Consumer-grade HDD’s, used properly, all have about same, low failure rate. If you treat your desktop like a NAS or server, they will drop like flies (as evidenced).
Sigh. No. Really, go look at the data. I am not going to take the “consensus” of the anand crowd over it.
Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 is a consumer-grade non-enterprise hard drive. In the sample of ~4,600 drives it has 1.1% annual failure rate in the NAS environment.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 is a consumer-grade non-enterprise hard drive. In the sample of ~1,200 drives it has 43.1% annual failure rate in the NAS environment.
Those are VERY VERY DIFFERENT failure rates.
I, for example, have five-drive zfs array at home which is on 24⁄7. I am very much interested in what kind of drives will give me a 1% failure rates and which kind of drives will give me 43% failure rates. I am not average, but I hardly think I’m unique in that respect in the LW crowd.
We certainly agree that the Barracuda’s are crap in NAS’s. I believe that WD Red’s are a major improvement and Hitachi Deskstars a further improvement, which is just reading the Backblaze data (which is eminently applicable to NAS environments), so I’m we’re in complete agreement that, for NAS’s, Barracuda << Red < 7K2000.
However, I also contend that, in a desktop PC, a lot of what makes the Reds and 7K2000 more reliable (e.g. superior vibration resistance) will count for very little, so they’ll still fail less often, just not 1/40th as much. Even if they’re four times as reliable, moving from, say, a 4% annual failure rate vs a 1% annual failure rate may not be worth the price premium (using Newegg pricing, the Hitachi drive costs 72.5% more, but on Amazon, the Hitachi drive is cheaper. Yay Hitachi?), especially since RAID 1 is a thing (which would give us a 0.16% annual failure rate at a 100% price premium). Obviously, if you can find higher-quality drives for less than lower-quality drives, use those. But, in what we’d naively expect to be the normal case, if you’re paying for features that drastically reduce failure rates in NAS environments, but using your drives in a desktop environment where these features are doing little to extend your drive life, then you’re probably better off using RAID 1.
(Why do I use low single-digit annual failure rates? Because I remember Linus of Linus Tech Tips, who worked as a product manager at NCIX and therefore is privy to RMA and warranty rates, implied that’s about right. He produces a metric shit-ton of content, though, so there’s no way I’m going to dig it up.)
I’m also interested why you’re dismissive of AnandTech. I currently believe they’re gold standard of tech reviews, but if they’re not as reputable as I believe they are, I would very much like to stop believing they are.
Yes. You keep saying that there are no significant differences in reliability between hard drives of similar class (consumer or enterprise, basically) in similar conditions. I keep saying there are.
I’m also interested why you’re dismissive of AnandTech. I currently believe they’re gold standard of tech reviews, but if they’re not as reputable as I believe they are, I would very much like to stop believing they are.
I don’t follow the hardware scene much nowadays, but I don’t think AnandTech was ever considered the “gold standard” except maybe by AnandTech itself. It’s a commercial website, not horrible, but not outstanding either. Garden-variety hardware reviews, more or less. In any case, I trust discussion on the forums much more than I trust official reviews (recall the Sturgeon’s Law).
Sigh. No. Really, go look at the data. I am not going to take the “consensus” of the anand crowd over it.
Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 is a consumer-grade non-enterprise hard drive. In the sample of ~4,600 drives it has 1.1% annual failure rate in the NAS environment.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 is a consumer-grade non-enterprise hard drive. In the sample of ~1,200 drives it has 43.1% annual failure rate in the NAS environment.
Those are VERY VERY DIFFERENT failure rates.
I, for example, have five-drive zfs array at home which is on 24⁄7. I am very much interested in what kind of drives will give me a 1% failure rates and which kind of drives will give me 43% failure rates. I am not average, but I hardly think I’m unique in that respect in the LW crowd.
Do we actually disagree about anything?
We certainly agree that the Barracuda’s are crap in NAS’s. I believe that WD Red’s are a major improvement and Hitachi Deskstars a further improvement, which is just reading the Backblaze data (which is eminently applicable to NAS environments), so I’m we’re in complete agreement that, for NAS’s, Barracuda << Red < 7K2000.
However, I also contend that, in a desktop PC, a lot of what makes the Reds and 7K2000 more reliable (e.g. superior vibration resistance) will count for very little, so they’ll still fail less often, just not 1/40th as much. Even if they’re four times as reliable, moving from, say, a 4% annual failure rate vs a 1% annual failure rate may not be worth the price premium (using Newegg pricing, the Hitachi drive costs 72.5% more, but on Amazon, the Hitachi drive is cheaper. Yay Hitachi?), especially since RAID 1 is a thing (which would give us a 0.16% annual failure rate at a 100% price premium). Obviously, if you can find higher-quality drives for less than lower-quality drives, use those. But, in what we’d naively expect to be the normal case, if you’re paying for features that drastically reduce failure rates in NAS environments, but using your drives in a desktop environment where these features are doing little to extend your drive life, then you’re probably better off using RAID 1.
(Why do I use low single-digit annual failure rates? Because I remember Linus of Linus Tech Tips, who worked as a product manager at NCIX and therefore is privy to RMA and warranty rates, implied that’s about right. He produces a metric shit-ton of content, though, so there’s no way I’m going to dig it up.)
I’m also interested why you’re dismissive of AnandTech. I currently believe they’re gold standard of tech reviews, but if they’re not as reputable as I believe they are, I would very much like to stop believing they are.
Yes. You keep saying that there are no significant differences in reliability between hard drives of similar class (consumer or enterprise, basically) in similar conditions. I keep saying there are.
I don’t follow the hardware scene much nowadays, but I don’t think AnandTech was ever considered the “gold standard” except maybe by AnandTech itself. It’s a commercial website, not horrible, but not outstanding either. Garden-variety hardware reviews, more or less. In any case, I trust discussion on the forums much more than I trust official reviews (recall the Sturgeon’s Law).