Low Quality disk drives

[easysurfer]

Here's a nice write up on HDD/SDD/Hybrid drives.


SSDs vs. hard drives vs. hybrids: Which storage tech is right for you? | PCWorld

When we were considering multiple TB of server class disk(as ssd) the next issue became controller throughput. You had to be careful back then on where you placed your ssd. Think thats in the past for $$$. The hybrid sounds like a nice deal.

Thanks, that's a really good article. I didn't even consider a hybrid.

 

[photoguy]

I am about to replace my 3rd backup disk drive in a period of about 5 years. Since these drives are only for backup purposed they don't get much use. I usually get 1 -2 TB drive from Costco, on off the 'book' type drives with a separate power supply I need to plug in. It's not so much the replacement costs (one was replaced under warranty) as the thought that my data is on a drive that could fail at any time.

Is anybody else having such negative experiences with hard drives?

At one point, I was having about 1 hard drive failure every 2 years. However in recent years (maybe the past or 5 or so) I haven't had any crashes but I did get SMART monitoring errors. The drives with errors have been relegated to non-critical use.

I really hate all the cables and power cords needed with external drives. Instead I use a dock, e.g. something like:

Voyager by NewerTech - Hard Drive Dock for 3.5" and 2.5" SATA Devices provides high-performance and flexibility

This allows you to use bare internal hard drives. I find it much more convenient for backup especially if you have multiple disks that you rotate.

When prices go done on SSDs to about $99 for 1TB, then I'll seriously think about pulling the trigger. For now, I'll just drool

You can't get 1TB but newegg has 256GB SSD for under $100. The SSD is a huge speed increase and is very noticeable.

 

[nuke_diver]

The only HD I've had die on a personal computer was after a PSU failed and zapped everything (smoke coming out of your computer == bad). All the computers I've had since have not failed. The old 40G drive from 2 computers ago is now an external backup drive (bought a housing to power it/connect to other computers). The last computer is now drive G,F and H in my new computer (320G drive partitioned into 3 drives). The current computer now has an SSD for programs/OS and a 1T drive for storage. There will be a %age failure rate and new models are likely worse (especially newer faster high density ones).

Having a good backup plan if you have sensitive (or sentimental data) is important. But mostly I don't (have that kind of data) so I'm a bit poor on backing up. I'll need to get more disciplined if I start recording more again.

 

[Daniel J]

Haven't heard LaCie in a long time. Just read they were purchased by Seagate. If you open up the LaCie, what drive is inside? I know they used to have Quantum drives, but that drive business was sold to Maxtor. Jeez, can't keep track...

We see a fair amount of LaCie failures in the shop (not a fan generally but the 3 year warranty mentioned above is good). Typically the drives we see inside LaCie enclosures are Seagate or Samsung, IIRC we also have seen a few Hitachis as well.

Our general recommendation is to buy a drive that has good online reviews and a decent warranty (2-3 years if possible). Backup early and often, with 2 or more copies of all important data. All hard drives fail eventually.

 

[target2019]

We see a fair amount of LaCie failures in the shop (not a fan generally but the 3 year warranty mentioned above is good). Typically the drives we see inside LaCie enclosures are Seagate or Samsung, IIRC we also have seen a few Hitachis as well.

Our general recommendation is to buy a drive that has good online reviews and a decent warranty (2-3 years if possible). Backup early and often, with 2 or more copies of all important data. All hard drives fail eventually.

Your primary desktop drive at home is failing...what do you buy? Where do you buy it?

 

[mpeirce]

Voyager by NewerTech - Hard Drive Dock for 3.5" and 2.5" SATA Devices provides high-performance and flexibility

This allows you to use bare internal hard drives. I find it much more convenient for backup especially if you have multiple disks that you rotate.

I use one of these for backups. They are excellent! I can buy cheaper bare drives and use them as "cartridges" - just plugging them in/out as needed.

I have two large drives I use for backup that rotate between being at home and being in the safe deposit box (off site backup!).

 

[ERD50]

I use one of these for backups. They are excellent! I can buy cheaper bare drives and use them as "cartridges" - just plugging them in/out as needed.

I have two large drives I use for backup that rotate between being at home and being in the safe deposit box (off site backup!).

Can you show me where you get bare drives cheaper than ones in enclosures? I always thought this would be the case (no pun intended), but when I look, I find I can get a portable USB drive as cheap as a bare one. That gives me a nice protective enclosure (no exposed circuitry), and just plug the USB cable into computer. I just throw them in a box and store them away for a little protection. I keep meaning to put one in the Safe Deposit box, but I procrastinate.

