DRIVE FAILURE RATES BETWEEN MANUFACTURERS

Hard Disk Failure Rate between the manufacturers. Had a HDD fail what brand was it?

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LASTOLITE

LASTOLITE

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Bill
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Yes
Ive just had a HDD failure, the very first in a long time and its was 4 years old so well past its 2 years warranty. Going back to the supplier I had a conversation about failure rates between the manufacturers, when I asked what their data was they said they had it but were not able to make it public. pity but understandable from a retailers point of view.

If you have had a drive fail could you click on what make it was if you can remember...see if we can gauge anything. I have bought a new drive now and incidentally from the same maker but now with a 5 year warranty so we will see.
 
Backblaze....

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/2018-hard-drive-failure-rates/

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I have 4 WD 2TB Red drives in my microserver and I have had 3 fails in 4 years.
Before that I had started to believe HDD fails were almost unheard of.
All of mine were replaced under wannty but it has completely turned me off WD.
 
I had one made by Maxtor some time ago that failed. Shop sent it back and Maxtor replaced it with a larger HDD. I didn't know until then that although computers have a warranty time (1 year usually), Some hard drives may have a longer one depending on make, worth checking up on
 
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most hard drives have 5 years direct with the manufactures just use their website with the serial number
 
I think the BackBlaze results are based on server life so are not comparable to ordinary PCs.
I have NEVER had a HDD failure in over 10 years but I don't keep my backup HDDs on my computers - they are all USB3 pluggable and only plugged in when needed, many are Seagate but I also have a HDD dock so I can just plug a HDD in when necessary.
Ad of course nowadays I use SSDs in the computers.
 
I had WD green drive fail couple of years back - apparently there was a 'known issue' with WD under Linux. Also had a couple of WD laptop drives fail due to dropping, but that's different.
 
Never and I have been using PC`s daily since the 1980`s LOL
 
had a couple of maxtor drives fail back in the day and having now used WD for the last 10/12 years with no issues i tend to hang my hat on them for reliability but everyone who messes with computers has horror stories with various brands failing at some stage or other. The main issue i have had over the years has tended to be the partition table corrupting which normally leaves me with a lack of trust in the drive it happens to (most recently a samsung 2tb one) so they normally end up being reformatted and then just used as a dumping site for stuff before it goes to its permanent home on my main drives. Hitachi have an absolutely terrible reputation for drives but i bought one years ago from pc world (needed it there and then so didn't have a choice) and it is still going as the system disk in my server.
 
I have been servicing peoples pc's for the last 12 years. In that period I have seen approx 25 dead or dying hard drives. About 5 of those have been in new machines on installation/setup. Drives, on average, fail on the bathtub curve. High failures in the first 3 months, dropping to almost zero for about 6 years, then the curve rises with failures increasing rapidly. This is common across all manufacturers. (A failure is any hd falling below the specified performances parameters.)
In my expreience hd's misread or miswrite with varying speeds long before they fail completely. It usually initially gets blamed on software errors such a microsoft update. Which is understandable.
Brian
 
LaCie

Multiple failures, I’m afraid.
 
I ran a school network of around 400 desktops and 500 laptops for years and had numerous drive failures from all the brands so I wouldn't bet my money on any particular one against the others. The two things that are worth bearing in mind are a) how long is the warranty and b) how good is the warranty return process when things go wrong?

Since retiring , in the last year I have had a couple of Toshiba drive failures and I wasn't impressed with the returns process so I will be giving them a miss in future.
 
Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor, Hitachi, Toshiba and probably others I've forgotten about over the years.
 
I've had loads of drives fail over the years. Mainly Seagates but in fairness, that was also the vast majority of ones I've been using so seems a bit unfair to single them out. I've not had a WD drive fail but was not bowled over by their customer service either so not a huge fan. I've been using Toshibas more lately and Sandisk and Samsung SSD's. All seem fine so far but all hard drives are on borrowed time one way or another.
 
Years ago now but I've had two seagate drive fail completely, both between 1-2 years after I brought them (one of them about a month after the warranty expired, the other last a tiny bit longer. Since that time I've refused to have any seagate drives, and I've gone nearly 30 years without ever having another failure.
 
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We had one of our nas go proper wrong, a seagate drive failed, and 96% yes 96% into the rebuild (almost a full day) a second drive failed and killed the entire nas, turned out 3 out of the 4 drive# were on their last legs after 25,000 hrs use. Data storage and the potential drive failures are Things of nightmares......
 
