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On Sunday 14 Jul 2013 23:35:50 Paul Hartman wrote: |
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> On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 10:58 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> |
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wrote: |
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> > On 08/07/2013 17:39, Paul Hartman wrote: |
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> >> On Thu, Jul 4, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Paul Hartman |
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> >> |
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> >> <paul.hartman+gentoo@×××××.com> wrote: |
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> >>> ST4000DM000 |
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> >> |
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> >> As a side-note these two Seagate 4TB "Desktop" edition drives I bought |
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> >> already, after about than 100 hours of power-on usage, both drives |
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> >> have each encountered dozens of unreadable sectors so far. I was able |
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> >> to correct them (force reallocation) using hdparm... So it should be |
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> >> "fixed", and I'm reading that this is "normal" with newer drives and |
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> >> "don't worry about it", but I'm still coming from the time when 1 bad |
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> >> sector = red alert, replace the drive ASAP. I guess I will need to |
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> >> monitor and see if it gets worse. |
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> > |
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> > Way back when in the bad old days of drives measured in 100s of megs, |
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> > you'd get a few bad sectors now and then, and would have to mark them as |
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> > faulty. This didn't bother us then much |
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> > |
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> > Nowadays we have drives that are 8,000 bigger than that so all other |
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> > things being equal we'd expect sectors to fail 8,000 time more (more |
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> > being a very fuzzy concept, and I know full well I'm using it loosely :-) |
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> > ) |
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> > |
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> > Our drives nowadays also have smart firmware, something we had to |
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> > introduce when CHS no longer cut it, this lead to sector failures being |
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> > somewhat "invisible" leaving us with the happy delusion that drives were |
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> > vastly reliable etc etc etc. But you know all this. |
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> > |
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> > A mere few dozen failures in the first 100 hours is a failure rate of |
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> > (Alan whips out the trust sci calculator) 4.8E-6%. Pretty damn |
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> > spectacular if you ask me and WELL within probabilities. |
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> > |
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> > There is likely nothing wrong with your drives. If they are faulty, it's |
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> > highly likely a systemic manufacturing fault of the mechanicals (servo |
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> > systems, motor bearing etc) |
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> > |
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> > You do realize that modern hard drives have for the longest time been up |
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> > there in the Top X list of Most Reliable Devices Made By Mankind Ever? |
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> |
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> An update: the Seagate drives have both continued to spit more |
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> unrecoverable errors and find more and more bad sectors. Including |
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> some end-to-end errors indicated as critical "FAILING NOW" status in |
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> SMART. From what I have read that error means the drive's internal |
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> cache did not match the data written to disk, which seems like a |
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> serious flaw. The threshold is 1 which means if it happens at all, the |
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> drive should be replaced. It has happened half a dozen times on each |
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> disk so far (but not at the exact same time, so I don't think it is a |
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> host controller problem -- and other disks on the same controller and |
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> cable have had no issues). They have also been disconnecting and |
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> resetting randomly, sometimes requiring me to pull the drive and |
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> reinsert it into the enclosure to make it reappear. It happens even |
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> after I disabled APM, so I know it isn't a spin-down/idle timeout |
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> thing. Temperatures are actually very good (low 30's) so they are not |
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> overheating. |
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> |
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> I think I will try to trade them in to Seagate for a new pair under |
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> warranty replacement. And then probably try to sell the replacements |
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> and be rid of them. |
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> |
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> Meanwhile, during that experiment, I bought 2 brand new Western |
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> Digital Red 3TB drives last week. No problems in SMART testing or |
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> creating LVM/RAID/Filesystems. I have now been running the destructive |
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> write/read badblocks tests for 24+ hours and they have been perfect so |
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> far, exactly 0 errors. They are more expensive (3TB for the same price |
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> as the 4TB seagate) and slightly slower read/write speed (150MB/sec |
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> peak vs 170MB/sec peak), but I value reliability over all other |
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> factors. |
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> |
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> These Seagate drives must have some kind of manufacturing defect, or |
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> perhaps were damaged in shipping... UPS have been known to treat |
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> packages like a football! |
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|
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I've been watching this thread with interest, because I've been trying to find |
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out which HDD I should be buying for a new PC. For every person reporting |
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problematic Seagates there's another person complaining about Western Digital |
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being too noisy, failing, or in the case of the black versions, far too |
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expensive. |
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|
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Amidst all the anecdotal aphorisms against one or the other manufacturer, I |
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saw mentioned that the likelihood of failure doubles up when you go from 1TB |
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to 2 TB. If true, I guess that the 3TB would have fewer failures than 4TB |
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drive. |
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|
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For what it's worth I have had a number of Seagates failing on me, but since |
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this was in the 90's. On my laptop a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 (ST9500420ASG) |
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is running fine for the last 3.5 years so, I was thinking of taking a punt on |
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a 'Seagate Barracuda 3.5 inch 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB 6GB/S Internal SATA'. But |
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what you're mentioning here gives me cause to pause. |
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|
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-- |
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Regards, |
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Mick |