Backblaze posts failure rates

[WT]

Very good read on how BackBlaze operates, and how they procured all those drives, even offering a $5 per drive bounty when local hardware stores had booted them from buying up all inventory:

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6028/dispelling-backblaze-s-hdd-reliability-myth-the-real-story-covered/index.html

I always enjoy rebuttal stories that give you some idea how a controversial article can always be the best marketing tool.

 

[Binky]

I'll keep buying the cheapest drives, with the exception of certain terribad drives like the Seagate 1.5TB. Most of my current spinners are seagates. I've had very good luck with all brands and I back up everything on a regular basis, then I back up the back up's!

All of this hysteria by people who have little understanding of statistics just keeps the prices down for me.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Very good read on how BackBlaze operates, and how they procured all those drives, even offering a $5 per drive bounty when local hardware stores had booted them from buying up all inventory:

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6028/dispelling-backblaze-s-hdd-reliability-myth-the-real-story-covered/index.html

I always enjoy rebuttal stories that give you some idea how a controversial article can always be the best marketing tool.

From the same site that brings you stories like these?
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/35032/north-korea-confirms-it-has-landed-a-man-on-the-sun/index.html

Methinks that their credibility is in question.

Edit: Anyways, the BackBlaze study isn't up to the rigors of a true scientific study perhaps, but as a study "from the trenches", it's interesting still.

And I take issue with TweakTown's suggestion that HDDs are only minimally engineered and so heavily cost-reduced, that they are designed to run as solo drives, but add in the vibration from neighboring drives, and they would surely vibrate themselves to death. If any drive is so minimally-engineered, I want to know about it, and avoid it. I often put more than one HDD into my storage PCs.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

I lost 3 of my 6 ST3000DM001's in a bit over 1 year 1 Inside warranty, the second a month outside warranty, and another one now 5 months after warranty.

Like others, I keep buying them cause they're cheap.

 

[Binky]

I lost 3 of my 6 ST3000DM001's in a bit over 1 year 1 Inside warranty, the second a month outside warranty, and another one now 5 months after warranty.

Like others, I keep buying them cause they're cheap.

Both of those out of warranty failures are reimbursable via your credit card extended warranty.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I lost 3 of my 6 ST3000DM001's in a bit over 1 year 1 Inside warranty, the second a month outside warranty, and another one now 5 months after warranty.

Like others, I keep buying them cause they're cheap.

Were they in the same PC? TweakTown says running more than one HDD in a PC effectively ensures drive destruction, due to vibration.

 

[ashetos]

People want a hard disk drive to last between 5 and 10 years, up to the point it has become obsolete. This is true for my friends, my workplace and also the university here. Such a product is cost effective if either it is durable/reliable or if it has a long warranty.

When somebody buys an intel CPU he doesn't expect the CPU to only last 3 years, or when someone buys a laptop with 1 year warranty he doesn't expect to throw it away after one year.

This is why this discussion is important. And all things considering, I find Seagate drives to be terribly expensive. And I'm not even factoring in recovery/downtime/availability.

 

[BrightCandle]

I don't think its reasonable to expect any hard drive to last 10 years. It might but its not very likely, they tend to show increasing failures past about 4 years, many are dead in 6 or so years. Its a physically moving part, it is never going to be as reliable as a CPU that is solid and pure electrical flow based. Those parts wear out and so a machine on a 10 year life cycle should anticipate multiple drive, fan, PSU replacements.

 

[ashetos]

Imagine somebody purchasing the WD1002FAEX model in 2010. It has already been 4 years, and the part number is still the latest for Western Digital. One could very easily use such a model for over 5 years, especially since it has a 5 year old warranty.

 

[Doomer]

Were they in the same PC? TweakTown says running more than one HDD in a PC effectively ensures drive destruction, due to vibration.

That's a load of crap if ever there was one.

 

[Cerb]

Imagine somebody purchasing the WD1002FAEX model in 2010. It has already been 4 years, and the part number is still the latest for Western Digital. One could very easily use such a model for over 5 years, especially since it has a 5 year old warranty.

