HARD DRIVE RELIABILITY STUDY ..... and here I am getting all excited as I'm about to read up on which cars survive a beating with the least amount of breakdowns..... LOL
2018 Hard Drive Reliability Study - Back Blaze
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Originally Posted by Brybo86
HARD DRIVE RELIABILITY STUDY ..... and here I am getting all excited as I'm about to read up on which cars survive a beating with the least amount of breakdowns..... LOL
I had to read that twice to get it. Although to my credit it's in the Computer section.
HARD DRIVE RELIABILITY STUDY ..... and here I am getting all excited as I'm about to read up on which cars survive a beating with the least amount of breakdowns..... LOL
Originally Posted by Virtus_Probi
I worked on parts for Seagate and WD quite some time ago...dealing with Seagate was generally pretty straightforward, not so much with WD. This was so long ago that it's unlikely that more than a few of the same people are still at either company, particularly the senior managers....
When you look into how a hard drive works, it's pretty incredible that the things actually function. I remember one of the mechanical guys talking about how closely the R/W heads flew over the platters and how they would fuse together if they actually touched. SSD is a piece of cake by comparison, excepting the miniscule feature sizes involved...
They are feats of engineering for sure. Especially the helium filled ones. And then when you get into the science of the bit storage that is fascinating. Especially overlapping, vertical storage and multiple layer (which I think is still experimental).
I worked on parts for Seagate and WD quite some time ago...dealing with Seagate was generally pretty straightforward, not so much with WD. This was so long ago that it's unlikely that more than a few of the same people are still at either company, particularly the senior managers....
When you look into how a hard drive works, it's pretty incredible that the things actually function. I remember one of the mechanical guys talking about how closely the R/W heads flew over the platters and how they would fuse together if they actually touched. SSD is a piece of cake by comparison, excepting the miniscule feature sizes involved...
They are feats of engineering for sure. Especially the helium filled ones. And then when you get into the science of the bit storage that is fascinating. Especially overlapping, vertical storage and multiple layer (which I think is still experimental).
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Zee09
$200 Site Donor 2023
I firmly believe Amazon killed more HD's than anyone.
Shipping oem units in bubble mailers and poorly packed to boot.
They killed many ssd's as well.
Shipping oem units in bubble mailers and poorly packed to boot.
They killed many ssd's as well.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Think I posted this one before, but when heads touch platters, bad things happen
No fail hdd thread would be complete without mentioning the biggestl TRD drives.. I mean TURD drives.
edit: (overdrive mentioned earlier)
Quantum bigfoot 5.25"
SLOW, LOUD, HOT.
IIRC They also seemed very susceptible to shock in transit. We used to get whole pallets with a near 50% DOA rate.
Was great when I'm repairing a computer with a bad hdd and it took 9 drives once to find a good one.
Compusa Store brand FTL.. IIRC a ton of crappaq came with them as well.
edit: (overdrive mentioned earlier)
Quantum bigfoot 5.25"
SLOW, LOUD, HOT.
IIRC They also seemed very susceptible to shock in transit. We used to get whole pallets with a near 50% DOA rate.
Was great when I'm repairing a computer with a bad hdd and it took 9 drives once to find a good one.
Compusa Store brand FTL.. IIRC a ton of crappaq came with them as well.
Originally Posted by Zee09
I firmly believe Amazon killed more HD's than anyone.
Shipping oem units in bubble mailers and poorly packed to boot.
They killed many ssd's as well.
AWS probably used the most HDD in the world and killed the most of them as a result. AWS alone used 10% of the world flash memory production.
I firmly believe Amazon killed more HD's than anyone.
Shipping oem units in bubble mailers and poorly packed to boot.
They killed many ssd's as well.
AWS probably used the most HDD in the world and killed the most of them as a result. AWS alone used 10% of the world flash memory production.
Originally Posted by Zee09
I firmly believe Amazon killed more HD's than anyone.
Shipping oem units in bubble mailers and poorly packed to boot.
They killed many ssd's as well.
