Life of Hard drives
Submitted by THE_red_baron on February 4, 2008 - 11:59pm.
Other Computers
Hi:
First, allow me to rant please...What the *&&*(# are the hard drive manufacturers up???
Sorry, I just hard my Nth number of Seagate HD failure. The original one in my G5-1.8 died last winter(about 2 years old). I put in another Baracuda(could find any Maxtor in a moments notice). Well, It just pull a vanishing act last friday. Could even be mounted to be repaired or at least pull some of my latest data out. I lost 4 days worth of stuffs, which is maximum of what I could lost, 'cause I do the backup on monday nights.
Remember the old Quantums drives? They used to last forever. I still have fully functional 500mb drive I pull from ColorClassics. Maxtors aren't that bad, I had one killed by the phone company via the modem. But I don't remember I have one die on me under normal use. Just a stack of small but functioning drives sitting in a box some where.
Then there is Seagate. I don't think I have a single Seagate outside a system that is still working. They all got pulled because they died or become unreliable. Not because they outlived their usefulness.
WD. I have returned almost half of the WD because I can't get them to start up with some system. They are not DOA or anything. Just compatibility issue with the systems I need them to work in(PC or MAC). Quite often I tried them in other systems and they work, Just not the ones that the drive was intented for. Especially if it had to be master or slave with a different manufacturer's drive on the same cable.
So, not knowing what happened in the market, I set out to get a Maxtor drive. Guess what, Seagate bought them and they are no longer available. They guy I by my drive from stopped stocking WD because he started to have a lot of issue with them recently too(Glad I am not the only one).
Now, the choice that's left is crap, and crapier. The other smaller drive makers doesn't have any better reputation either. I personally have not tried them. (Toshiba and Fujitsu Notebook drive seems to be ok, but they see far less usage then desktop drive in my case)
which lead to the real question of this post. Has anybody every used "enterprise grade" or "server grade" drive on a desktop? and how is their reliability? I know the drives are design with different critiria. It was meant to be at a fixed temperature(in the server room) and run for 24/7. Desktop drive are usuallt turned of at the end of the day and see some temperature cycles and a lot of on/off cycles. I guess the question is, can a server drive be use on a desktop and still have good reliablity?
I know it costed more, but as far as I am concerned, the drive should be the most reliable component in a system. If any else died, I could buy replacement part and keep going. But if drive died, I am kind of SOL with the data.
Tried using silverkeeper to do a daily sync to a NAS. but with 24 gb of data(small files, lots and lots of small files). It usually takes over 4 hours to compare the HD with the NAS. Slowing the system down enough that I can't work with it.
Any info is greatly appreciated. Thanks