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Backblaze Hard Drive Stats for 2018

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Re: Backblaze Hard Drive Stats for 2018

#61

Post by e40 »

krob wrote: post #3

HGST look like the best, but they don't have the quantities of the Seagate, makes me wonder if these numbers are skewed :/

Anyone have a good source of HGST drives? On Amazon, it used to be you could only get them from resellers and some comments complained about getting used drives. I basically stopped buying HDs from Amazon from resellers.

EDIT:

Example:

THEY ONLY WAY YOU CAN VERIFY THAT YOU DID INDEED RECEIVE THE FULL 5 YEAR HGST WARRANTY IS YOU MUST CALL HGST TECHNICAL SERVICE, GIVE THEM THE SERIAL NUMBER AND ASK IF THE DRIVE IS A NON-OEM, OEM OR REMANUFACTURED.

I have ordered expecting the full 5 year warranty, and verifying with technical service, have discovered - one with over 18,000 hours (from Crystaldiskinfo), several OEM's (no manufacturer warranty), a remanufactured and a full 5 years manufacturer warranty. AND once in awhile I get lucky and received as advertised - a full 5 year manufacturer's warranty.

Re: Backblaze Hard Drive Stats for 2018

#62

Post by sangnoir »

jacobolus wrote: post #27
level wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I built a server a few years ago, and I determined it was more cost effective for a drive to fail than to use HGST. It would be more inconvenient, but having a drive fail on a home server with only 6 drives didn't seem very likely anyway.

If you have a 2%/year failure rate per drive, then that leaves you with a nearly 12%/year chance that at least 1 of 6 drives will fail each year. Or a 31% chance that at least 1 of 6 drives will fail within 3 years. Or a 52% chance that at least 1 of 6 drives will fail within 6 years.

The question then is, would it be cheaper to replace that one drive or get the more expensive disks with lower chances of failing?

Re: Backblaze Hard Drive Stats for 2018

#63

Post by eps »

e40 wrote: post #58
conbandit wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've never found anything with it, why do you keep doing it (see: the definition of insanity)?

I have. Last time I bought a bunch of drives for a RAID array, I used the WD utility to test each of them. 1 of the 6 failed the test.

"Failed" as in "with an IO error" as in "got the wrong data back"?

Because if it's the latter, it could've been caused by some other part of IO stack and not necessarily the drive itself.

Re: Backblaze Hard Drive Stats for 2018

#65

Post by StrangeDoctor »

fpgaminer wrote: post #54

Tangentially related. Whenever I get a new drive, I always do a "burn-in". A program writes data to the whole drive and then reads it back (reproducible random data). Is there any real justification for doing this kind of test on a new drive? Doing it takes quite awhile, so I've been wondering lately if it's even worth it. I've never found anything with it.

I do this with SD cards, I've found fakes with regards to speed and capacity. But I use ZFS for drives and just trust it to do its thing.

Re: Backblaze Hard Drive Stats for 2018

#66

Post by metalliqaz »

linsomniac wrote: post #55
metalliqaz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"because reasons" is an overly negative way to say "because they offer the best value" They can get large numbers of them cheap, and their system is good at detecting and replacing bad drives, so why not use them?

In my head it wasn't negative, it was that there are a lot of reasons that I don't think needed to be gone into. Offering value is one, having systems that are designed to minimize the impact of failures is another. Others that came to mind when I wrote that include: Being able to get them at the quantities they need, having systems that reduce the COST of failures (drive replacement and RMA), cost of RMAing 10 drive…

hmmm, I always thought "because reasons" was sarcastic, as in the person would list reasons but they are all bullshit. Of course, sarcasm can be impossible to discern correctly on Internet forums and social media. I admit I could be completely wrong about this.

Re: Backblaze Hard Drive Stats for 2018

#67

Post by atYevP »

HankB99 wrote: post #60
atYevP wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yev from Backblaze here -> Glad you're enjoying the stats!

Please thank those responsible on my behalf (and all of the others who study the numbers before purchasing drives.)

I'll let Andy know - he might be around here somewhere :D

Re: Backblaze Hard Drive Stats for 2018

#68

Post by bluedino »

fpgaminer wrote: post #54

Tangentially related. Whenever I get a new drive, I always do a "burn-in". A program writes data to the whole drive and then reads it back (reproducible random data). Is there any real justification for doing this kind of test on a new drive? Doing it takes quite awhile, so I've been wondering lately if it's even worth it. I've never found anything with it.

In one of their first blog posts about the pods they stated that they saw 'high infant mortality' in drives so they would burn-in each pod for a few days before writing any customer data to one.

Re: Backblaze Hard Drive Stats for 2018

#69

Post by atYevP »

sigi45 wrote: post #52

I wonder if any of those companies talk to Backblaze about it. Like sending drives back for inspection :) I'm also curious why those companies wouldn't directly talk to backblaze. I read somewhere a blog post on how they bought specific drives online at a sale.

Yev from Backblaze here ->

> I read somewhere a blog post on how they bought specific drives online at a sale.

Yea, we used to buy drives wherever we could, but that was years ago. We're larger now so we go through more established channels.

Re: Backblaze Hard Drive Stats for 2018

#70

Post by cataflam »

conbandit wrote: post #57
fpgaminer wrote: post #54

Tangentially related. Whenever I get a new drive, I always do a "burn-in". A program writes data to the whole drive and then reads it back (reproducible random data). Is there any real justification for doing this kind of test on a new drive? Doing it takes quite awhile, so I've been wondering lately if it's even worth it. I've never found anything with it.

If you've never found anything with it, why do you keep doing it (see: the definition of insanity)?

Not the parent, but probably because

1. It's notorious that hard drives have a higher failure rate at the beginning of their lives than in the middle (see bathtub curve [0]). So it's not absurd to test them hard early on before writing any useful data and to do an early RMA.

2. The failure rate on drives is low enough that his methodology may be right but he still never has any failure in his life. Doesn't it make insane.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve

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