When we used to buy cases of hard drives at a time they would be standing upright in plastic formed carriers with not much shielding from shock than the bubble wrapping you find for drives ordered from Amazon.
I'm not saying I agree with this but I always found it comical that they would ship a case of drives in manners similar to Amazon but when you returned a drive for warranty it had to have a nuclear bomb shelter worth of packaging around it to their standards or they would void the warranty upon receipt.
Heck they would even sell you a special box with foam and static bag to send it back in at one point and this usually was quite the bulky packaging over the size of the drive.
![[Linked Image]](http://www.memorypack.com.tw/image/SSD%20and%20accessories/SSD%20packages/20ct%20ssd%20tray/ssd%20hdd%20solid%20state%20disk%20solid%20state%20drive%20hard%20disk%20drive%20plastic%20tray%20clamshell%20box%20esd%20package%20conductive%20antistatic%20(1).jpg "[Linked Image]")
![[Linked Image]](https://www.egreen-tek.com/v/vspfiles/photos/HDD2.5_30-2T.jpg "[Linked Image]")
I firmly believe Amazon killed more HD's than anyone.
Shipping oem units in bubble mailers and poorly packed to boot.
They killed many ssd's as well.
When we used to buy cases of hard drives at a time they would be standing upright in plastic formed carriers with not much shielding from shock than the bubble wrapping you find for drives ordered from Amazon.
I'm not saying I agree with this but I always found it comical that they would ship a case of drives in manners similar to Amazon but when you returned a drive for warranty it had to have a nuclear bomb shelter worth of packaging around it to their standards or they would void the warranty upon receipt.
Heck they would even sell you a special box with foam and static bag to send it back in at one point and this usually was quite the bulky packaging over the size of the drive.
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Zee09
$200 Site Donor 2023
Amazon before they figured it out didn't even use bubble wrap
They threw SSD and basic hd's in Kraft mailers and the OEM packaging then was a zip lock bag.
Seagate used that single clam shell packaging that was nothing more than a dust shield and that was better than what you show.
That case container you pictured is worthless.
Amazon has cleaned up its act but it took a long time to do so.
They threw SSD and basic hd's in Kraft mailers and the OEM packaging then was a zip lock bag.
Seagate used that single clam shell packaging that was nothing more than a dust shield and that was better than what you show.
That case container you pictured is worthless.
Amazon has cleaned up its act but it took a long time to do so.
Originally Posted by OVERKILL
Found a whole ancient slashdot thread on it!
https://ask.slashdot.org/story/02/1...arddrives-been-failing-in-record-numbers
And yeah, looks like it was all drives in that family in 5,400RPM that shared the Cirrus Logic chip on the board.
That was a long, long time ago. Cirrus Logic exited that market around 2001, although I believe they still were dealing with liabilities well into about 2003. Western Digital sued them and lost.
A former coworker of mine worked in that division. Said it was a steady source of income for the company, but they had a new direction for the company where they wanted to go for higher profit margin businesses only. That was probably the last of their legacy businesses. By then they had moved their headquarters to Texas from Silicon Valley and were really concentrating on the businesses (mostly audio ICs) of their Crystal Semiconductor purchase. I used to work in Fremont, and I can't even recognize where the old Cirrus Logic buildings used to be. I think a few were torn down.
Found a whole ancient slashdot thread on it!
https://ask.slashdot.org/story/02/1...arddrives-been-failing-in-record-numbers
And yeah, looks like it was all drives in that family in 5,400RPM that shared the Cirrus Logic chip on the board.
That was a long, long time ago. Cirrus Logic exited that market around 2001, although I believe they still were dealing with liabilities well into about 2003. Western Digital sued them and lost.
A former coworker of mine worked in that division. Said it was a steady source of income for the company, but they had a new direction for the company where they wanted to go for higher profit margin businesses only. That was probably the last of their legacy businesses. By then they had moved their headquarters to Texas from Silicon Valley and were really concentrating on the businesses (mostly audio ICs) of their Crystal Semiconductor purchase. I used to work in Fremont, and I can't even recognize where the old Cirrus Logic buildings used to be. I think a few were torn down.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Originally Posted by y_p_w
Originally Posted by OVERKILL
Found a whole ancient slashdot thread on it!
https://ask.slashdot.org/story/02/1...arddrives-been-failing-in-record-numbers
And yeah, looks like it was all drives in that family in 5,400RPM that shared the Cirrus Logic chip on the board.