Here, cheapest bare 2.5" 500 GB drive at Newegg - $44.95:

Computer Hardware, Hard Drives, Internal Hard Drives, All Laptop Hard Drives, 500GB, 600GB, 640GB - Newegg.com

And cheapest portable 500 GB drive in enclosure - $44.95:

Computer Hardware, Hard Drives, External Hard Drives, Portable External Hard Drives - Newegg.com


That cheapest one is an unknown brand to me, the more known Samsung & Toshiba are a few $ more ( $49.99 ), but it would take a lot of drives to amortize that $70 adapter at these small differences, and you lose the other advantages I mentioned.


BTW, I do have the super cheap version of one of those adapters (bare cables) - they come in handy for checking a bare drive with my laptop. I've used to help people with their computers when the drive is having problems.


-ERD50

 

[target2019]

At one point, I was having about 1 hard drive failure every 2 years. However in recent years (maybe the past or 5 or so) I haven't had any crashes but I did get SMART monitoring errors. The drives with errors have been relegated to non-critical use.

I really hate all the cables and power cords needed with external drives. Instead I use a dock, e.g. something like:

Voyager by NewerTech - Hard Drive Dock for 3.5" and 2.5" SATA Devices provides high-performance and flexibility

This allows you to use bare internal hard drives. I find it much more convenient for backup especially if you have multiple disks that you rotate.

You can't get 1TB but newegg has 256GB SSD for under $100. The SSD is a huge speed increase and is very noticeable.

I have a similar dock, by BlacX. I've had that since USB 2.0 was all the rage. It is one of the more useful externals I've purchased. I insert a drive, make a drive image, and remove/store the backup drive. It's also useful for reformatting a drive, drive recovery, virus check.

I purchased a similar solution in the way of all cables and connectors. It was easier to leave in my bag when I went out to replace an internal or try a rescue mission.

 

[mpeirce]

Can you show me where you get bare drives cheaper than ones in enclosures? I always thought this would be the case (no pun intended), but when I look, I find I can get a portable USB drive as cheap as a bare one. That gives me a nice protective enclosure (no exposed circuitry), and just plug the USB cable into computer. I just throw them in a box and store them away for a little protection. I keep meaning to put one in the Safe Deposit box, but I procrastinate.

I haven't shopped NewEgg in a while. I'm currently using 3TB drives (I backup my iMac - 1 TB HD + 250GB SSD, wife's similar iMac, and shared MacBook Pro - 250 GB SDD all onto the same disk using Time Machine) and so haven't been shopping for smaller drives. I don't see the larger drives on NewEgg?

On Amazon, a 3TB WD Caviar Green disk is $89 while the WD My Book 4 TB USB 3.0 Hard Drive is $118. Not sure if they are the same actual drive.

Huh, looks like the 4TB USB drive is only $5 more. While the 4TB bare drive is $50 more.

It's been a few years since I bought drives (mine haven't failed yet!) so I'm not sure what the pricing dynamics are - maybe the USB drives use cheaper drive mechanisms or maybe it's just a matter of volume and aggressive pricing for the USB drives.

Still, I use the Firewire interface for backup (our old iMacs don't have USB 3.0) and so the Voyager toaster still makes sense for me.

 

[photoguy]

Can you show me where you get bare drives cheaper than ones in enclosures? I always thought this would be the case (no pun intended), but when I look, I find I can get a portable USB drive as cheap as a bare one. That gives me a nice protective enclosure (no exposed circuitry), and just plug the USB cable into computer. I just throw them in a box and store them away for a little protection. I keep meaning to put one in the Safe Deposit box, but I procrastinate.

I've been surprised at how cheap the manufacturers can sell the external drives. I think this is because generally they use cheaper drive brands (I almost always see seagate and western digital not HGST) and models (probably the equivalent of 1 year warranty or worse).

On newegg I think the most volume is in the 3tb or 4tb range for 3.5 drives. For 3.5 drives the cheapest bare drives are about $10 less than externals ($100 vs $110). However for 4tb the externals are cheaper.

That cheapest one is an unknown brand to me, the more known Samsung & Toshiba are a few $ more ( $49.99 ), but it would take a lot of drives to amortize that $70 adapter at these small differences, and you lose the other advantages I mentioned.

You can get USB docks for much less than $70 (I think mine was $20-$30). But the real advantage of the dock is space/convenience and letting you pick exactly what drives you want. Given the back blaze study, I'm not likely to buy anything but HGST.

The other advantage of the dock is that cooling is consistent and can be better than a cheap external enclosure.

