Koleckai Silvestri 1150 Posted February 1, 2014 Share Posted February 1, 2014 Interesting reading on drive failure rates from the professional storage people: http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/ 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starkadius 219 Posted February 1, 2014 Share Posted February 1, 2014 (edited) They didn't include the Seagate NAS drives unfortunately, curious to see the results of those. I have been replacing my Seagate Desktop 4TB drives (ST4000DM000) with the Seagate NAS 4TB (ST4000VN000) drives which are designed for 24/7 usage and has a 3 year warranty. They run much cooler and reviews seem to be much better than the desktop ones. They ARE slightly more expensive but basically you are paying for longevity and peace of mind so in the long term I think that is worth it versus saving a little in the short term Seagate NAS HDD 4TB SATA 6GB NCQ 64 MB Cache Bare Drive ST4000VN000 Edited February 1, 2014 by Starkadius Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koleckai Silvestri 1150 Posted February 1, 2014 Author Share Posted February 1, 2014 They only use consumer level drives. They don't list WD Blue or Black either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmac 132 Posted February 1, 2014 Share Posted February 1, 2014 (edited) What's the main cause of HDD failure? I say this because I'm not running mine on any sort of backup system, and have been for a few years now with some of my drives. I'm running all WD external drives right now. 9TB worth, the largest drive being 3TB. Edited February 1, 2014 by pmac Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starkadius 219 Posted February 1, 2014 Share Posted February 1, 2014 There are various factors that could cause hard drive failure but the most common is heat. I have observed that external drives usually run on higher temperatures when turned on for a lengthy period because of the enclosure and as such I would not use them for 24/7 use cases such as media browser. They are good for backup purposes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abobader 2960 Posted February 1, 2014 Share Posted February 1, 2014 Good day, As Starkadius said regarding thing lead to HDD failure matters, as the heat the main issue, I will add to it: 1 - Dust. 2 - Bad management for idling the HDD. Also HDD brands do main issue as well, again Starkadius cover that in some post here. The HDD controller as here the RAID controller (whom use it) can have some factor as well. My best Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmac 132 Posted February 1, 2014 Share Posted February 1, 2014 (edited) There are various factors that could cause hard drive failure but the most common is heat. I have observed that external drives usually run on higher temperatures when turned on for a lengthy period because of the enclosure and as such I would not use them for 24/7 use cases such as media browser. They are good for backup purposes. I guess I've just been lucky so far then... I always worry about what I'll do in case of a failure, unfortunately I don't really know anything about unRAID's/RAID's, or other alternatives. But I do want to eventually set up some sort of backup system, just don't know which route to take... I've got: 2x 3TB Externals 2x 1TB Externals 1x 2TB Internal unRAID looks nice, because it seems cheaper/more reliable than a proper RAID setup, but I've read Windows has some online software backup systems as well, I just don't really know anything about any of them... lol Edited February 1, 2014 by pmac Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koleckai Silvestri 1150 Posted February 1, 2014 Author Share Posted February 1, 2014 Online backup is probably impractical once you are past the 1 terabyte threshold. You need reall good upload speeds to make it work. As for failure, in the article, they said one of the reasons for failure was frequent spin downs of low power drives. Every time a drive spins up, it puts stress on the motor. So you want to control that for long term use. spinning drives create heat which causes problems with the platters so you want to cool them down. Make sure there is good air flow in any case and/or use heat exchangers on the drives directly. Going slightly above consumer grade will help you as well. Such as the NAS drives mentioned by Starkadius above or the Blue and Black lines from Western Digital. Or Hitachi drives. They cost a bit more but are more reliable. You also don't need the fastest drives for your media storage. Slower is usually more reliable. They aren't going to use the bandwidth of SATA individually anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gcw07 347 Posted February 1, 2014 Share Posted February 1, 2014 As for failure, in the article, they said one of the reasons for failure was frequent spin downs of low power drives. Every time a drive spins up, it puts stress on the motor. So you want to control that for long term use. spinning drives create heat which causes problems with the platters so you want to cool them down. Make sure there is good air flow in any case and/or use heat exchangers on the drives directly. Going slightly above consumer grade will help you as well. Such as the NAS drives mentioned by Starkadius above or the Blue and Black lines from Western Digital. Or Hitachi drives. They cost a bit more but are more reliable. You also don't need the fastest drives for your media storage. Slower is usually more reliable. They aren't going to use the bandwidth of SATA individually anyway. This is the reason I don't ever buy those Green drives. The spin downs on those suck. And yeah for any NAS or just good quality drives, I'd have to recommend minimum of the Red drives now. Black if you can afford them, but that is stepping it up a lot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starkadius 219 Posted February 1, 2014 Share Posted February 1, 2014 I agree, for MediaBrowser usage the Western Digital Red drives which are for NAS applications are appropriate as well. I have not used the WD Red drives so I can't vouch for them but they have comparable features to the Seagate NAS drives. The Western Digital Red and Seagate NAS drives are an in-between consumer and enterprise level drives so they aren't so cheap but not so expensive either, they are just right for media serving. Western Digital 4 TB WD Red SATA III 5400 RPM 64 MB Cache NAS Hard Drive WD40EFRX Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigjohn 656 Posted February 1, 2014 Share Posted February 1, 2014 (edited) Interesting reading on drive failure rates from the professional storage people: http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/ I love the way the BackBlaze folks are so open about everything they do. We use them for all of our desktop PCs at my workplace. If I had a decent internet connection at home I would use them there too. $50/year for unlimited data backup (but no server OS or Linux - unless you count Mac OSX). Edited February 1, 2014 by bigjohn322 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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