The WD1003FZEX is the current model, I'm afraid.

And, it has nothing to do with warranty. They can and will send you a totally different drive as a replacement, so long as it is considered equal to or better than the one sent back. I've gotten a Black sending in a Blue, larger drives, and an RE GP to replace a plain Green, in the past, from WD.

 

[Cerb]

People want a hard disk drive to last between 5 and 10 years, up to the point it has become obsolete.

Then they need to make backups, because how many will last that long is anybody's guess. Many will, some won't, and you don't know who's will and won't, at the point of purchase. Even those Hitachis Blackblaze had failed, however lower in rate over time. It costs less to prepare for that chance, generally, than to try to pick up the pieces later. Also, while they didn't graph it over time, they had a large difference between individual models, not merely brands.

When somebody buys an intel CPU he doesn't expect the CPU to only last 3 years, or when someone buys a laptop with 1 year warranty he doesn't expect to throw it away after one year.

No, but it happens anyway. CPUs basically don't die, without being in a harsh environment like a large datacenter. The thing is, you're harping on warranty, which is a pure business decision, weighing costs of the warranty, and PR/sales impact of changing the warranty, not anything to do with the product quality. The cost of servicing the base warranty is built in to each product's cost. The cost of servicing longer warranties is built in to the added cost of those warranties.

If you get a Compaq craptop with a 1-year warranty, and it dies after a year, you got what you paid for. If you bought a Probook with a 1-year warranty and it does after a year, you were unlucky.

This is why this discussion is important. And all things considering, I find Seagate drives to be terribly expensive. And I'm not even factoring in recovery/downtime/availability.

How so? They have 1-year retail warranties, and 2-year OEM warranties, now. Even with a longer warranty, if you have to use the warranty, you have the same downtime and recovery issues as if you didn't have the warranty. All that changes is the cost of a replacement drive going from $70+ to the cost of postage.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I would love one of their enclosures one of these days. If I had the money and a need for that density, I totally would.

 

[ashetos]

The WD1003FZEX is the current model, I'm afraid.

And, it has nothing to do with warranty. They can and will send you a totally different drive as a replacement, so long as it is considered equal to or better than the one sent back. I've gotten a Black sending in a Blue, larger drives, and an RE GP to replace a plain Green, in the past, from WD.

I've missed some developments it seems, I'll look for any reviews!

 

[ashetos]

Then they need to make backups, because how many will last that long is anybody's guess. Many will, some won't, and you don't know who's will and won't, at the point of purchase. Even those Hitachis Blackblaze had failed, however lower in rate over time. It costs less to prepare for that chance, generally, than to try to pick up the pieces later. Also, while they didn't graph it over time, they had a large difference between individual models, not merely brands.

Of course everybody needs to make backups, I'm not talking about data loss, even the best disk in the world might catch on fire for all I know. And I agree with you, while I generally trust WD drives I've learned to stay the hell away from the last two generations of green models.

No, but it happens anyway. CPUs basically don't die, without being in a harsh environment like a large datacenter. The thing is, you're harping on warranty, which is a pure business decision, weighing costs of the warranty, and PR/sales impact of changing the warranty, not anything to do with the product quality. The cost of servicing the base warranty is built in to each product's cost. The cost of servicing longer warranties is built in to the added cost of those warranties.

If you get a Compaq craptop with a 1-year warranty, and it dies after a year, you got what you paid for. If you bought a Probook with a 1-year warranty and it does after a year, you were unlucky.

Well yeah, I'm talking about cost, and its relationship with either warranty or quality. My point is that the manufacturer should either provide long warranties, or/and great quality so that the product is cost effective (on average, as you already described with the Probook example, bad luck is tough to beat).

How so? They have 1-year retail warranties, and 2-year OEM warranties, now. Even with a longer warranty, if you have to use the warranty, you have the same downtime and recovery issues as if you didn't have the warranty. All that changes is the cost of a replacement drive going from $70+ to the cost of postage.

