Consumer Drives Might Be More Reliable Than Enterprise Hard Drives


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Not really sure this belongs here but here goes:

 

Online backup service Backblaze uses the same hard drives most of us use to store our data?which means they have almost 35,000 consumer drives housing our data. Their latest report claims that consumer hard drives are actually slightly more reliable than expensive "enterprise" style drives.

We've covered their analysis before, and they still rank Hitachi/HGST drives the most reliable. This time, they discovered that the drives designed for corporate server use?that is, so-called "enterprise drives"?actually failed more often than consumer drives. If you're buying enterprise drives because you think they'll last longer, it may be worth looking into that decision further.

 

 

 

 

Sauce:

http://lifehacker.com/consumer-drives-might-be-more-reliable-than-enterprise-1650338754

 

 

Surprisingly enough, I agree, i've been burned by seagate one too many times.

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I don't know that I agree.

 

Enterprise drives go through a heck of a lot more abuse than consumer drives, so of course they fail more often.  We need more data showing that same abuse on consumer drives before making that claim.

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Anything Seagate and WD Green must burn in hell. Samsung and Hitachi were the only decent brands and now they've both been bought by Seagate/Wd. Let's just hope both companies will go extinct soon :(

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I don't know that I agree.

 

Enterprise drives go through a heck of a lot more abuse than consumer drives, so of course they fail more often.  We need more data showing that same abuse on consumer drives before making that claim.

Well backblaze does post a lot of info on their use on the links above.

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Well backblaze does post a lot of info on their use on the links above.

But as a backup service, I do not feel that it is the same level of abuse that an enterprise drive will typically go through on a business day.

 

I'd like to see some data on a consumer drives vs. enterprise drives with heavy SQL use in a medium to large business for reading and writing and which one fails quicker.

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I used to have super speed fiber optics and used torrents a lot (heavy on the drive)

 

the drive i used torrents on - running daily - usually failed within few month.

 

 

 

then i decided to switch to enterprise drives.     have not had a mechanical enterprise drive fail on me even once!   in 3 years.    instead of a failure every 6 months.

 

 

 

i call bullcrap

 

 

 

 

anyway, i switched to ssd for torrent drive, and it is doing well so far.  so this is not an issue.     but we are talking about mechanical drives yes?

 

 

enterprise drives are same as consumer, but more expensive since they test them more thoroughly.  so again, i call bull-crap on the article.

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I used to have super speed fiber optics and used torrents a lot (heavy on the drive)

 

the drive i used torrents on - running daily - usually failed within few month.

 

Were your drives WD Greens? WD Greens are garbage that in order to save a microscopic amount of power keep parking the heads extremely often so they die in a very short time when used "intensively". Could you believe that some manufacturers used those also as main drives? Crazy stuff.

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I used to have super speed fiber optics and used torrents a lot (heavy on the drive)

 

the drive i used torrents on - running daily - usually failed within few month.

 

 

 

then i decided to switch to enterprise drives.     have not had a mechanical enterprise drive fail on me even once!   in 3 years.    instead of a failure every 6 months.

 

 

 

i call bullcrap

 

 

 

 

anyway, i switched to ssd for torrent drive, and it is doing well so far.  so this is not an issue.     but we are talking about mechanical drives yes?

 

 

enterprise drives are same as consumer, but more expensive since they test them more thoroughly.  so again, i call bull-crap on the article.

seagate by any chance? :P

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Not really sure this belongs here but here goes:

 

Online backup service Backblaze uses the same hard drives most of us use to store our data?which means they have almost 35,000 consumer drives housing our data. Their latest report claims that consumer hard drives are actually slightly more reliable than expensive "enterprise" style drives.

We've covered their analysis before, and they still rank Hitachi/HGST drives the most reliable. This time, they discovered that the drives designed for corporate server use?that is, so-called "enterprise drives"?actually failed more often than consumer drives. If you're buying enterprise drives because you think they'll last longer, it may be worth looking into that decision further.

 

 

 

 

Sauce:

http://lifehacker.com/consumer-drives-might-be-more-reliable-than-enterprise-1650338754

 

 

Surprisingly enough, I agree, i've been burned by seagate one too many times.

 

I definitely agree.  I have seen so many ES, CS and RE drives fail.  Meanwhile the client computers rarely get hdd failures.  Laptops still seem to have a higher failure rate but they also have worse conditions.

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seagate by any chance? :p

 

seagate, then wd, then wd, then seagate... then some other brand i don't even remember too.

until i switched to enterprise, they all failed from heavy constant use!

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seagate, then wd, then wd, then seagate... then some other brand i don't even remember too.

until i switched to enterprise, they all failed from heavy constant use!

Ahh lots of linux torrents eh?

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I used to have super speed fiber optics and used torrents a lot (heavy on the drive)

 

the drive i used torrents on - running daily - usually failed within few month.

 

 

 

then i decided to switch to enterprise drives.     have not had a mechanical enterprise drive fail on me even once!   in 3 years.    instead of a failure every 6 months.

 

 

 

i call bullcrap

 

 

 

 

anyway, i switched to ssd for torrent drive, and it is doing well so far.  so this is not an issue.     but we are talking about mechanical drives yes?

 

 

enterprise drives are same as consumer, but more expensive since they test them more thoroughly.  so again, i call bull-crap on the article.

 

Honestly that usage is not very heavy.  You are writing mostly contiguous data with torrents and very little random writes or reads.  You likely had bad luck.  I have consumer drives in heavy random read/write scenarios doing fine and enterprise drives in mostly file server usage that fail more than I'd like.

