New Old Disks?
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StarNamer@work wrote:
The HGST drives were bought late October 2023 and early to mid November. The first failure was the first week of December, the second in January and the third about 2 weeks ago.
That's seriously bad. Do other systems also report them as dead? Have you tried other SATA ports? Quite a few years ago I got a Sandybridge motherboard replaced (under warranty) because after a few months, SATA ports started disappearing. I believe there was an actual recall. I'm not suggesting the same thing might apply here, but it might be worth simply trying different ports. Who knows.
dandy72 wrote:
Do other systems also report them as dead?
None of the drives were actually completely dead. In fact, in each case, the parameter which caused them to be reported as "FAILED!" was the Spin_Retry_Count, with one of the drives having a raw value of 1441811 when I replaced it. I suspect that, once spinning, the drives would probably continue to work fine for months (years?) but since they were being reported as having the potential to fail within 24 hours and were all within their return window, I felt it was better to replace them rather than risk a more serious failure.
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I think HGST used to be a Hitachi brand, and I've purchased external drives from WD, and the drives inside had an HGST label. Even recent ones, so even though they might no longer promote the HGST brand (at least on the box), WD is clearly still using the name internally... And I don't think I've had any sort of bad failure rate with the drives I have that I *know* are HGST.
They were and Hitachi bought that division from IBM earlier. The flooding happened in Thailand if I recall correctly.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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StarNamer@work wrote:
Seagate
I'm trying hard - really hard - not to be a cynic and automatically conclude that this is your problem right there. But, of the 50+ drives I've personally owned over the last few decades, *all* Seagates are currently dead. Zero exception. All others (WD, HGST, some Toshiba and other brands that are lesser-known as drive makers) have been retired - as in, still work, but now so small in terms of capacity they're not worth using anymore. And I have disproportionally fewer Seagate drives than other brands (based on my experience I'd be insane to keep giving them my money). Backblaze has been compiling drive failure reports for years now. Their reports never do anything to convince me I'm wrong. Also - I'd never buy a refurbished drive. Ask yourself: What are the reasons anyone would ever send a hard drive back?
There is at least one site that uses massive numbers of hard drives (thousands at least) and have been doing so for years. They collect failures stats for all of those at an individual basis and make the results public. They have been doing that for quite some time. Lots of detail. Fun random read. And probably more relevant it you really need to get some real world stats on failure rates.
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StarNamer@work wrote:
Seagate
I'm trying hard - really hard - not to be a cynic and automatically conclude that this is your problem right there. But, of the 50+ drives I've personally owned over the last few decades, *all* Seagates are currently dead. Zero exception. All others (WD, HGST, some Toshiba and other brands that are lesser-known as drive makers) have been retired - as in, still work, but now so small in terms of capacity they're not worth using anymore. And I have disproportionally fewer Seagate drives than other brands (based on my experience I'd be insane to keep giving them my money). Backblaze has been compiling drive failure reports for years now. Their reports never do anything to convince me I'm wrong. Also - I'd never buy a refurbished drive. Ask yourself: What are the reasons anyone would ever send a hard drive back?
dandy72 wrote:
Also - I'd never buy a refurbished drive. Ask yourself: What are the reasons anyone would ever send a hard drive back?
I would never buy even a new a drive from Amazon. I thought to save some money and bought 2 8TB drives from them (in 2022, IIRC). Both were dead on arrival. Buying the drives locally in Israel is a bit more expensive, but none of them have ever arrived dead. (Sample of >30 drives over the last 20 years)
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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They were and Hitachi bought that division from IBM earlier. The flooding happened in Thailand if I recall correctly.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
Weren't the IBM drives originally branded as "deskstar" which, of course, became corrupted to death star? I've had reasonable experiences with Hitachi and Western Digital drives - no unexpected failures before they were replaced because they were either getting old anyway, or were just replaced for more capacity. I did have to laugh when many years ago, having just bought and installed a Fujitsu Robin drive a "very knowledgeable" friend (a technical writer journo) posted a list of drives not to be touched with a dirty stick online, and the Fujitsu was top of the stack. That drive eventually got retired some 6 years later without a hiccup when the machine it was in was upgraded.
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Weren't the IBM drives originally branded as "deskstar" which, of course, became corrupted to death star? I've had reasonable experiences with Hitachi and Western Digital drives - no unexpected failures before they were replaced because they were either getting old anyway, or were just replaced for more capacity. I did have to laugh when many years ago, having just bought and installed a Fujitsu Robin drive a "very knowledgeable" friend (a technical writer journo) posted a list of drives not to be touched with a dirty stick online, and the Fujitsu was top of the stack. That drive eventually got retired some 6 years later without a hiccup when the machine it was in was upgraded.
