Storage forum: Are today's new computer hard drives just simply junk?

very helpful info from an insider...;)
Actually I know Apple always get the best deals from the hardware makers, so I'm keep checking those Apple hardware crack open articles to see what parts they use (like those SSD from Samsung/Toshiba)
And the capacity point is quite true. I won't buy the latest and biggest drive (those 3TB/4TB drives) and waiting the technology to become more mature. They are probably testing the reliability of those drives from customers feedback.

Thanks for the video and the article. Cleared up a few questions....Digger

Check it out ... participate .... see my post. Take your best stab at a drive, then mirror it.

Does the alleged inferiority of hard drives in desktop PCs also apply to those in laptops, or are laptops as reliable as in past because they have to withstand G-forces of portability??

Not too sure how you send it when I am not supposed to provide my email address?
Sydney

It was news to me that hard drives are getting to be less reliable, and frightening. I have a couple of 1TB drives upon which I store family videos that are transferred from the flash drive in my camera. How do I get the benefit of the author's experience if I cannot let him/her have my email address? Kibobella

I think there are a couple of factors at work that are resulting in a perceived increase in failure rate.

Mobility
First, more people are using laptops and other mobile devices instead of desktops. Hard disk drives are mechanical devices. The platters spin very fast (typically 5400 or 7200 rpm), and they have very small arms that sweep a transducer across the surface of each spinning platter, at a distance of just a few microns above the platter surface. If the transducer makes contact with the surface, game over. That platter may very well be rendered useless. Think about that the next time you set your laptop down on a desk. If the HDD is off during an impact, then the risk is much reduced and relates primarily to damage to the bearing that holds the platters. Impact durability for HDDs is measured in G forces, and is typically just a few for an operating device, but far more for a deactivated one.

If you want to avoid this, use a solid-state drive (SSD) with no moving parts, instead of a hard disk drive (HDD) with lots of moving parts. I have recently replaced the included HDD with a SSD on every laptop owned by a member of my family, and every family member has also experienced a HDD failure on their laptop. For insight into SSD quality, visit newegg.com and read the reviews. Some SSDs - particularly older models - suffered a variety of firmware bugs that could cause devices to fail.

Unrecoverable Bit error rate
Let's say that the unrecoverable bit-error rate for HDDs has remained constant at 1:10^14 for the past 20 years. At the same time, the amount of storage space on a HDD has grown from ~40 MB back in 1990 to as much as 4 TB today. That is a capacity growth of 5 orders of magnitude! The likelihood that a bit will be read incorrectly is roughly the same as it was 20 years ago, but we are storing and retrieving 100,000 times as many bits. So yes, unrecoverable bit errors will be that many times more frequent (assuming data access rates scale linearly with storage capacity). In most cases, these types of errors will result in a damaged or lost file or set of files, or a corrupted directory, or similar localized problems. But if the problem occurs in certain essential parts of the disk such as the boot partition, the O/S kernel program files, or O/S configuration data files (such as the Windows registry), the problem can cause the O/S not to boot.

On HDD quality
Again, the reviews at newegg.com, tigerdirect.com and similar sites are your friends. In particular, pay attention to reviews that have longer time-of-ownership. The manufacturers of bare HDDs are 3:
Western Digital: also now owns Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST). Hitachi previously bought out IBM's Deskstar and Travelstar technologies.
Seagate Technology: also now owns Maxtor and Samsung Storage Technologies
Toshiba

All other HDD devices are simply cases or containers constructed around bare HDDs manufactured by one of these three manufacturers. Indeed, if you crack open a case from Lacie, HP, or whomever, you will find HDDs inside it with labels from one of these three. So you won't get better reliability for the bare HDD from any of them.

Each vendor makes a variety of drives targeting various purposes. Enterprise drives are typically designed to withstand the heat, vibrations and usage model present in server environments. Laptop drives are designed for better G-shock resilience, to a point. For this reason, you may be better off purchasing a laptop drive such as a WD scorpio black, than a 2.5" enterprise drive that you try to stuff into a laptop.

