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Hard Drive Reliability Update – Sep 2014

backblaze.com

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Re: Hard Drive Reliability Update – Sep 2014

#131

Post by gukov »

linker3000 wrote: post #120
ars wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Hitachi is owned by Western Digital, and Western Digital hard disks are not doing quite as well.

It's now called "HGST (a Western Digital company)" and the two product lines (WD and HGST HDDs) are totally separate in both parts and manufacturing. /HGST employee

What makes your drives so good?

Re: Hard Drive Reliability Update – Sep 2014

#132

Post by Serow225 »

atYevP wrote: post #129
Serow225 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the Seagate 7200.14, have you checked to see if you have the latest firmware on all of them? http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/223651en Same for the 7200.11: http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/207951en

Yup, we have top-men that are in charge of keeping an eye on firmware, if we see a need in an update, we'll do it.

Have you been able to reach out to anyone at Seagate in their drive FA group to see if they'd be interested in you sending back samples of the failed drives?

Re: Hard Drive Reliability Update – Sep 2014

#133

Post by atYevP »

ars wrote: post #113
masklinn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second takeaway: if you want working HDDs, go with Hitachi.

But Hitachi is owned by Western Digital, and Western Digital hard disks are not doing quite as well.

Yev from Backblaze here -> HGST is run by a completely different division w/ a different manufacturing line. So there are some difference!

Re: Hard Drive Reliability Update – Sep 2014

#134

Post by atYevP »

gukov wrote: post #131
linker3000 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's now called "HGST (a Western Digital company)" and the two product lines (WD and HGST HDDs) are totally separate in both parts and manufacturing. /HGST employee

What makes your drives so good?

Our guess is that they kiss every one of them before they leave the factory. For good luck...

Re: Hard Drive Reliability Update – Sep 2014

#135

Post by mey »

Serow225 wrote: post #132
atYevP wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, we have top-men that are in charge of keeping an eye on firmware, if we see a need in an update, we'll do it.

Have you been able to reach out to anyone at Seagate in their drive FA group to see if they'd be interested in you sending back samples of the failed drives?

I assume (mentioned in the article) they get sent back for warranty RMA.

Re: Hard Drive Reliability Update – Sep 2014

#136

Post by robomartin »

Thanks for sharing such useful data. I just had a Seagate drive fail. Was able to recover data since the last local backup with various tools. It took hours of repair work.

I've been procrastinating about getting off-site backup. This post on HN reminded me that I've been meaning to get an account going with your company for a while. I just signed up and will test on my machine before deploying to other machines in my business. Thank you.

Re: Hard Drive Reliability Update – Sep 2014

#138

Post by brianwski »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #119
atYevP wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yev from Backblaze here -> Yes, we do burn in the drives before deploying them. So the drives in the study are ones that have at least made it past that state.

Doesn't that negate a lot of the usefulness of the data? If most Hitachis fail in the burn-in but all Seagates pass it then the expected failure of a drive would be wildly different to that suggested by the charts. Do you have the figures for raw losses including at burn-in? I mean, sure, you burn-in and do warranty returns so buying Hitachi would still seem better - but if one needs a drive to just work then it's ke…

Brian from Backblaze here. Let's call that "DOA Failure rate", where the drive is either dead on arrival, or does not survive the 2 day initial burn in test. I'll ask the boots on the ground for more data, but my impression is the 2 day burn in doesn't catch many drive failures, let's say less than 1/2 of 1 percent. We have even proposed skipping it, but we gain confidence the REST of the system is wired up correctly and other components like power supplies also have infant mortality.

Re: Hard Drive Reliability Update – Sep 2014

#139

Post by BuckRogers »

I keep seeing this stuff over the years, so I go buy something other than Seagate like WD... and they fail within a year. So I replace it with a Seagate and no problems for years. See another report that says Seagate is terrible- repeat process.

I'm just going to keep using Seagate until my anecdata refutes the reality I live in.

Re: Hard Drive Reliability Update – Sep 2014

#140

Post by InclinedPlane »

medium wrote: post #126
InclinedPlane wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to love Seagate. Then I got bit by the 7200.11 firmware problems, which was one of the worst hard drive experiences I've ever had. Never again.

The 7200.11 debacle! It was unbelievable that it happened- as far as I remember, Seagate was the leader in reliability before then, I had created five or six RAIDs with Seagate drives with 100% reliability. But when they released the 7200.11 versions....ALL 7200.11 models would spin down after idle for X minutes and then start clicking...the data was still intact, but for the drive to work again you had to pull the p…

Yup. I had built a gaming/workstation desktop using 2x 7200.11's in RAID-0. It started acting up, at a lan party of all things, which made me suspect the RAID controller on the motherboard, especially after using the drives separately seemed to work ok. But then one of the drives died and then the other, both at pretty much the least convenient moments possible.
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