Alister Morton wrote:
Weren't the IBM drives originally branded as "deskstar" which, of course, became corrupted to death star?
They were. I had the misfortune of buying a couple of these, and they are the only drives that catastrophically failed in service for me.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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There is at least one site that uses massive numbers of hard drives (thousands at least) and have been doing so for years. They collect failures stats for all of those at an individual basis and make the results public. They have been doing that for quite some time. Lots of detail. Fun random read. And probably more relevant it you really need to get some real world stats on failure rates.
It's BackBlaze (2023 stats)[^] I have looked at it in the past, but as they've moved to larger enterprise drives it seems less relevant - I don't need 12Tb or larger drives for home use! And, if I look at the stats by manufacturer, it's difficult to determine if there's any consistency or if it's down to specific models.
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There is at least one site that uses massive numbers of hard drives (thousands at least) and have been doing so for years. They collect failures stats for all of those at an individual basis and make the results public. They have been doing that for quite some time. Lots of detail. Fun random read. And probably more relevant it you really need to get some real world stats on failure rates.
I believe Wayback Machine publishes (possibly 'published') similar data. Several years ago, I saw their figures; I believe it was on a web page. I worked on a collaborative project with them, so it could be that the data was not openly available to everyone. (But then: Why should it not be?) I wouldn't draw too fast conclusions from one such log, though. Lots of factors may affect perceived 'disk quality'. Did you monitor the voltage stability of the power delivered to all of the disks, at the disk power contact, or could it possibly vary from one disk to another? What about that thunderstorm causing a lot of strong electrical fields - was the failure rate identical for the disks installed a week before the thunderstorm and a those installed a week after it? Do all disks have the same protection against environmental hazards such as temperature and vibrations? Are you sure that the truck delivering one batch of disks did not hit a bump in the road, giving that batch a mechanical shock even before they were installed? Some disks have consistently high failure rates across a lot of installations. (I will not mention any specific manufacturer - It's Better Muting that ...). It would be a good thing if some web site would collect such statistics from a number of different huge installations, to show which manufacturers / models are consistently good or bad.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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dandy72 wrote:
Do other systems also report them as dead?
None of the drives were actually completely dead. In fact, in each case, the parameter which caused them to be reported as "FAILED!" was the Spin_Retry_Count, with one of the drives having a raw value of 1441811 when I replaced it. I suspect that, once spinning, the drives would probably continue to work fine for months (years?) but since they were being reported as having the potential to fail within 24 hours and were all within their return window, I felt it was better to replace them rather than risk a more serious failure.
StarNamer@work wrote:
since they were being reported as having the potential to fail within 24 hours and were all within their return window, I felt it was better to replace them rather than risk a more serious failure.
For sure. I would've done the same.
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dandy72 wrote:
Also - I'd never buy a refurbished drive. Ask yourself: What are the reasons anyone would ever send a hard drive back?
I would never buy even a new a drive from Amazon. I thought to save some money and bought 2 8TB drives from them (in 2022, IIRC). Both were dead on arrival. Buying the drives locally in Israel is a bit more expensive, but none of them have ever arrived dead. (Sample of >30 drives over the last 20 years)
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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There is at least one site that uses massive numbers of hard drives (thousands at least) and have been doing so for years. They collect failures stats for all of those at an individual basis and make the results public. They have been doing that for quite some time. Lots of detail. Fun random read. And probably more relevant it you really need to get some real world stats on failure rates.
I read an article posted somewhere by google. Most of their data centers use SSDs but before that spinners. That said, from a single developer to small develop shop, after 5+ years, new SSDs are ordered. Existing SSDs are cloned and tossed. Screwing around with old tech is interesting but not profitable. True story - had a customer 3 degrees away from me. They had spinners in backup storage - sealed in the event of active hardware failure. Some of these would not spin up, so they hit them with a hair dryer... here's your sign...
Charlie Gilley “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759 Has never been more appropriate.
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:thumbsup:
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
Hi, I'm a fan of a functional drive. I've owned WD, Seagate, Toshiba, HGST, Deskstar and a couple other no-namers. For a couple of years, my WD's were shining stars and Seagate was garbage. Then it became Deskstar and HGST with the WD and Seagate's being terminal garbage. Then Seagate's were the king of the world and WD was the dregs. From my experience (for what its worth), Seagate and WD were the consistent drives. Either really outstanding and will go forever or garbage and toss now!! At present, I have a mixture of 1TB, 2TB and 4TB drives running. Approximately half are Seagate and half are WD. An old HGST is in the mix as well. I have a couple of Toshiba portable drives I just purchased. I purchased two portable Toshibas and one of them was DOA. Purchased another and returned the dead one to Amazon. That one is good to go. Your mileage will vary.
Cegarman I drink, there for I am Illegitimum non carborundum Welcome to my Chaos and Confusion!