That was a long, long time ago. Cirrus Logic exited that market around 2001, although I believe they still were dealing with liabilities well into about 2003. Western Digital sued them and lost.
A former coworker of mine worked in that division. Said it was a steady source of income for the company, but they had a new direction for the company where they wanted to go for higher profit margin businesses only. That was probably the last of their legacy businesses. By then they had moved their headquarters to Texas from Silicon Valley and were really concentrating on the businesses (mostly audio ICs) of their Crystal Semiconductor purchase. I used to work in Fremont, and I can't even recognize where the old Cirrus Logic buildings used to be. I think a few were torn down.
I recall Cirrus Logic quite well from when I was much, much younger. Their graphics cards for example. They were a big name in the "value" chipset segment, not unlike many other names from various (or multiple) segments that we don't see anymore: ALI, Trident, Hercules, High-Point, SiS...etc
Originally Posted by OVERKILL
Found a whole ancient slashdot thread on it!
https://ask.slashdot.org/story/02/1...arddrives-been-failing-in-record-numbers
And yeah, looks like it was all drives in that family in 5,400RPM that shared the Cirrus Logic chip on the board.
That was a long, long time ago. Cirrus Logic exited that market around 2001, although I believe they still were dealing with liabilities well into about 2003. Western Digital sued them and lost.
A former coworker of mine worked in that division. Said it was a steady source of income for the company, but they had a new direction for the company where they wanted to go for higher profit margin businesses only. That was probably the last of their legacy businesses. By then they had moved their headquarters to Texas from Silicon Valley and were really concentrating on the businesses (mostly audio ICs) of their Crystal Semiconductor purchase. I used to work in Fremont, and I can't even recognize where the old Cirrus Logic buildings used to be. I think a few were torn down.
I recall Cirrus Logic quite well from when I was much, much younger. Their graphics cards for example. They were a big name in the "value" chipset segment, not unlike many other names from various (or multiple) segments that we don't see anymore: ALI, Trident, Hercules, High-Point, SiS...etc
I had a Cirrus Logic video card that was 128km
Then upgraded to a Trident 16-Bit ISA that could do 256 colours. Man was I rocking the graphics then.
Then upgraded to a Trident 16-Bit ISA that could do 256 colours. Man was I rocking the graphics then.
In previous years of this data, people have always liked to trash Seagate, but most people failed to notice that WD's green drives of the time didn't show up on the chart more because they were so bad that Back Blaze stopped buying them.
My Seagate 80mb IDE in my 386 worked up until I threw it out some 20 years later. It was the drives in the last 15 years or so that have been an issue for me.
Originally Posted by DejaVue
In previous years of this data, people have always liked to trash Seagate, but most people failed to notice that WD's green drives of the time didn't show up on the chart more because they were so bad that Back Blaze stopped buying them.
All hard drive companies have had their failed designs. It just comes with the territory. But now there are basically 3 manufacturers left after consolidation.
However, I'm not sure how it's going to be with solid state technologies getting denser and cheaper. There are a lot of companies that are just buying NAND flash, essentially commodity SSD controllers, designing boards, and finding a contract manufacturer. There are literally dozens to hundreds of companies that could do this if they wanted because the cost of entry is low.
In previous years of this data, people have always liked to trash Seagate, but most people failed to notice that WD's green drives of the time didn't show up on the chart more because they were so bad that Back Blaze stopped buying them.
All hard drive companies have had their failed designs. It just comes with the territory. But now there are basically 3 manufacturers left after consolidation.