 

[ERD50]

...
It's been a few years since I bought drives (mine haven't failed yet!) so I'm not sure what the pricing dynamics are - maybe the USB drives use cheaper drive mechanisms or maybe it's just a matter of volume and aggressive pricing for the USB drives. ...

I tend to think this is it (bolded part). It seems in many areas, the more popular items are sometimes more aggressively priced, as there is more competition/attention there.

-ERD50

 

[M Paquette]

Many of the newer external drives use a custom digital board built specifically for the USB interface on the drive case. This cuts the cost, and blocks 'drive shucking', the practice of buying external drives and stripping out the actual drive for use in rack storage ("Drive farms") and similar applications.

 

[devans0]

I had my hard disk start making noise this week. I bought a new computer and thumb drives for back up. My new computer doesn't have a hard drive. More expensive, but I have data, pics, videos, and music that I want to save. Thumb drives have really come down in price. I was just looking for a quick fix ....and a new computer.

 

[misanman]

Be sure to consider the drive speed when making comparisons. 5400rpm drives are typically cheaper than the 7200rpm drives. (Enterprise-class drives, for comparison, are often 10,000rpm or 15,000rpm.)

 

[Totoro]

With a hybrid I don't believe you get to choose. Frequently accessed or recent data is cached on the SSD but likely also stored on the conventional drive. This is good, as it gives you better performance along with high capacity automatically.

This is what I meant. Drive does it automatically, costs +/- 50% more vs. straight up HDD.

 

[MRG]

This is what I meant. Drive does it automatically, costs +/- 50% more vs. straight up HDD.

Agree 100%. I know you know this, but for some others, that haven't had exposure.

It's a concept that's been in use on enterprise class disk for a long time, but an order of magnitude more cache. As you mentioned its automatic, exactly what is needed. Your hot data stays on ssd and is backed by hdd. In enterprise class sans, you(at least a year ago) paided extra for that feature.

The benefits of avoiding hdd hits improves performance, as your not mechanically seeking to a track and reading a sector. Even the fastest disk slows the cpu down to a crawl if you're waiting on i/o operations. With ssd that happens at memory transfer speed(more or less), a very short wait.

Many years ago(30) I was in a presentation given by a application tuning guy. His point was the cheapest i/o was the one you didn't do. His example was great, if a mainframe only executed a single instruction a second it would take one year for an i/o to complete. Most of that year (10+ months as I recall) was spend waiting on the disk. Technology is different but physical i/o, (waiting on disk) has always been a bottleneck.

 

[Jerry1]

I have a 120GB SSD and a 2TB hard drive. I save all my programs on the SSD and store all my data on the hard drive. I'm not a power user, but I have the full microsoft office suite, quicken, turbo tax, the operating system and a few other various programs on my SSD and still have about 25% unused. It is great. The computer starts up fast and loads programs fast. I then buy an external drive and back up my storage drive on a regular basis. The main thing I worry about is my storage drive. Everything on the SSD can be reloaded. Keeping all my data in one place makes backup very easy. I have USB 3.0 and use a USB 3.0 backup drive. I just do an uncompressed copy. It takes awhile, but I just get it going and walk away.

It's really not hard to run this way and I love how fast the computer starts. It also was a good compromise between a regular hard drive (slow and noisy) and a hybrid in terms of cost since the SSD is not that big.

 

[explanade]

I've had Seagate drives fail on me. So I've switched to WD ...

 

[easysurfer]

I've had Seagate drives fail on me. So I've switched to WD ...

I've got a failing Seagate drive at the moment. Guess those bargain basement prices are for a reason..to unload them.

 

[explanade]

I do backups on two different drives. Incremental backups don't take long so maybe should add a third.

Also a good idea to keep one of the drive offsite but it's a lot of work.

 

[pb4uski]

My uncle has a relatively new Apple Mac and has gone through 3 hard drives in the last 6 months. Amazing. He is much more patient that I am. I would have thrown the thing in the pool by now.

 

[Daniel J]

My uncle has a relatively new Apple Mac and has gone through 3 hard drives in the last 6 months. Amazing. He is much more patient that I am. I would have thrown the thing in the pool by now.

That is highly unusual. Perhaps the machine is being abused or the technician did not diagnose the issue correctly? Sometimes other failures will appear to be the hard drive ( e.g., hard drive cable).

 

[easysurfer]

Replaced the Segate drive of my desktop pc with an older Western Digital drive I had around. The issue of my computer randomly pausing for about a minute at times is fixed .

I should have done the hard drive change a long time ago, but the cause didn't dawn on me (besides just something random) until reading an actual name of the symptom on a Microsoft page called a "generic freeze" caused by bad hardware.

http://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2681286