[Discuss] The perpetual question: current "best" HDD?

[dsr at randomstring.org (Dan Ritter)]

On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 02:20:40PM -0500, Daniel Feenberg wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, 8 Jan 2013, Dan Ritter wrote:
> 
> >On Tue, Jan 08, 2013 at 11:17:11AM -0500, Derek Atkins wrote:
> >>Of course, when I bought the drives warranties were 3 or 5 years, not
> >>the '1 or 2' years they are now.  So I'm looking for the "best value"
> >>2TB drives available today -- lowest price for highest quality + good
> >>warranty.  It looks like I can pretty much only choose between WD and
> >>Seagate nowadays -- I guess lots of consolidation in the market?  (My
> >>existing drives were Hitachi, which in my experience were always great
> >>drives).
> >>
> >>What's the current going theories and best practices?  Any concrete
> >>suggestions (links to NewEgg or some other vendor would be appreciated).
> >
> >
> >Don't buy "green" drives or anything that doesn't explicitly say
> >7200RPM.
> 
> Why? We have had good luck with WD Green 3TB drives for bulk storage
> and backup - no failures in a score of drives. I have a theory that
> they will last 72/54 times the life of a 7200RPM drive.
> 
> We don't use them for Windows desktops - Linux and FreeBSD servers only.

I have an inordinately high failure rate with WD Green in the 1 and 2
TB sizes. About 70% were replaced in their first year, about 50% have
been replaced a second time. All were in Linux boxes.


> reduced error probabilities. But if the only difference is
> correcting bugs in the firmware, it seems unlikely that the vendor
> would only correct the firmware in models that constitute a tiny
> percentage of sales. So I think there are other differences, and the
> firmware differences are probably not significant.

I expect you are correct. Higher QA standards? Tighter
tolerances in the engineering? Using better specified parts at a
higher cost? Probably all of the above.

-dsr-