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Backblaze pulls a Seagate 3TB drive out of service

36 points by velodrome 12y ago

wtallis 12y ago
I've had four of these drives in my home server for several months. Until I completely disabled their built-in power management, they would park the heads every few minutes. The relevant SMART indicator was on track for them to exhaust their specified rating for load/unload cycles in about a year. I haven't noticed any other problems with them yet, but I'm making sure to scrub the disks weekly and I have some other drives as hot spares to pick up the slack when the first one fails.
- atYevP 12y ago
  Yev from Backblaze here -> Yea, likely you're going to be OK with those drives. We're just reporting on our experience with them. Likely use-cases are going to be different, especially in a home setting!
  - Symbiote 12y ago
    A sample size of one, but I had an external ST3000DM001, attached to an ARM Linux server, and it failed in about 9 months. In its enclosure, it reported an "airflow temperature" of 56°C while sitting on my desk. It had a 2 year warranty, possibly EU rules mean 1 year isn't enough (for home users).
    - atYevP 12y ago
      Sample size of one = only sample size important to that one :-p
    - Torgo 12y ago
      Some Seagates lie for that value in their SMART entry. It reports an offset from optimal temperature, which always fails the SMART test.
    - wtallis 12y ago
      I think they just bumped the warranty period back up a bit some time after clearing out the post-flood inventory. My drives bought from newegg in the US came with a 2-year warranty. I'm more worried about the consequences of the dumb power management than poor materials and workmanship.
breakingcups 12y ago
I love reading Backblaze blog entries. They're very open and informative. In fact, reading the blog so frequently really convinced me to try out Backblaze itself, but unfortunately the upload speeds were just way too slow from The Netherlands. Does anyone know if they operate data centers in Europe already?
- atYevP 12y ago
  Yev from Backblaze here -> TRY IT AGAIN! We just introduced multi-process uploading, which has helped some of our users abroad 2x or 3x their speeds!
TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
Since when does BackBlaze of all places do blogspam? There’s more if you subscribe… Signup today to receive the Backblaze Blog in your Inbox and we’ll send you Bonus data and charts from this blog post including the Seagate_3TB_DATA-Summary.xlsx spreadsheet and more. Sign up for the Blog If you’re already a subscriber to the Backblaze Blog, this Bonus material should already be in your inbox – you’re welcome… Complete with capitalized "Bonus". Oh, and this still appears via the RSS feed. Guess they really want people's email addresses, eh?
- atYevP 12y ago
  Yev from Backblaze here -> That's actually new. We tried it for the first time with this post. We don't actually use the email addresses for anything, other than to send the data. The intent is that you sign up for blog notifications, and then possibly try the service.
smackfu 12y ago
>In annual terms, 2.7% or the drives failed in 2012, 5.4% failed in 2013 and 47.2% failed in 2014. I can't figure out where that 47% number is coming from, if the overall failure rate was 29.5%. It seems like 1008 out of 4289 drives failed in 2014, or 23.5%.

36 points by velodrome 12y ago

I've had four of these drives in my home server for several months. Until I completely disabled their built-in power management, they would park the heads every few minutes. The relevant SMART indicator was on track for them to exhaust their specified rating for load/unload cycles in about a year. I haven't noticed any other problems with them yet, but I'm making sure to scrub the disks weekly and I have some other drives as hot spares to pick up the slack when the first one fails.

atYevP 12y ago
Yev from Backblaze here -> Yea, likely you're going to be OK with those drives. We're just reporting on our experience with them. Likely use-cases are going to be different, especially in a home setting!
- Symbiote 12y ago
  A sample size of one, but I had an external ST3000DM001, attached to an ARM Linux server, and it failed in about 9 months. In its enclosure, it reported an "airflow temperature" of 56°C while sitting on my desk. It had a 2 year warranty, possibly EU rules mean 1 year isn't enough (for home users).
  - atYevP 12y ago
    Sample size of one = only sample size important to that one :-p
  - Torgo 12y ago
    Some Seagates lie for that value in their SMART entry. It reports an offset from optimal temperature, which always fails the SMART test.
  - wtallis 12y ago
    I think they just bumped the warranty period back up a bit some time after clearing out the post-flood inventory. My drives bought from newegg in the US came with a 2-year warranty. I'm more worried about the consequences of the dumb power management than poor materials and workmanship.

breakingcups 12y ago

I love reading Backblaze blog entries. They're very open and informative. In fact, reading the blog so frequently really convinced me to try out Backblaze itself, but unfortunately the upload speeds were just way too slow from The Netherlands. Does anyone know if they operate data centers in Europe already?

atYevP 12y ago
Yev from Backblaze here -> TRY IT AGAIN! We just introduced multi-process uploading, which has helped some of our users abroad 2x or 3x their speeds!

TheLoneWolfling 12y ago

Since when does BackBlaze of all places do blogspam? There’s more if you subscribe… Signup today to receive the Backblaze Blog in your Inbox and we’ll send you Bonus data and charts from this blog post including the Seagate_3TB_DATA-Summary.xlsx spreadsheet and more. Sign up for the Blog If you’re already a subscriber to the Backblaze Blog, this Bonus material should already be in your inbox – you’re welcome… Complete with capitalized "Bonus". Oh, and this still appears via the RSS feed. Guess they really want people's email addresses, eh?

atYevP 12y ago
Yev from Backblaze here -> That's actually new. We tried it for the first time with this post. We don't actually use the email addresses for anything, other than to send the data. The intent is that you sign up for blog notifications, and then possibly try the service.

smackfu 12y ago

>In annual terms, 2.7% or the drives failed in 2012, 5.4% failed in 2013 and 47.2% failed in 2014. I can't figure out where that 47% number is coming from, if the overall failure rate was 29.5%. It seems like 1008 out of 4289 drives failed in 2014, or 23.5%.