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On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 7:49 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@×××××.com> wrote: |
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> |
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> I also found this after the reply from Ian. |
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> |
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> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/3tb-hard-drive-failure/ |
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> |
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> No wonder they had it on sale. Heck, why didn't they just say it was a |
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> good door stop instead of a hard drive??? |
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> |
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Yeah, the only reason I'd want to use that model drive is if I had a |
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raid5 composed of entirely different drives and for some reason the |
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discount on the Seagate 3TB drive let me bump it up to a raid6 (and to |
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be sure I'd never put more than one of those in an array). It is |
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basically a doorstop. |
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|
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I had two of those go in the span of a year. One was replaced under |
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warranty. The next was the warranty replacement. That one was no |
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longer under warranty, but after a scathing Amazon review Seagate |
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actually commented on the review asking me to contact them about a |
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replacement. I didn't bother - I really was tired of swapping out |
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drives at that pace and didn't consider the considerably-higher risk |
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of a double failure worth it. |
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i'd have to check - I think I picked a 4TB Seagate NAS drive to replace it. |
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Somebody suggested not buying Seagate. The thing is, EVERY |
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manufacturer has had drives like these. Well, the Hitachi drives |
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Backblaze goes on about would be an exception, but they're |
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SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive and I don't think it is worth the premium |
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in a RAID. For a single-drive system I'd strongly consider them. I |
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think I heard they were bought out at some point, so we'll see if |
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their reputation holds. |
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|
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And that's the thing with brand reputations. These days MBAs milk |
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reputations. Some finance guy realizes that people will buy this |
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year's drives based on last year's reputation and cuts some corners |
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and collects a huge bonus. Three years later everybody is dealing |
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with drive failures. Every vendor does it. That one Seagate model |
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was about the worst I've personally seen, but who knows what model is |
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being sold today that in three years will turn out to be just as bad, |
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and it could come from any of the vendors. |
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I do try to look at the Backblaze stats for what they're worth, but I |
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think the general advice applies well. Make sure you have an |
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appropriate level of redundancy and backup strategy. Make sure to mix |
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models of drives in your RAIDs. The whole point of a RAID is to keep |
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the price down by increasing your tolerance of failures. |
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And the whole NAS drive firmware thing really bugs me because they |
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charge a premium for a few bits in flash memory that should be |
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user-configurable anyway. Some of those drives have better vibration |
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resistance, which bugs me less. However, the bottom line is that they |
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probably will improve your RAID performance in the event of a failure, |
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and they probably do tend to cut the corners less on them. But who |
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knows, maybe the drive that fails next year will be the super-premium |
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edition. |
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All of this goes to one of my drivers for using btrfs (and in this |
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regard zfs will do just as well). The checksumming means that I'm not |
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really trusting the drive or its firmware at all, and I scrub my |
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arrays weekly. |
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Sorry you ended up with a bad drive... That model IS considerably |
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cheaper than most of the others... |
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|
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-- |
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Rich |
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