1 |
On Mon, July 15, 2013 09:39, Mick wrote: |
2 |
> On Sunday 14 Jul 2013 23:35:50 Paul Hartman wrote: |
3 |
>> On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 10:58 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> |
4 |
> wrote: |
5 |
>> > On 08/07/2013 17:39, Paul Hartman wrote: |
6 |
>> >> On Thu, Jul 4, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Paul Hartman |
7 |
>> >> |
8 |
>> >> <paul.hartman+gentoo@×××××.com> wrote: |
9 |
>> >>> ST4000DM000 |
10 |
>> >> |
11 |
>> >> As a side-note these two Seagate 4TB "Desktop" edition drives I |
12 |
>> bought |
13 |
>> >> already, after about than 100 hours of power-on usage, both drives |
14 |
>> >> have each encountered dozens of unreadable sectors so far. I was able |
15 |
>> >> to correct them (force reallocation) using hdparm... So it should be |
16 |
>> >> "fixed", and I'm reading that this is "normal" with newer drives and |
17 |
>> >> "don't worry about it", but I'm still coming from the time when 1 bad |
18 |
>> >> sector = red alert, replace the drive ASAP. I guess I will need to |
19 |
>> >> monitor and see if it gets worse. |
20 |
>> > |
21 |
>> > Way back when in the bad old days of drives measured in 100s of megs, |
22 |
>> > you'd get a few bad sectors now and then, and would have to mark them |
23 |
>> as |
24 |
>> > faulty. This didn't bother us then much |
25 |
>> > |
26 |
>> > Nowadays we have drives that are 8,000 bigger than that so all other |
27 |
>> > things being equal we'd expect sectors to fail 8,000 time more (more |
28 |
>> > being a very fuzzy concept, and I know full well I'm using it loosely |
29 |
>> :-) |
30 |
>> > ) |
31 |
>> > |
32 |
>> > Our drives nowadays also have smart firmware, something we had to |
33 |
>> > introduce when CHS no longer cut it, this lead to sector failures |
34 |
>> being |
35 |
>> > somewhat "invisible" leaving us with the happy delusion that drives |
36 |
>> were |
37 |
>> > vastly reliable etc etc etc. But you know all this. |
38 |
>> > |
39 |
>> > A mere few dozen failures in the first 100 hours is a failure rate of |
40 |
>> > (Alan whips out the trust sci calculator) 4.8E-6%. Pretty damn |
41 |
>> > spectacular if you ask me and WELL within probabilities. |
42 |
>> > |
43 |
>> > There is likely nothing wrong with your drives. If they are faulty, |
44 |
>> it's |
45 |
>> > highly likely a systemic manufacturing fault of the mechanicals (servo |
46 |
>> > systems, motor bearing etc) |
47 |
>> > |
48 |
>> > You do realize that modern hard drives have for the longest time been |
49 |
>> up |
50 |
>> > there in the Top X list of Most Reliable Devices Made By Mankind Ever? |
51 |
>> |
52 |
>> An update: the Seagate drives have both continued to spit more |
53 |
>> unrecoverable errors and find more and more bad sectors. Including |
54 |
>> some end-to-end errors indicated as critical "FAILING NOW" status in |
55 |
>> SMART. From what I have read that error means the drive's internal |
56 |
>> cache did not match the data written to disk, which seems like a |
57 |
>> serious flaw. The threshold is 1 which means if it happens at all, the |
58 |
>> drive should be replaced. It has happened half a dozen times on each |
59 |
>> disk so far (but not at the exact same time, so I don't think it is a |
60 |
>> host controller problem -- and other disks on the same controller and |
61 |
>> cable have had no issues). They have also been disconnecting and |
62 |
>> resetting randomly, sometimes requiring me to pull the drive and |
63 |
>> reinsert it into the enclosure to make it reappear. It happens even |
64 |
>> after I disabled APM, so I know it isn't a spin-down/idle timeout |
65 |
>> thing. Temperatures are actually very good (low 30's) so they are not |
66 |
>> overheating. |
67 |
>> |
68 |
>> I think I will try to trade them in to Seagate for a new pair under |
69 |
>> warranty replacement. And then probably try to sell the replacements |
70 |
>> and be rid of them. |
71 |
>> |
72 |
>> Meanwhile, during that experiment, I bought 2 brand new Western |
73 |
>> Digital Red 3TB drives last week. No problems in SMART testing or |
74 |
>> creating LVM/RAID/Filesystems. I have now been running the destructive |
75 |
>> write/read badblocks tests for 24+ hours and they have been perfect so |
76 |
>> far, exactly 0 errors. They are more expensive (3TB for the same price |
77 |
>> as the 4TB seagate) and slightly slower read/write speed (150MB/sec |
78 |
>> peak vs 170MB/sec peak), but I value reliability over all other |
79 |
>> factors. |
80 |
>> |
81 |
>> These Seagate drives must have some kind of manufacturing defect, or |
82 |
>> perhaps were damaged in shipping... UPS have been known to treat |
83 |
>> packages like a football! |
84 |
> |
85 |
> I've been watching this thread with interest, because I've been trying to |
86 |
> find |
87 |
> out which HDD I should be buying for a new PC. For every person reporting |
88 |
> problematic Seagates there's another person complaining about Western |
89 |
> Digital |
90 |
> being too noisy, failing, or in the case of the black versions, far too |
91 |
> expensive. |
92 |
> |
93 |
> Amidst all the anecdotal aphorisms against one or the other manufacturer, |
94 |
> I |
95 |
> saw mentioned that the likelihood of failure doubles up when you go from |
96 |
> 1TB |
97 |
> to 2 TB. If true, I guess that the 3TB would have fewer failures than 4TB |
98 |
> drive. |
99 |
> |
100 |
> For what it's worth I have had a number of Seagates failing on me, but |
101 |
> since |
102 |
> this was in the 90's. On my laptop a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 |
103 |
> (ST9500420ASG) |
104 |
> is running fine for the last 3.5 years so, I was thinking of taking a punt |
105 |
> on |
106 |
> a 'Seagate Barracuda 3.5 inch 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB 6GB/S Internal SATA'. But |
107 |
> what you're mentioning here gives me cause to pause. |
108 |
|
109 |
I usually tend to avoid comments about one brand or the other. |
110 |
Due to some bad experiences in the past with some brands, and not many |
111 |
issues with WD (only 1 dodgy drive, more details further in this email) in |
112 |
the past couple of years, I use mainly WD-drives. |
113 |
|
114 |
I currently have quite a few WD RED 3TB drives in use and these are quite |
115 |
reliable. Even in a not-so-optimal climate. (Gets really hot where they |
116 |
are, room temperature has been above 30C for the past several days) |
117 |
|
118 |
In the previous location (yes, moved the server), there were more 30C+ |
119 |
days and the old servercase got kicked a few times by accident. This lead |
120 |
to 1 WD green (1.5TB) out of 6 to end up being unreliable to the point |
121 |
where this drive is as reliable as a car with water in the fueltank... |
122 |
|
123 |
I also found the REDs to be a little more expensive then "regular" drives |
124 |
and a lot cheaper then the Raid Edition drives. |
125 |
|
126 |
-- |
127 |
Joost |