Hard drive recommendation

[flavius]

I have lost 4 hard drives within the last 12 month, 3 WD and one Hitachi (iMac) which lasted at least 2.5 years and gave me a clear warning at least.

The good news is, I don't have any WD's left. And, yes, I know yours has been running fine for years.

I don't know what to buy anymore.
I need a new external drive to use as a time machine for my new Mac (>= 500). Any recommendations (besides the one that Apple offers)?

[mistergq]

are these HDs for your XP Server or for your mac?

how many fans do you have in your computer case?

It sounds like that your case is probably running too hot.

(btw: I prefer Seagate hard drives, although there are people claiming they now suck).

[rcl]

Here's my 2 cents worth of advice, if it applies at all.

Right after I got MCE up and running in December (before I went over to SageTV) I blew away a brand new 1TB Seagate drive in one day. I've been running hard disks since the 1982-ish era and have had hundreds of drives running over that time frame. None ever blew up. During that one day I could feel the side of my face getting hot from 1.5' away, so I knew something was wrong. The drive way running non-stop recording shows.

I then installed a tempoary 180MB WD drive and it has been running fine for a month, recording non-stop from 3 capture cards.

I then did the logical thing and searched Google for "1TB TIVO upgrade drive". That pointed me to the "WD10EVVS AV-GP". This is the drive anyone would want to have in the 1TB range. It is the special "AV GP" variety made for PVRs. I did have to special order it.

[flavius]

Thanks, rcl.

So, I might be getting another WD <sigh>. This one does seem hard to find. Somebody is selling them on ebay, though.

[mayamaniac]

As mistergq mentioned, cooling is the key to the life span of your computer components, especially the harddrive. Your SageTV server is likely running 24/7 non-stop, so make sure it is properly ventilated. I recommend having air suck in from the front of the case and exiting the back for best air flow. Harddrives are more likely to die due to heat than anything, it's less likely to fail because of the brand.

As long as you properly cool the drives, any of the popular brands will work well.
Recently, there's a batch of seagate 1TB drives made in Thailand that have firmware problems. But that's a rare case, I have 4 seagate 1TB made in China and so far they have been running fine.

[alfi33]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

As long as you properly cool the drives, any of the popular brands will work well.

I would tend to agree with this statement for the most part.....except when it comes to noise level.

I recently replaced a 500GB Maxtor drive with a WD Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB drive. This difference is huge! The WD drive is very quiet (and much faster). The crunchy noises the Maxtor made sounded like someone walking across fresh snow.

[QueOnda]

Originally Posted by mistergq

(btw: I prefer Seagate hard drives, although there are people claiming they now suck).

I've had more seagate fail recently but I still go for them for the 5 year warranty.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

As mistergq mentioned, cooling is the key to the life span of your computer components, especially the harddrive.

While I know this and read this all the time, can someone say what it really means in hard numbers? It's one thing to tell people they need to keep their drives cool to ensure a long life. It's another to say, "the drive needs to stay between x and y degrees."

For example, if you look on WD's site, the Caviar Blue 750GB drive simply states that it operates between 32 and 140 degrees F. Some people may look at that and say, "So, as long as I keep it below 140, I'm good!" Yet, that's not the reality of the situation. At the same time, you shouldn't keep the drive at 32 degrees either!

My WHS server keeps all of my drives between 77 and 84 degrees F 24/7, even under full load. Is that good? I think it is, but is it really?

[CollinR]

Seagate SV35, these are the drives used in professional CCTV DVRs
which run 24/7 capturing video and recycling the drivespace.

SV = Surveillance Video

[QueOnda]

Cost?

[bastafidli]

Actually reagarding cooling and HDD lookup on the web results of large scale testing Google made regarding reliability of HDD and temperature. You would be surprise with the exactly opposite results as you would expect.

[bastafidli]

Seagate as far as I know no longer offers 5 year warranty starting January 1st.

[CollinR]

Originally Posted by QueOnda

Cost?

Not a huge price difference, they are available at Newegg without special order. The part# will end SV35.

Originally Posted by bastafidli

Actually reagarding cooling and HDD lookup on the web results of large scale testing Google made regarding reliability of HDD and temperature. You would be surprise with the exactly opposite results as you would expect.

Agreed this was quite interesting, there is an obvious happy medium that is warmer then most think.

I sure do wish they had listed mfg/part#.

[CollinR]

Oh and the Google link:
http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf

That tells me around 100*F is the temp to maintain, unless it's 3 years of age. LOL

[flavius]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

...cooling is the key to the life span of your computer components..

One of the keys, absolutely. You also don't want to use devices improperly, especially hard drives. What was I thinking using a cheap MyBook with a one year warranty as Mac time machine (automated backup) device?

The only other drive I have lost in 25 years or so was a Seagate that came in a highend Dell in 2001 that did not do the recording at the time. After just a few month it started complaining about bad sectors, and it got worse pretty quickly. The replacement drive, however, ran until 2005 when I sold the box, after at least three and a half years of PVR duty which it was not designed for.

Your mileage does vary, of course. And it sometimes comes to mind what my brother used to say about Seagate, in a word-play: 'Sie geht oder sie geht nicht" That's German for it works or it doesn't. I guess, his closet is stacked up with Maxtors.

No more one year warranty drives for me, though.

[rcl]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

My WHS server keeps all of my drives between 77 and 84 degrees F 24/7, even under full load.

While everyone is talking about HD temperatures, after I lost my 1TB Seagate in one day of usage to overheating I bought "HDDlife Pro" from www.hddlife.com. It shows 3 icons in the system tray, each with the temperature of my main hard disks. That'll prevent me from missing on drive overheating, should it ever occur again.

My 2 older 80MB system drives sit at about 93F, with a clocked max temp of 115F. My new 1TB "WD10EVVS AV-GP" PVR-qualified drive is sitting at 90F right now. It is a "Green" drive and tends to run cooler. I made sure to have 2 fans in my machine, one right in front of the drives and one at the back, to ensure good air flow.

[bastafidli]

On Linux you can use http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
to do stuff like this
smartctl --all /dev/sda

Device: COMPAQPC ATLAS10K3_18_WLS Version: 220A
Serial number: 342223714220
Device type: disk
Local Time is: Fri Jan 30 12:14:28 2009 CST
Device supports SMART and is Enabled
SMART Health Status: DATA CHANNEL IMPENDING FAILURE DATA ERROR RATE TOO HIGH [asc=5d, ascq=32]

Current Drive Temperature: 31 C
....


Just an FYI, it is already running 3 years saying "DATA CHANNEL IMPENDING FAILURE DATA ERROR RATE TOO HIGH" (I just probably jingxed it :-)

[davephan]

Losing 4 drives in one year sounds like a cooling problem to me too.

I go for years without loosing a hard drive. Although I had two Seagate 1 TB SATA drives that were bad out of the box recently. I returned the drives to Micro Center for replacement Seagate 1 TB SATA drives.

Dave

[flavius]

Originally Posted by davephan

Losing 4 drives in one year sounds like a cooling problem to me too.
Dave

You guys must be assuming they all died in the server, but only one did, two more in two other machines. The last one was a MyBook external drive-.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by flavius

You guys must be assuming they all died in the server, but only one did, two more in two other machines. The last one was a MyBook external drive-.

I think the cooling still needs to be checked out, on each computer. Or, maybe it happened in the summertime, when there isn't AC running in the house.

Dave