Kieranstandishphoto said:
We had one of our nas go proper wrong, a seagate drive failed, and 96% yes 96% into the rebuild (almost a full day) a second drive failed and killed the entire nas, turned out 3 out of the 4 drive# were on their last legs after 25,000 hrs use. Data storage and the potential drive failures are Things of nightmares......
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it's not uncommon. raid rebuilds put a lot of read/writes on the other drives, don't necessarily think its down to age. just one of those things.
 
Thanks for voting! Keep it comming, I find the accounts of your experiences reassuring Drives just dont fail around me...haha. started to feel personal.
 
LASTOLITE said:
Thanks for voting! Keep it comming, I find the accounts of your experiences reassuring Drives just dont fail around me...haha. started to feel personal.
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nope, not just you :) we just had an external backup Seagate fail, wasn't the drive but the actual electronics, its not if, but when.
 
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Kieranstandishphoto said:
nope, not just you :) we just had an external backup Seagate fail, wasn't the drive but the actual electronics, its not if, but when.
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Under those circumstances you can still retrieve your data. If you're not aware of this let me know and I will explain.
Brian
 
Cockney said:
Under those circumstances you can still retrieve your data. If you're not aware of this let me know and I will explain.
Brian
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depends on the drive. especially the smaller 2.5" ones.

ive seen an annoying trend of soldering the USB ports directly to the controller board so you cant do the old remove it from the enclosure trick.
 
neil_g said:
depends on the drive. especially the smaller 2.5" ones.

ive seen an annoying trend of soldering the USB ports directly to the controller board so you cant do the old remove it from the enclosure trick.
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I haven't come across a soldered one. If the heads haven't actually crashed you can usually take it from the housing and put it in a usb rig. Failing that the discs can be removed and put in a doner hard drive. Cost about £500 but been worth it for a couple of my customers.
Brian
 
Cockney said:
Under those circumstances you can still retrieve your data. If you're not aware of this let me know and I will explain.
Brian
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Thanks, just took the drive out of the case and stuck it in a desktop caddy thing I have, data is fine, it just no longer have one of our external usb drive just a 5tb drive with no home :)
 
Kieranstandishphoto said:
Thanks, just took the drive out of the case and stuck it in a desktop caddy thing I have, data is fine, it just no longer have one of our external usb drive just a 5tb drive with no home :)
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If you're happy to open your pc case. You will have a spare sata socket and a spare sata power connection. (If not you can get power splitter cable) Enabling you to put the drive inside. You may need an extra sata cable. Available any pc supplier. Any probs give me a shout & I will post you one free.
Brian
 
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Cockney said:
I haven't come across a soldered one.
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The Toshiba mq01ubd??? (???=050/100/200) series drives all come with a custom designed board with a USB3 connector; makes for a compact external unit.
Had a friend pick one up and drop it while it was running.
They asked if I could fix it but...
ShockDeath.gif Big scrape on the platter.

By the looks of it, the mq01abd??? series are the same drives with SATA control boards.
 
Tori_T said:
The Toshiba mq01ubd??? (???=050/100/200) series drives all come with a custom designed board with a USB3 connector; makes for a compact external unit.
Had a friend pick one up and drop it while it was running.
They asked if I could fix it but...
View attachment 236894 Big scrape on the platter.

By the looks of it, the mq01abd??? series are the same drives with SATA control boards.
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I wasn't questioning their existance, just saying I'd never come across one yet. Thankfully.
 
Maybe, but not on those Tosh drives. The interface chips are different.
They're dedicated USB drives, not SATA with a bit soldered on. (n)
 
Tori_T said:
Maybe, but not on those Tosh drives. The interface chips are different.
They're dedicated USB drives, not SATA with a bit soldered on. (n)
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B#*t@%ds! :shifty:
 
Tori_T said:
Maybe, but not on those Tosh drives. The interface chips are different.
They're dedicated USB drives, not SATA with a bit soldered on. (n)
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The later version of the WD Passport is the same. I stripped some out to put the drives in a SATA enclosure and some don't have the SATA plug, they're just USB straight on to the drive i/f board.
 
neil_g said:
the WD MyPassport (2.5" USB3) is one. it's also one of the most common failing external drives that ive come across personally.
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The early aluminium and rubber cased ones were bombproof but the more recent plastic ones are flimsy around the USB connector. I got fed up with dodgy contacts and started to strip out the drives to use in a decent enclosure....that's the point that I discovered that some aren't built with typical SATA connectors to a daughter card and are USB directly to the drive's control card.
 
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