However, I'm not sure how it's going to be with solid state technologies getting denser and cheaper. There are a lot of companies that are just buying NAND flash, essentially commodity SSD controllers, designing boards, and finding a contract manufacturer. There are literally dozens to hundreds of companies that could do this if they wanted because the cost of entry is low.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Originally Posted by DejaVue
In previous years of this data, people have always liked to trash Seagate, but most people failed to notice that WD's green drives of the time didn't show up on the chart more because they were so bad that Back Blaze stopped buying them.
Sure, but some of that criticism (of Seagate) is warranted. Seagate is the only company other than the aforementioned Fujitsu fiasco, where I've had EVERY drive of a particular family poop the bed. The 7200.12 1TB drives were a disaster. I warrantied them, got back the refurbished "green label" versions, which defecated the bed in the same manner as the drives they replaced. Not only were the drives crap, but Seagate's dealings with the issue were equally horrid.
In previous years of this data, people have always liked to trash Seagate, but most people failed to notice that WD's green drives of the time didn't show up on the chart more because they were so bad that Back Blaze stopped buying them.
Sure, but some of that criticism (of Seagate) is warranted. Seagate is the only company other than the aforementioned Fujitsu fiasco, where I've had EVERY drive of a particular family poop the bed. The 7200.12 1TB drives were a disaster. I warrantied them, got back the refurbished "green label" versions, which defecated the bed in the same manner as the drives they replaced. Not only were the drives crap, but Seagate's dealings with the issue were equally horrid.
Originally Posted by PandaBear
Originally Posted by nthach
From what I've read, when Seagate bought out Conner, that's when they started to slide downhill. The irony was that Nils Conner was a former Seagate engineer, and their drive design was simple - the moving parts on a aluminum plate with a stamped steel cover that was cheaper to build.
Quantum from what I remember as a kid were all made in Japan by Panasonic(Matsushita back then).
Not exactly, 7200.7 was real good and way after Seagate bought Conner. I'm still using mine from 2003 on my daily rig.
I just took a 7200.7 40Gb out of service on an HMI rig that has run almost continually since it was made in 2004. I took it out because it was so full it couldn't be defragged or have the cloning software installed on it without compressing a bunch of stuff.
Originally Posted by nthach
From what I've read, when Seagate bought out Conner, that's when they started to slide downhill. The irony was that Nils Conner was a former Seagate engineer, and their drive design was simple - the moving parts on a aluminum plate with a stamped steel cover that was cheaper to build.
Quantum from what I remember as a kid were all made in Japan by Panasonic(Matsushita back then).
Not exactly, 7200.7 was real good and way after Seagate bought Conner. I'm still using mine from 2003 on my daily rig.
I just took a 7200.7 40Gb out of service on an HMI rig that has run almost continually since it was made in 2004. I took it out because it was so full it couldn't be defragged or have the cloning software installed on it without compressing a bunch of stuff.
Originally Posted by jhellwig
I just took a 7200.7 40Gb out of service on an HMI rig that has run almost continually since it was made in 2004. I took it out because it was so full it couldn't be defragged or have the cloning software installed on it without compressing a bunch of stuff.
I remember those when I built computers, back then Seagate also offered a 5-year warranty and I happily used those Barracuda series drives with confidence. I think those were made around the time Seagate bought out Maxtor. The later Maxtor drives were rebadged Barracuda 7200.x series drives.
I just took a 7200.7 40Gb out of service on an HMI rig that has run almost continually since it was made in 2004. I took it out because it was so full it couldn't be defragged or have the cloning software installed on it without compressing a bunch of stuff.
I remember those when I built computers, back then Seagate also offered a 5-year warranty and I happily used those Barracuda series drives with confidence. I think those were made around the time Seagate bought out Maxtor. The later Maxtor drives were rebadged Barracuda 7200.x series drives.
I have one RAID5 on 2 TB Constellation that keeps going while I am looking and looking for an excuse to get something "new" (and there is no reason)
HGST Ultrastar 7K4000 HUS724040ALE6...ertified Refurbished) -w/3 Year Warranty is tempting for the price
HGST Ultrastar 7K4000 HUS724040ALE6...ertified Refurbished) -w/3 Year Warranty is tempting for the price
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