Thanks John. Very useful information.

Mike

It seems strange that they continue to buy Seagate even though they have the highest failure rate or shortest life. I guess it all comes down to economics and proper management. I never bought a Rolls Royce car, despite its reputed quality, because I couldn't afford it.

I did buy two 1.5 TB Seagate drives (their worst performer) a few years back. One drive started to fail within 12 months (SMART reported reallocations) and the other about a year later. I replaced them before I lost data.

My own experience pretty much corroborates their findings. I have some IBM hard drives which have been in constant service for ten years or so, obviously purchased before Hitachi bought IBM's hard drive business. Most of the advances in hard drive technology were invented by the engineers at IBM (Hitachi), it only stands to reason that they would build a superior product. I've also had stellar luck with Samsung hard drives, but those were not tested.

In all the years and all the drives I've only had one fail. I recently decided to get rid of all the old IDE drives I had in a cupboard in caddies. Despite some of them being unused for around 10 years all came up just fine.

On the other hand knowing the tight tolerances and dust intolerance of these devices I do treat them accordingly.

Optical drives are another matter entirely :(

Bob.

On a related note.

We know that disks should be run within their optimum temperature range (not too cold and not too hot). My internal disks typically run in the mid to high 30s (Celsius) range and were a bit hotter during our recent heat wave. (Monitored with Hard Disk Sentinel.) However, I was surprised when I first saw how much hotter external USB drives can be during backups or data transfers, even though they only feel warm to touch on the outside. Fans would be of little help due to the insulation provided by the packaging. What to do?

Optical drives are so cheap that I treat them as disposable, when they're used up, I toss them.

On another note, I looked into Backblaze (the cloud storage company that published the drive reliability test) and unlimited backup of data for $5/month seems like an excellent deal. I've also really enjoyed reading their blogs about the company, I'll gladly kick in $5/month/computer to help them grow their business.

Thank you for linking to that extremely valuable study. Very useful.

Ditto on the optical drives: I've never had one last more than two years, and I only burn a few hundred discs a year. Even my Plextor (back when they were still making them themselves) didn't make it much beyond eighteen months.

I gave up on internal optical drives ages ago. I was having to open up my computer case just about yearly to replace them. Now with USB2 i just buy the cheapest no-name external burner i can find and expect to toss & replace it, which only requires disconnecting USB & power and plugging the new one in.

The only one I've had luck with is WD Caviar Black. I did recently have a Seagate 5 year drive bite the dust at 4.5 years, and they sent me a new one.

All the other brands have left me data-less. Florida, with lightning and crappy electrical feed.

Thanks JC: The Truth will set you free!

Been reading and thoughtful for 30 minutes. That site has started to put some crucial, well-formed, business-based hard-won experience on what I've often found to be clouded urban mythology.

Cheers

Grazie

Very interesting reading... thanks for posting the link. I wish Google would publish similar statistics, but that will probably never happend... ;)

My experience is similar, every Seagate I have owned has failed (>6 drives). I have a buch of Samsing Spinpoint drives (about 15, both external and internal) - not a single failure so far. The oldest are soon 7 years... It seems Samsung drives ARE very well built... or then I'm also lucky... Sad that also Samsung´'s HD's were sold...

Christian

Good post, and reflects my experience. The last Seagate internal I have installed began failing this week.. WD Caviar Black seems the way to go for me these days. Since 2002 I have had 22 IBM/Hitachi drives in my various RAIDs and only lost one (at seven years old).

I'm interested in others' experiences with externals, since a lot of us rely on those for backups. I've lost 2 each of WD and Seagate over the last three years, and this was drive failure, not USB interface failure as usual. I started buying Toshiba externals a year and a half ago and haven't had a single problem.

Thanks for the posting, but same thing by a different company was posted here a couple years ago, wasn't it?

I have a couple of NEC 3550 DVD burners in my PC case that are used to burn batches of 25-50 CDs and DVDs every month or so. The upper one (the one I most frequently turn to for one-offs) began failing after about 5 years of service--it just got weaker and eventually couldn't read even a commercial DVD. Plus, after prolonged burning it would occasionally spit out "doughnut" burns where the laser intensity varied as the burn progressed. The second NEC drive has, however, run fine for all those years. I have two spare 3550 drives that I bought off eBay as future replacements.

Several of my hard drives were destroyed by a faulty power supply some years back, so they don't count. Other than that, one drive has failed, a Seagate. That's all. I keep my system on 24/7 and there are typically two hard drives inside the case in addition to the C SSD drive and another drive mounted via caddy in the front.

I have given up on spinning media, I don't burn any discs anymore, if I want to send someone files, I put them on a cheap USB stick.

My computer has two Samsung SSDs in it, one is the main drive, and the other is a backup drive that is cloned once a week from the main drive, takes but a few minutes.

I archive all projects to USB sticks, and sock them away in a caddy for safety.

I archive all projects to USB sticks, and sock them away in a caddy for safety.Has anyone seen a study similar to this Hard Drive Reliability Test, that has attempted to determine how long data will last on a USB stick or similar solid state non-volatile memory device? I would love to switch over to storing data on these devices, but since I understand a little about the technology, I am not convinced that it is likely to be readable 10-20 years from now, much less in 50 years or more.

Years ago I was able to get lots of data on accelerated aging tests done on CDs and DVDs and it convinced me that if you use good blanks and store them well, these will likely be viable for 50-100 years.

Yes, I know about some reports of CD and DVD failures after a few years, but those stories always involve bad media or bad storage techniques. And yes, I understand that a player must be available to play these discs fifty years from now, but that is true for thumb drives, hard drives, or any other digital storage medium.

So, has anyone seen an accelerated aging test for non-volatile solid state memory?

A USB stick wouldn't begin to hold my typical project, even a dozen sticks wouldn't. I still rely on hard drives for backup and archiving, plus, if I need to revisit a project, I just pop the drive in a caddy and edit directly on the drive.

+1 jc

play these discs fifty years from now

well, if anyone wants to watch something of mine in 50 years i'd be very happy - and if they do, more than likely it'll be on vimeo / youtube / internet archive....

Yes! +++1 for USB HD docking station. I use a dual dock similar this one and it works great for for backups AND archiving.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41%2BdTkTK36L._SY300_.jpg

Interesting that LaCie hard drives aren't mentioned in this comparison. I have two that are more than five years old and still going strong. The shock mounted field drives are rugged and have held up well in very harsh conditions.

Jack

LaCie does not make the hard drives they put in their enclosures so they wouldn't have qualified for the comparison test.

more than likely it'll be on vimeo / youtube / internet archive....

Interesting you mention that. Since I started keep a favorite list on Youtube vs a bookmark in my browser, ~25% of my favorites have either been deleted, user removed for some reason, privated or blocked in my country.

So, to me, it looks like the only way to read this stuff in 50 years is like it was 50 years ago: don't throw out the old Nagra deck and keep the 1930's reel to reel machine in pristine condition because you might need it later.

Everything is disposable these days, I doubt anything you hold on to will be readable in 50 years. Even a brand new computer right now might not operate in 50 years, which would be a far cry from the tech my grandpa had when he was my age.