[accesscomp] Dan's Tip for Tuesday

From: "Robert Acosta" <boacosta@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Bob Acosta" <boacosta@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2015 08:35:04 -0700

Fact of the Day:

A sheep , a duck and a rooster were the first passengers in a hot air
balloon.

Hitler's mother considered abortion but the doctor persuaded her to keep the
baby.

Steven Seagal was the first non-Asian to successfully open a martial-arts
academy in Japan.

***

Who makes the most reliable hard drives? (updated) | ExtremeTech

It's the eternal question for PC owners: Which manufacturer makes the most
reliable hard drives? Backblaze, the unlimited online backup company, has
been following this story for years now, and its latest 2015 data sheds some
new light on the subject. Backblaze currently has over 41,000 hard drives
powered up and constantly spinning. And as you can imagine, it is very much
in Backblaze's interests to ensure that it buys reliable hard drives. Every
time a drive fails, it takes considerable time and effort to pull the drive,
slot in a new one, and rebuild the RAID array.

So while it's generally known
<http://www.extremetech.com/computing/170748-how-long-do-hard-drives-actuall
y-live-for> how long hard drives actually live for,

--read more here:

<http://www.extremetech.com/computing/170748-how-long-do-hard-drives-actuall
y-live-for>
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/170748-how-long-do-hard-drives-actually
-live-for

it stands to reason that some manufacturers make drives that are more
reliable than others. But whose?

Which hard drive manufacturer is the most reliable?

To answer that question, we took a look at Backblaze's latest numbers. The
company <https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/> breaks down its
data in two ways - by manufacturer, and by specific drive.

<https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/>
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/

The data is fairly complex, but we'll try to break it down into bits of
easy-to-digest, actionable information. (Read:
<http://www.extremetech.com/computing/88078-how-a-hard-drive-works> How a
hard drive works.)

<http://www.extremetech.com/computing/88078-how-a-hard-drive-works>
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/88078-how-a-hard-drive-works

As of the end of December 2014, Backblaze had 15,528 Seagate drives, 22,902
Hitachi drives, 1,174 Western Digital drives, and 47 Toshiba drives. These
drives are not all the same age - some are several years old, while many
were installed in the past year, including thousands of brand new 4TB and
even a few 6TB models.

The odd numbers are because Backblaze basically buys whatever drive offers
the most competitive dollar-per-gigabyte ratio, with reliability being a
secondary factor. For most of the last five years, Seagate and Hitachi have
offered the best price-per-gig, with Western Digital Red and Toshiba DT01ACA
drives only recently becoming viable (although there are too few Toshiba
drives to draw any conclusions yet).

<http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Backblaze-2015.jpg>
Backblaze 2015 hard drive failure

As you can see from the graph at this link,

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/175089-who-makes-the-most-reliable-hard-d
rives?mailing_id=1226581
<http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/175089-who-makes-the-most-reliable-hard-
drives?mailing_id=1226581&mailing=ExtremeTech&mailingID=FBBBFB17FB564E0189BF
4FF88FBAC02D>
&mailing=ExtremeTech&mailingID=FBBBFB17FB564E0189BF4FF88FBAC02D

, Hitachi drives are by far the most reliable. Even though many of
Backblaze's Hitachi drives are several years old, they only have an annual
failure rate of 2% or so on average. And the latest HGST drives have a
failure rate of just 1.4%. The "annual failure rate" is the chance of a
drive dying within a 12-month period.

Western Digital is worse, but still impressive: After three years of
operation, 92.4% of Western Digital Red 3TB drives are still running - not
terrific, but still good.

Seagate 3TB drives turned out to be a disaster, with over 40% failing
throughout 2014. In 2013, the failure rate was 9.6% - high, and a kind of
foreshadowing, in retrospect. Thanks to the new 4TB version, the numbers
improve tremendously, as the second graph indicates below, with an excellent
failure rate of just 2.6% - indicating that even a few years out, they
should do much better than the 3TB models.

Which single hard drive is the most reliable? (And which is the least?)

In general, then, if you want a reliable hard drive, you should stay with
4TB for the best value and reliability, and go with either Hitachi or
Seagate. If you're looking for a specific drive model that has good
longevity, the numbers break down interestingly.

The Hitachi GST Deskstar 5K3000 3TB has proven very reliable, but expensive
compared with other HGST models. Get one of these drives and you're almost
guaranteed (97-98%) to make it through three years without a dead drive. If
you want a 4TB drive, the Hitachi Deskstar 5K4000 is your best bet - it has
a slightly higher failure rate, but still below WD and Seagate's offerings.
As far as poor reliability goes, Seagate had some nasty offenders,
particularly the 3TB 7200.14 model. But the latest 4TB 7200.15 drives are
turning out to be a solid way to go.

Backblaze also notes that some drives (the Western Digital Green 3TB and
Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB) start producing errors as soon as they're slotted
into a
<http://www.extremetech.com/computing/90634-how-to-build-your-own-135tb-raid
6-storage-pod-for-7384> storage pod. They think this is due to the large
amounts of vibration caused by thousands of other hard drives. (They also
think that their aggressive spin-down setting, which is ostensibly to save
power, causes a lot of wear to the drive.)

Hit up Backblaze's website for
<https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/> a full list of hard drives
and their statistics. Found here:

<https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/>
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/

Samsung, Toshiba, 6TB, and beyond

Unfortunately, Backblaze doesn't have a statistically significant number of
Samsung or Toshiba drives installed. Even so, because Seagate acquired
Samsung's hard drive division in 2011, it's hard to say if an older,
pre-acquisition Samsung drive would be more or less reliable than a
post-acquisition drive. Toshiba and Fujitsu still have a reasonable wedge
(~10%) of the market share pie. But unfortunately we'll have to wait for
another study to see how they compare with Seagate, Western Digital, and
Hitachi.

Otherwise, the next stop is the 6TB tier. Backblaze expects to have plenty
of data on the subject come early next year, as it's busy buying up
thousands of new drives at that capacity. We can't wait for those results.

Sebastian Anthony contributed to this article.

--- <http://www.extremetech.com/author/jlendino> Jamie Lendino on April 10,
2015 from Extreme Tech

(Links inserted by Dan.)

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/175089-who-makes-the-most-reliable-hard-d
rives?mailing_id=1226581
<http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/175089-who-makes-the-most-reliable-hard-
drives?mailing_id=1226581&mailing=ExtremeTech&mailingID=FBBBFB17FB564E0189BF
4FF88FBAC02D>
&mailing=ExtremeTech&mailingID=FBBBFB17FB564E0189BF4FF88FBAC02D

"If any- one is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed
away; behold, all things have become new."

2 Corinthians 5:17,

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[accesscomp] Dan's Tip for Tuesday

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