I have had three Western Digital drives fail in the last four years, an
internal 2 TB Black, an external 2 TB My Book, and a 3 TB external
Elements. The two external drives stopped being recognized by the
computer, and I got an imminent disk failure message from Win 7 on the
black. All three drives had 3 year warranties, and were replaced without
question, although there wasn't much human customer service interaction.
On Sun, Jun 21, 2015 at 1:08 PM, Richard L. Hess <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Here is what a bit of searching discovered.
>
> Maxtor-->Seagate
> Samsung-->Seagate
>
> IBM-->Hitachi-->HGST-->Now wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital
>
> Toshiba
>
> I had nine 1 TB Samsung HDDs from 2008 and I've only had to replace one.
>
> The worst drives I ever had were Seagate 1.5 TB drives.
>
> Interesting that the WD Reds were as bad as they were. Perhaps there is a
> thing about the size of the RAID that makes sense with the number of drive
> limits.
>
> The vibrations/acoustic issues of drives was not clearly discussed when I
> looked a few years ago.
>
> Backblaze is a very interesting product. I'm thinking of DAS (Direct
> Attached Storage via USB) for my main computer that runs 24/7 that would be
> where I'd store all the files and have it mirrored to the local NAS. Using
> Backblaze, the DAS would be backed up to the cloud and I could still use my
> off-site HDDs to protect against EMP <smile>.
>
> Considering the time to replicate, making the DAS out of separate 6 TB HDD
> in RAID 1 configurations might make sense. I have to look at DAS
> enclosures, also because multiple HDDs become unreliable with too many via
> USB. USB3 is faster than GIG-E so that's a non-issue now.
>
> That way, I would not have to run the second set of aging NAS units to
> back up the first one.
>
> I have already already experimented with a close relative of this
> configuration using an internal HDD at the Historical Society as a backup
> for the NAS. The NAS there is 4 TB RAID6 with four 2 TB Reds. There is a 3
> TB internal drive in the media workstation. All work on that workstation is
> done to the SSD but offloaded to the internal HDD and NAS for storage. We
> do an offsite disk, but cloud would be better.
>
> It seems that HGST div of WD might be better than WD and, in general, WD
> seems better than Seagate, though I don't know if the Samsung/Seagate
> drives are still separate. Those were good.
>
> I have a couple of Toshiba portable USB HDDs and they seem fine, too.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard
>
--
Frank B Strauss, DMD
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