The combination of short warranty and bad reliability is what breaks the deal with Seagate. This combination brings cost up. The bad reliability (in my experience, and Backblaze's seemingly) on its own is what causes worse downtime.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Hah! Where are all the "T3h D3athstarz!" screaming banshees now?

 

[PliotronX]

Hah! Where are all the "T3h D3athstarz!" screaming banshees now?

Yup, the theme is more like Barracudas eating their own tail these days. Hitachis are my second choice behind WD.

 

[smitbret]

Were they in the same PC? TweakTown says running more than one HDD in a PC effectively ensures drive destruction, due to vibration.

Well, I don't think I've had a desktop/tower/server with just one spinner since about 2004.

The drives I've had fail look like this:

Laptop - WD
Exernal Enclosure - Seagate (dropped onto concrete from about 7 feet while powered up)
External Enclosure - WD
External Enclosure - WD

My stats tell me that heat and impact cause drive destruction. I haven't lost an internal HDD, with the exception of the laptop in recent memory. I have one Samsung 500GB that I bought in 2007 that ras been running with a SMART warning "1 Pending Sector" for about 2 years now. Otherwise, flawless from my Seagate Barracudas, WD Greens and Samsung LJ/JJs.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Don't buy Seagate - some models have failure rates over 25%.

Don't buy WD Green 1-2TB, they have failure rates over 120% (i.e. the replacements even fail).

That said, I already knew that since I have had 5 failures across the 3 WD Green 2TB drives I own... And this is why WD cut the warranty period on the drives from the original 5 years to 3 years (or 2 if OEM).

 

[Zxian]

Don't buy WD Green 1-2TB, they have failure rates over 120% (i.e. the replacements even fail).

That said, I already knew that since I have had 5 failures across the 3 WD Green 2TB drives I own... And this is why WD cut the warranty period on the drives from the original 5 years to 3 years (or 2 if OEM).

Where do you get that figure for the WD Green drives? I had eight WD10EACS drives in my storage server for two years, and all of them are still going strong. One of the four WD20EARS drives that I then purchased has been returned for RMA. The eight WD30EFRX drives (Reds) that I've got now have been spinning for over a year without any hiccups.

 

[PliotronX]

Where do you get that figure for the WD Green drives? I had eight WD10EACS drives in my storage server for two years, and all of them are still going strong. One of the four WD20EARS drives that I then purchased has been returned for RMA. The eight WD30EFRX drives (Reds) that I've got now have been spinning for over a year without any hiccups.

Greens, at least certain firmware revisions with aggressive head parking, are notorious for failure. Probably the worst line of HDD's since the IBM DeskStar (not to be confused with Hitachi's revised DeskStar line). If your greens haven't died so far I don't think they will.

 

[Red Squirrel]

The head parking is what ruins the greens imo. They are completely useless in raid applications because they'll be detected as failed when the head parks (I've seen it) and no sane person uses today's hard drives without raid. Backups should be your 2nd defense, not your first.

 

[Zxian]

Greens, at least certain firmware revisions with aggressive head parking, are notorious for failure. Probably the worst line of HDD's since the IBM DeskStar (not to be confused with Hitachi's revised DeskStar line). If your greens haven't died so far I don't think they will.

If you're referring to people associating the load/unload cycle count from SMART with head parking, I think you're mistaken. There was a long thread on SilentPCReview about this when the greens first came out. I've still got one of the WD10EACS drives in my server today, and it's reading 2.4 million for the load/unload cycle count.

I had all of the greens mentioned connected to a 3ware 9650SE card. None of them were dropped due to head parking. It may depend on the controller, but it's not a guaranteed thing. I've also setup greens in RAID1 on simple motherboard controllers as well.

Greens really aren't as bad as people make them out to be.

 

[Carson Dyle]

I haven't had a single failed WD Green drive, with several of the WD10EACS drives now a little over five years in 24x7 use. All of the 2TB WD Green drives that I have are WD20EARS, all over three years old, with several of them bought used. I also have a couple of WD15EADS drives that have been in use for more then four years. None of these drives are being used in RAID arrays, just a large JBOD file server.

 

[Phynaz]

Where do you get that figure for the WD Green drives?

RTFA