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How long do disk drives last?

blog.backblaze.com

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Re: How long do disk drives last?

#121

Post by dmourati »

secabeen wrote: post #120
dmourati wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cap=capacitor. http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/MegaRAID%20SAS/MegaRAID%... Edited to add: They've optimized for hardware purchase price and given up reliability (HW RAID, battery, cap), performance, and maintainability. The strange thing is the overall cost of the storage system is driven by power, not purchase price. Smarter RAID controllers, like I link above, let you manage power by spinning down disks as they…

Actually, Glacier is probably backed mostly by tape with a disk cache. Writing then becomes cheap, as you can grab the next blank tape, but restores take a while, as they have to pull the specific tapes needed from whatever storage system they're using.

Seriously doubt Amazon is using tape.

Re: How long do disk drives last?

#122

Post by Filligree »

cnvogel wrote: post #60
pedrocr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't spin down controlled by the host and not the drive?

The host can spin down a drive manually, but most often it's done autonomously be the drive. ‣ In Linux you can manually ... • check the power state of your drive using: hdparm -C /dev/sda • manually spin down the drive (standby) using: hdparm -y /dev/sda (it will immediately spin up at the first attempt to read a sector) ‣ Or you configure the automatic standby of the drive (which also does not involve the OS)... •…

So, actually you got -B backwards. n < 128 allows spin-down.

Re: How long do disk drives last?

#123

Post by atYevP »

wazoox wrote: post #82

There are extremely large difference in reliability between different drives makes and models. Here are a couple of numbers (we're building storage servers, running 24/24 in various environments): * my company installed about 4500 Seagate Barracuda ES2 (500 GB, 750 GB and mostly 1TB) between 2008 and 2010. These drives are utter crap, in 5 years we got about 1500 failures, much worse than the previous generation (250…

Yev from Backblaze -> We love Hitachi drives. They make us really happy. Unfortunately they are also more expensive than WD and Seagates, and since our #1 factor in drive purchasing is price, we don't get them very often :(

Re: How long do disk drives last?

#124

Post by cenhyperion »

fletchowns wrote: post #109
cenhyperion wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your hard drive manufacturer knows precisely how long the drive will last Care to back that up with any real data instead of baseless consumer speculation relying on time travel?

They don't know exactly , but they have a very good idea. It's all based on statistics.

And a statistical average is very different than exactly when your specific drive will fail.

Re: How long do disk drives last?

#125

Post by kevinpet »

mikevm wrote: post #68
barrkel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've bought perhaps 50 drives in the past 20 years, and maybe 10 of them died, the others mostly becoming obsolescent. I only started taking serious logs about 6 years ago. Drives have died for me both in 24/7 powered systems and through power cycles. Drives have reported intermittent failures for many months, but still lived for years without any actual data loss. The oldest drive I still have spinning is a 200G IDE…

The one thing to know about cheap consumer cloud backup solutions like CrashPlan and Backblaze is that they only have one copy of your data. So if their RAID array where your data is stored dies and cannot be rebuilt, it's all gone. You can Google for a few disaster stories about both companies.

Backblaze doesn't use RAID, they use blob-level replication. I'm sure they can lose data, the question is how likely they are to lose data simultaneous with you losing your HD and local backup.

Re: How long do disk drives last?

#126

Post by cenhyperion »

wmf wrote: post #90
mikevm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one thing to know about cheap consumer cloud backup solutions like CrashPlan and Backblaze is that they only have one copy of your data. So if their RAID array where your data is stored dies and cannot be rebuilt, it's all gone. You can Google for a few disaster stories about both companies.

How many levels of backups for your backups do you need?

Ideally in most circumstances you should have at least one cold (non-raid, non-connected) backup of all data, and an offsite one. More being much better.

Re: How long do disk drives last?

#128

Post by outworlder »

skriticos2 wrote: post #22
outworlder wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true for blackblaze. But these drives will still be useful. What about, say, shipping them to ONGs located in Africa?

That's a horrible idea! The logistics to collect and ship the old tech to Africa alone would probably cost more then just buying it bulk from China and ship in one batch. But there are other considerations: * This would also result in a big pile of waste in Africa, as their recycling infrastructure is limited. * They need food, shelter, stable politics and functional education before they can make any use of computer…

Maybe at such scale.

I don't think that's an horrible idea, because I routinely donate old computer tech to non-profits, which do make use of it. Usually to assemble computers for children. Granted, this has negligible cost to me, as we are in the same country.

When one has access to cheap tech from the BestBuy just around the corner, it is difficult to imagine how expensive it can be in third world countries. It may also be difficult to understand how incredibly old are some of the computers that do exist.

I can't believe that it would be so expensive to ask people and companies to donate their old "junk", fill up a container and ship it.

> This would also result in a big pile of waste in Africa, as their recycling infrastructure is limited.

That may be so. That much tech waste could also create the necessary conditions for a recycling industry to start. Assuming that it doesn't already.

> They need food, shelter, stable politics and functional education before they can make any use of computers.

Is that so? Can't computers help them achieve those goals?

> They have limited energy supply. Low powered tablets / laptops are much more useful.

Yes, many locations completely lack power and ordinary desktop computers wouldn't work. But I don't think that's true for all african countries.

Re: How long do disk drives last?

#129

Post by atYevP »

thatthatis wrote: post #69

Articles like this one are the reason I went with backblaze over carbonite. It may not mean their tech is any better, but it does 1) increase my confidence in them and 2) teach me something interesting each time. Both of those are, in my book, good reasons for giving them my money.

And we love your money! Please tell more people to give us your money ;-) Seriously though, we're glad we can entertain you and help you back up. We figure being open about this stuff leads to awesome discussion and sometimes, like in the case of our storage pods, we learn a thing or two from the world at large! It's a win/win :)

Re: How long do disk drives last?

#130

Post by atYevP »

dmourati wrote: post #115
brianwski wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze but I'm on the software side, I barely ever touch the storage pods anymore. It is not true that the pod team must remove the 4U server from the rack. It is slid out like a drawer (no tools required, takes maybe 10 seconds). The drive or motherboard is then replaced, then you slide the drawer back in. So the 4U server must slide 18 inches one way, but zero cables have to be unplugged or…

Thanks for the clarification. That the PODs were on rails was never made clear to me. Still, I count that as "physically removing a 4u rackmount storage pod." Those suckers cannot be light. 10 seconds sounds rather fast. I don't imagine you could do it that fast for any of the upper pods. While I don't recommend them outright, we settled on 3U boxes from SuperMicro. http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/3u/837/s…

Yev at Backblaze | One of our designs was for an aluminum pod..it made it..."lighter". :)
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