Hard Drives are like lightbulbs
Every hard disk drive is doomed to failure. It is not a question of if, but simply a matter of when. If you think of HDDs as being like light bulbs that you need to replace from time to time, you will be much better off. Because you know you will need to replace them, you will force yourself to make frequent backups of any valuable data that is stored on them. You can purchase more expensive HDDs designed to last longer - just like you can purchase more expensive compact-fluorescent lightbulbs. But those too fail eventually, so all you are doing is reducing the amount of maintenance work you need to do; you are not eliminating it completely. The logical course of action that flows from this realization is that you should store as little as possible on local HDDs and SDDs (which also fail eventually), and rely upon centralized servers and other external media to store more permanent copies of your valuable data. Those servers might be cheap backup devices that sit somewhere in your house, or they might be accessed through a cloud service, or they might be some combination of cloud, USB-attached devices, and Home Servers (such as WHS). They could even be libraries of DVDs and BR discs that you store in a fireproof offsite location. You need to decide what backup solution is right for you and your needs. But if you don't have a solution in place, then your data will metaphorically end up in the dark.

When people replace drives internally, they need to worry a lot about heat. Clogged vents and fans not running properly could cause heat issues. There are also power issues when people start adding things into a box without doing some calculations and/or research. When you get external drives, the effect of having other components is really minimalized unless you are adding 10,000 or 15,000 RPM drives that have a high heat output. Cheaper drives should work pretty good.

Tough question for sure. I have definitely noticed the difference in reliability as well.

I have found that if a model has its own power supply, it tends to survive better than those that simply run off the power of a USB connection.

I have one good quality hard drive for data backup and tend to keep smaller capacity, dirt-cheap ones around for day to day file transmission.

Though I actually think the days of recommending those cheap ones are numbered. Gmail is constantly upping the limit on the file size of attachments-- so what's the point? You can just send yourself an email. There's an article about cloud computing at Technology chronicle that talks about how the use of mobile phones, ipads, etc is changing the way we access data storage. So I'm thinking, aside from backing up large amounts of essential financial or irreplaceable information, what's the point of recommending hard drives at all? The cloud is starting to dominate that whole market.

Hard drives and USB sticks will soon be gone. They're getting replaced faster than cds and dvds! I understand that for design and audio/visual projects, hard drives might still be the way to go but in the medium term, I think they're going to get phased out.
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Like you I was stunned to see someone suggest that the cloud would replace hard drives. Anyone who thinks that should try uploading a full system backup to a cloud service. I know a lot of folks don't do full system backups, but they're living on borrowed time until they have a rude awakening when their system won't boot. I tried uploading a few hundred megabytes to a cloud service and it took forever. My full system backups are approx 50 GB. I have a fast cable connection, but downloading a 3 GB ISO file takes about 20 minutes, and uploads are much, much slower. I backed up 14 GB using wireless-N to a local hard drive and it took 80 minutes. That backup would be much much slower going to the cloud.
In addition to security and speed problems, there's reliability to consider. A number of cloud providers have gone out of business. Then there's cost. If I were to put 50-60 GB of data in the cloud, I'd pay a pretty good monthly fee whereas my 2 TB local backup disk is paid for with no monthly fees. These drives cost less than $150 these days.
I believe anyone who thinks the cloud is going to replace hard drives in the foreseeable future has spent too much time in the clouds breathing rarefied air!

... I see you started with computers in 1966. I started in 1963 after 6 years in college. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised at what people say any more, especially young folks and politicians. I see in your bio where you say you're still pretty technically with it, but struggling to keep up with technology. Boy does that ever fit me. I know Windows very well (and of course the ancient mainframes), but being retired I've had no use for cell phones (I guess that makes me a dinosaur ). Recently though, my wife decided to buy one to take pictures with (don't ask me what's wrong with a digital camera she has because I have no idea). Turns out that the cell phone she got can only send pictures via email (you can't get them via USB connection), and it doesn't support WiFi (it's an LG Revere). What a helluva education I'm getting! It does support bluetooth, so now I've got to get up to get up to speed on bluetooth. Yuck!

OK, a little over the top but here's a rather famous person with a view on that.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57486930-71/woz-the-cloud-is-a-nightmare/

Your choice of dreams. Make them good ones.
Bob