7 ms·

Helium-Filled: yey ! Seagate: hmm.. Aren't Seagate the least reliable HDDs in most of the HDD statistics from data centers ?

mnw21cam 10y ago
Tell me about it. I currently have a four month old Seagate Archive 8TB drive that is failing all over the place and returning corrupted data. And it looks like I'll be having to make threats under the Consumer Rights Act to get it replaced.
- beagle3 10y ago
  "Archive" drives are not meant for day to day use - that's why they are called "Archive" (as in, write-mostly-once-read-occasionally). They use SMR layout, which is just as fast for writing, but much slower for rewriting. That said, if it is returning corrupted data, you should check the memory chips in your computer (If you can do a non-UEFI boot, an Ubuntu live disk has a memory test utility you can use). Even if the on-disk data is corrupted, the drive should detect that and return an error and no data, rather than corrupted data.
  - mnw21cam 10y ago
    Yes, I'm aware of the nature of the drive. It is purely used to store incremental backups from my main ZFS set of three, so sequentially-written large tar files, with associated par2 parity data. No, the drive isn't technically returning corrupted data. I ran "par2 v" over the stored files (which is a read-only verify of the parity data), and it reports several of the files corrupted. However, looking in /var/log/messages, I do have several messages saying "Medium Error" and "Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed". The drive also has quite bad SMART stats, for instance: 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 8 183 Runtime_Bad_Block 0x0032 098 098 000 Old_age Always - 2 184 End-to-End_Error 0x0032 001 001 099 Old_age Always FAILING_NOW 2853 187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0032 093 093 000 Old_age Always - 7 189 High_Fly_Writes 0x003a 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 1 195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered 0x001a 111 100 000 Old_age Always - 38134120 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 24 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0010 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 24 The drive also has seven logged ATA errors, and has five failed self-tests. I think it's stuffed.
Jaruzel 10y ago
From experience, I would say so. In various arrays I've worked with, the Seagates always seem to be the first to fail SMART. Also they are really noisy when compared to a WD or Hitachi (not really an issue in a Datacentre, but I'm long in the tooth enough to automatically associate 'noisy' with 'failing drive'). WD have been using helium for a while on their 8TB drives: http://www.wdc.com/en/8tb/Default.aspx http://www.wdc.com/en/8tb/Default.aspx And they have a specific model for Datacentres: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1670 http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1670
roddux 10y ago
According to BackBlaze's data set, Western Digital are the least reliable: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q4-2015/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q4-201... Seagate and Toshiba tie for 2nd, but HGST drives are by far and away the most reliable.
- jdimov10 10y ago
  Wait, WD are the LEAST reliable, but HGST are the MOST reliable... Isn't that the SAME company?
  - gruez 10y ago
    They're only the same company in ownership; both operate independently of each other
- XorNot 10y ago
  Of course this is generally asking the wrong question. If you're concerned about reliability in terms of data loss, you're already doing it wrong.
_Codemonkeyism 10y ago
How times change ... 25 years ago everyone was proud to own a SCSI Barracuda.

mnw21cam 10y ago

Tell me about it. I currently have a four month old Seagate Archive 8TB drive that is failing all over the place and returning corrupted data. And it looks like I'll be having to make threats under the Consumer Rights Act to get it replaced.

beagle3 10y ago
"Archive" drives are not meant for day to day use - that's why they are called "Archive" (as in, write-mostly-once-read-occasionally). They use SMR layout, which is just as fast for writing, but much slower for rewriting. That said, if it is returning corrupted data, you should check the memory chips in your computer (If you can do a non-UEFI boot, an Ubuntu live disk has a memory test utility you can use). Even if the on-disk data is corrupted, the drive should detect that and return an error and no data, rather than corrupted data.
- mnw21cam 10y ago
  Yes, I'm aware of the nature of the drive. It is purely used to store incremental backups from my main ZFS set of three, so sequentially-written large tar files, with associated par2 parity data. No, the drive isn't technically returning corrupted data. I ran "par2 v" over the stored files (which is a read-only verify of the parity data), and it reports several of the files corrupted. However, looking in /var/log/messages, I do have several messages saying "Medium Error" and "Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed". The drive also has quite bad SMART stats, for instance: 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 8 183 Runtime_Bad_Block 0x0032 098 098 000 Old_age Always - 2 184 End-to-End_Error 0x0032 001 001 099 Old_age Always FAILING_NOW 2853 187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0032 093 093 000 Old_age Always - 7 189 High_Fly_Writes 0x003a 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 1 195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered 0x001a 111 100 000 Old_age Always - 38134120 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 24 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0010 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 24 The drive also has seven logged ATA errors, and has five failed self-tests. I think it's stuffed.

Jaruzel 10y ago

From experience, I would say so. In various arrays I've worked with, the Seagates always seem to be the first to fail SMART. Also they are really noisy when compared to a WD or Hitachi (not really an issue in a Datacentre, but I'm long in the tooth enough to automatically associate 'noisy' with 'failing drive'). WD have been using helium for a while on their 8TB drives: http://www.wdc.com/en/8tb/Default.aspx http://www.wdc.com/en/8tb/Default.aspx And they have a specific model for Datacentres: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1670 http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1670

roddux 10y ago

According to BackBlaze's data set, Western Digital are the least reliable: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q4-2015/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q4-201... Seagate and Toshiba tie for 2nd, but HGST drives are by far and away the most reliable.

jdimov10 10y ago
Wait, WD are the LEAST reliable, but HGST are the MOST reliable... Isn't that the SAME company?
- gruez 10y ago
  They're only the same company in ownership; both operate independently of each other
XorNot 10y ago
Of course this is generally asking the wrong question. If you're concerned about reliability in terms of data loss, you're already doing it wrong.

_Codemonkeyism 10y ago

How times change ... 25 years ago everyone was proud to own a SCSI Barracuda.