[kwlug-disc] 4TB drive throwing errors - what's current drive thinking these days?

Thu Apr 21 08:17:24 EDT 2016

One universal constant in HDDs...  Most everybody has their preferred
brand, usually WD or Seagate.  I was a WD fan for many years but after
replacing my n+1th drive, I thought I would give Seagate a try.  The
Seagates that I bought worked well.  So I bought more, in particular four
of the 3TB Baracudas.  Then a year or so later I read that big HDD review
(that was mentioned in this email chain a while ago the name of which I
forget) where they said that this particular 3TB Seagate was very prone to
failures.  And guess which drives in my NAS have been doing the funny
blinking lately?  So I did a lot of reading and found that while the 3TBs
Seagates were crap, the 4TBs were actually pretty good.  I've already
swapped one dead 3TB for a 4TB and I have a couple of 4TBs on the shelf
waiting for their chance.

Moral of the story?  It's not the manufacturer that you should be concerned
about, it's that exact model number that you need to investigate.  In my
case (pun intended) I'm sticking with the ST4000VN000 Seagates.

On Thu, 21 Apr 2016 at 07:39 Khalid Baheyeldin <kb at 2bits.com> wrote:

> I use Western Digital Green 3TB WD30EZRX for backup in an eSATA dock.
> They have been performing well for a few years now.
>
> On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 12:26 AM, B.S. via kwlug-disc
> <kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> wrote:
> > The WD Red used to be 5, now 3 - but along has come Red Pro, which has 5.
> >
> > As do the Constellations.
> >
> > The WD RE does too, but I've lost track as to whether it's the old model
> naming line or not, vis a vis the NAS drives (RE has become Red Pro?). Or
> something.
> >
> > http://www.wdc.com/en/products/catalog/ notes there's an SE and AE now,
> too.
> >
> >
> > There's 500GB free on the drive - I have a feeling that even if some
> sectors start going bad the btrfs checksumming will cause it to keep
> hunting for a sector until it finds a good one. Perhaps buying me some time
> to deal with things.
> >
> > Just ignore the bit rot lurking behind the curtain. (My guess as to the
> cause of the files going bad since last week's scrub.)
> >
> > 'course if it's a mechanical / spindle issue ... it's just going to drop
> on me.
> >
> > smartctl -H says it's to die within 24 hours. We'll see.
> >
> > <grumble>
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> >> From: L.D. Paniak <ldpaniak at fourpisolutions.com>
> >> To: B.S. <bs27975 at yahoo.ca>; KWLUG discussion <kwlug-disc at kwlug.org>
> >> Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2016 10:34 PM
> >> Subject: Re: [kwlug-disc] 4TB drive throwing errors - what's current
> drive thinking these days?
> >>
> >> Don't forget the Gold drives:
> >> http://www.storagereview.com/wd_gold_datacenter_hdds_announced
> >>
> >> For other peoples' data use enterprise drives.
> >>
> >> For your own data, it is hard to beat a 5yr warranty drive.  2/3 more
> >> "lease" time than a 3yr drive.
> >> Are there any 5yr retail drives besides WD Black?
> >> That said, I have been getting good performance and reliability from
> >> Seagate ST2000VN000 drives
> >> even though they are 3yr warranty.  They have good reviews at the usual
> >> places, have options up
> >> to 8TB and are well priced.
> >>
> >>
> >> On 04/20/2016 12:22 PM, B.S. via kwlug-disc wrote:
> >>>  One of my WD4001FAEX-00MJRA0 4TB Sata III drives is now throwing off
> >> errors. What's current thinking on drives and colours these days?
> >>>
> >>>  smartctl -H is now showing failure, showed PASSED a week ago. More
> >> importantly, btrfs scrub is throwing off a few hundred errors - this
> after a
> >> scrub last week that only threw 5 fixable errors (after restoring a
> half dozen
> >> other problematic files).
> >>>
> >>>  Seems since my last look, WD has even more colours out there by which
> to
> >> confuse. If anyone has clarity, that would be useful.
> >>>
> >>>  Past list consensus seemed to be that only WD Black made sense for
> the use
> >> case / time - 5 year warranty (i.e. manufacturer has more confidence in
> their
> >> product), 7200 rpm, 6 Gbps. Intellipower issues were reported, so seems
> to be
> >> best to avoid that. (I don't raid, rsync'ing to other machines instead,
> >> so multi-GB backups fly across the house nightly.) WD Red has gone to 3
> year
> >> warranty, in favour of 'Red Pro' now. Blue, Black, Red, Red Pro, NAS,
> >> RE, RE pro ... bah!
> >>>
> >>>  The other drive of that ilk seems to be Seagate Constellations, but I
> >> don't recall having any experience with them to know.
> >>>
> >>>  What's current thinking on drives these days?
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > kwlug-disc at kwlug.org
> > http://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Khalid M. Baheyeldin
> 2bits.com, Inc.
> Fast Reliable Drupal
> Drupal optimization, development, customization and consulting.
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> For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple,
> and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken
>
>
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