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I definitely agree.  I have seen so many ES, CS and RE drives fail.  Meanwhile the client computers rarely get hdd failures.  Laptops still seem to have a higher failure rate but they also have worse conditions.

 

most likely because enterprise hdds are bought for HEAVY CONSTANT USE!

 

and your consumer barely uses the drive,  apart from running windows, and saving temp files from browser history!

Ahh lots of linux torrents eh?

 

 

no.   not linux.    i used to seed huge loss-less archives of copyright free music, and movies, obviously. you know, stuff from hundred of years ago.   in perfect quality.    

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Honestly that usage is not very heavy.  You are writing mostly contiguous data with torrents and very little random writes or reads.  You likely had bad luck.  I have consumer drives in heavy random read/write scenarios doing fine and enterprise drives in mostly file server usage that fail more than I'd like.

 

 

most likely because enterprise hdds are bought for HEAVY CONSTANT USE!

 

and your consumer barely uses the drive,  apart from running windows, and saving temp files from browser history!

 

 

no.   not linux.    i used to seed huge loss-less archives of copyright free music, and movies, obviously. you know, stuff from hundred of years ago.   in perfect quality.    

He does have a point though, heavy usage is not just contiguous data. Though I wish someone more knowledgeable would chip in here.

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Were your drives WD Greens? WD Greens are garbage that in order to save a microscopic amount of power keep parking the heads extremely often so they die in a very short time when used "intensively". Could you believe that some manufacturers used those also as main drives? Crazy stuff.

 

no, black.

 

instinct tell me to stay away from GREEN stuff in my computer hardware.    it is just common sense.

 

my coffee cups can be green.  i choose my homes blinds and curtains, thinking about the environment (or saving on my air conditioning and heating bills)

with my harddrive - it is the last thing i worry about.

 

He does have a point though, heavy usage is not just contiguous data. Though I wish someone more knowledgeable would chip in here.

 

again, i respectfully disagree.      sharing a 100gb file through torrent (at 10 MegaBytes per second) means constant reads from multiple areas of the substantial area of the drive

a good torrent client will show you a map of reads and writes... and at that speed, download and uploading drive access is crazy!!!!

 

it is nowhere near straight up download stream... .or  even download manager that runs 5 streams..    here we have 1000s of random reads and writes, all over the place, every second.

HDD overload, was a pretty constant message, until i lowered the speed manually in the torrent client settings!

 

luckily SSD don't have that issue.

 

 

 

 

so... anyway.   mechanical ENTERPRISE HDD are awesome, and they are much more reliable at the heavy use, compared to consumer drives.   100%

 

 

for mechanical reading head - moving so much all the time is a nightmare that wears the drive out!  i know first hand.

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no, black.

 

instinct tell me to stay away from GREEN stuff in my computer hardware.    it is just common sense.

 

my coffee cups can be green.  my harddrive don't need to.

 

again, i respectfully disagree.      sharing a 100gb file through torrent (at 5 MegaBytes per second) means constant reads from multiple areas of the substantial area of the drive

 

 

for mechanical reading head - moving so much all the time is a nightmare that wears the drive out!  i know first hand.

Ia agree with your respectful disagreeing :P I'm just not knowledgable enough for this debate (as far read/write/random read whatever that means :P) 

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no, black.

 

instinct tell me to stay away from GREEN stuff in my computer hardware.    it is just common sense.

 

my coffee cups can be green.  my harddrive don't need to.

 

Don't let Lime see your green cups... or he will steal them.  :p

 

Anyway, TO EVERYONE ELSE who read this thread:

 

Check the HDD types so you get the right HDD for your purposes:

 

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/Flyer/ENG/2178-701024.pdf

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Torrenting really shouldn't put that much strain on any drive, consumer grade or enterprise level. I personally wouldn't use a green drive or a NAS drive in a workstation with a high duty cycle of load on the drives, they're better for storage purposes.

 

Also, I don't know if I'm just lucky but I have 3 seagate drives in my computer, 2 500 gig 7200.12 drives in RAID0 for gaming, and a 3TB storage drive. I warranty replaced one of the 500GB drives about 3 years ago, but other than that my Seagate drives have behaved pretty well.

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Torrenting really shouldn't put that much strain on any drive, consumer grade or enterprise level. I personally wouldn't use a green drive or a NAS drive in a workstation with a high duty cycle of load on the drives, they're better for storage purposes.

 

Also, I don't know if I'm just lucky but I have 3 seagate drives in my computer, 2 500 gig 7200.12 drives in RAID0 for gaming, and a 3TB storage drive. I warranty replaced one of the 500GB drives about 3 years ago, but other than that my Seagate drives have behaved pretty well.

Agree, don't most torrent client now have some sort of "smart caching" to avoid unnecessary grinding?

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most likely because enterprise hdds are bought for HEAVY CONSTANT USE!

 

and your consumer barely uses the drive,  apart from running windows, and saving temp files from browser history!

 

 

no.   not linux.    i used to seed huge loss-less archives of copyright free music, and movies, obviously. you know, stuff from hundred of years ago.   in perfect quality.    

 

Actually no, I use enterprise drive with any true server setup and quite a few are just doing file server.  Some of these don't really see heavy use but still have had failures.  

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I have 4 x 3TB seagate drives (regular consumer, not green) in a raid 5 array here. They're in my server which takes a beating, and they're running 24/7. None of them have failed at all.

 

I've had several WD drives fail on me though. I think personally think that it's down to 2 things more than anything:

 

 - How they were treated during shipping

 - Luck.

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