures (the capacitors can swell to bursting) - issues that
i don't have since switching to Green (Apple did, too, for the same reasons). They are slower than 7,500rpm drives and I wouldn't use them for other uses. They seem to take longer to wake up, too. Nowadays, the warranty is 2 years.

Otherwise, these days, the WD Caviar Blue has a 2 year warranty and runs a little cooler than the Caviar Black with its 5 year warranty. I'd go Black unless in a cramped space where heat could be an issue (iMac) and then I'd be looking at SSDs.

I notice that the WD VelociRaptor is now a 2.5" drive with a 3.5" heat sink. Yes, they're faster but still not nearly as fast as an SSD. I wouldn't put them in anything other than a well cooled enterprise server rack configured RAID. I just don't think They'd give any real world performance benefit over a Black in a Mac Pro.

The Hitachi have been spec'd by IBM for many years. Toshiba is now made by Hitachi. Very good reputation. I prefer the warranty support of WD but that's the only reason I don't use Hitachi.