3 ms·

And here's the discussion of that story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4631027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4631027 I browsed the comments with

And here's the discussion of that story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4631027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4631027 I browsed the comments with two things in mind: was anyone uncomfortable with shucking and farming on this scale, and were the drives of equivalent quality? Regarding the latter, user rsync of rsync.net claimed that "the drives inside these enclosures are the worst spec'd, highest failure rate drives." User budmang of Backblaze, however, said, "The drives were literally the same inside the external enclosures." User atYevP of Backblaze posted a similar comment.

jotm 13y ago
High failure rates of external drives can also be attributed to the USB controllers - they're better than their IDE predecessors (which failed a lot, sometimes taking the drives with them - only low level utilities could revive them). Otherwise, I don't see how or why the hard drive manufacturers would bother to send the worst batches (which aren't that much worse) to external hard drive assemblers.
- sp332 13y ago
  It could also be that they shut down more frequently. More stop-start cycles mean more wear on the moving parts of the disk.
  - bentcorner 13y ago
    Isn't that a feature of the USB enclosure? (i.e., not an issue once a drive has been "shucked")
- ZoFreX 13y ago
  I repair computers for friends and families and the majority of the time I get a broken external to look at, it's the enclosure that's at fault and the drive is absolutely fine. I encourage people to buy their enclosures and drives separately - it's a little more expensive, but this way you can RMA just the enclosure if it fails. With an all-in-one, you either void your warranty to get the data back, or ship the whole unit back for a replacement.
  - jotm 13y ago
    That's an interesting point, since I have a Samsung hard drive I took OUT of an enclosure and out of curiosity I checked the warranty on it - it's a 3 year warranty that is still active and the web page said I could initiate a return. So, technically, I could RMA the drive myself if it fails... or would they notice it and not process the return?
atYevP 13y ago
Yev here ;-) -> http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/11/12/how-long-do-disk-drives-last/ http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/11/12/how-long-do-disk-drives... We posted this earlier in the month. The drives inside the external drives that were shucked performed pretty well. We were guessing that they would fail more frequently but that just didn't turn out to be the case. We're currently collecting even more data and hope to release it soonishly :)
sliverstorm 13y ago
Interesting. I've never once found a standard drive model inside an external. I mean, of course they are standard form factors, standard interfaces, etc- they are standard 3.5" hard drives- but they are always some odd model number I've never heard of with a 32kB cache, 1 month warranty, and 3600RPM. (slight exaggeration).
- hrrsn 13y ago
  In my experience, most of the 3.5" enclosure drives have been off the shelf. My last batch of HP ones were all WD Greens. I have seen a few WD 2.5" externals with proprietary connections :/
wayne_h 13y ago
Data recovery guy here... Failure of external drives has mostly to do with their handling. They get bumped around while runnning. People trip over the cords and knock them over. They stack them like pancakes and they overheat. They block the fans and cause overheating. Many enclosures are designed to look stylish - but don't cool well. Heads fly at nanometers over the surface - they dont tolerate bumps well. The drives we recover from external enclosures appear to be the same as bare drives that we recover.

jotm 13y ago

High failure rates of external drives can also be attributed to the USB controllers - they're better than their IDE predecessors (which failed a lot, sometimes taking the drives with them - only low level utilities could revive them). Otherwise, I don't see how or why the hard drive manufacturers would bother to send the worst batches (which aren't that much worse) to external hard drive assemblers.

sp332 13y ago
It could also be that they shut down more frequently. More stop-start cycles mean more wear on the moving parts of the disk.
- bentcorner 13y ago
  Isn't that a feature of the USB enclosure? (i.e., not an issue once a drive has been "shucked")
ZoFreX 13y ago
I repair computers for friends and families and the majority of the time I get a broken external to look at, it's the enclosure that's at fault and the drive is absolutely fine. I encourage people to buy their enclosures and drives separately - it's a little more expensive, but this way you can RMA just the enclosure if it fails. With an all-in-one, you either void your warranty to get the data back, or ship the whole unit back for a replacement.
- jotm 13y ago
  That's an interesting point, since I have a Samsung hard drive I took OUT of an enclosure and out of curiosity I checked the warranty on it - it's a 3 year warranty that is still active and the web page said I could initiate a return. So, technically, I could RMA the drive myself if it fails... or would they notice it and not process the return?

atYevP 13y ago

Yev here ;-) -> http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/11/12/how-long-do-disk-drives-last/ http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/11/12/how-long-do-disk-drives... We posted this earlier in the month. The drives inside the external drives that were shucked performed pretty well. We were guessing that they would fail more frequently but that just didn't turn out to be the case. We're currently collecting even more data and hope to release it soonishly :)

sliverstorm 13y ago

Interesting. I've never once found a standard drive model inside an external. I mean, of course they are standard form factors, standard interfaces, etc- they are standard 3.5" hard drives- but they are always some odd model number I've never heard of with a 32kB cache, 1 month warranty, and 3600RPM. (slight exaggeration).

hrrsn 13y ago
In my experience, most of the 3.5" enclosure drives have been off the shelf. My last batch of HP ones were all WD Greens. I have seen a few WD 2.5" externals with proprietary connections :/

wayne_h 13y ago

Data recovery guy here... Failure of external drives has mostly to do with their handling. They get bumped around while runnning. People trip over the cords and knock them over. They stack them like pancakes and they overheat. They block the fans and cause overheating. Many enclosures are designed to look stylish - but don't cool well. Heads fly at nanometers over the surface - they dont tolerate bumps well. The drives we recover from external enclosures appear to be the same as bare drives that we recover.