Backblaze - Vendor Drive Stats for 2015 Report

[sfx2000]

Looks like Seagate has worked thru their issues... remember, WD had some issues a while back as well..

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q4-2015/

 

[ColinTaylor]

Interesting stuff. Although it's a bit unfair to summarise the manufacturers in such a simplistic way. They are using a fairly limited range of drives (albeit in large numbers) which aren't necessarily the ones you or I will be buying. Still, it's good to know.

 

[stevech]

Those stats are about statistically invalid, I say. Small numbers.
Need failures per 100,000 or per million.
And exclude the many "no trouble found" on RMA'd drives.

Didn't WD acquire HGST?

 

[ColinTaylor]

Didn't WD acquire HGST?

Yeah. And Seagate bought Samsung's HDD business. That's why it's more important to look at the figures broken down by model number rather than manufacturer.

It's good that they make all the data available to the public. So if someone wants to create a really big spreadsheet...

 

[RMerlin]

Interesting stuff. Although it's a bit unfair to summarise the manufacturers in such a simplistic way. They are using a fairly limited range of drives (albeit in large numbers) which aren't necessarily the ones you or I will be buying. Still, it's good to know.

And also they use some of these models in usage scenarios they aren't designed for, but it's still always interesting to see. The one tendency that strikes me there is the constant low failure rate of HGST. A far cry from the days of the Deathstars (I had three die on me back in the day, one after only three days).

 

[stevech]

And Seagate bought Samsung's HDD business.

does that include SSDs?

 

[ColinTaylor]

does that include SSDs?

According to Wikipedia, apparently not. And we know that Wiki is never wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solid-state_drive_manufacturers

 

[L&LD]

Those stats are about statistically invalid, I say. Small numbers.
Need failures per 100,000 or per million.
And exclude the many "no trouble found" on RMA'd drives.

Didn't WD acquire HGST?

These numbers are huge and correlate well to the real world of what I have experience with all the drives noted in the graph (except WD was switched with Seagate in my much earlier experiences with hdd's).

I have found that any 'sample size' over 20 is large enough to accurately predict a trend. Not show differences of a few 10ths of a percent, but something like what the graph shows. HGST being the superior hdd for reliability above all others.

 

[htismaqe]

And also they use some of these models in usage scenarios they aren't designed for, but it's still always interesting to see. The one tendency that strikes me there is the constant low failure rate of HGST. A far cry from the days of the Deathstars (I had three die on me back in the day, one after only three days).

I only use HGST drives now. Best price, best overall quality. Yes, WD bought them, however they operate separately.

 

[avtella]

I had 3 120 GB WD's fail on me in the early 2000's within months of each other, one within a week and others I know also learned to avoid WD for a while, their cross shipping and support service was great though lol. WD seems to have improved from those days. HGST does seem to have better reliability, interestingly it was once IBM's HDD division before moving to Hitachi and now WD.

Seagate seems to be comparatively less reliable now than it once was... My father did consulting for Seagate in the early 2000's via a consulting firm and around that time IBM consultants convinced Seagate to cut down on backed testing significantly as they predicted even with higher return rates the cost savings would be worth it.... They should have thought about brand image as well in my opinion.

For SSD's Crucial aka Micron seems to have the best bang for the buck and pretty good reliability. Samsung's PRO is good but seems overpriced. I believe Micron/Intel work jointly on NAND Flash production and Toshiba/Sandisk work together as well.

 

[RMerlin]

For SSD's Crucial aka Micron seems to have the best bang for the buck and pretty good reliability. Samsung's PRO is good but seems overpriced. I believe Micron/Intel work jointly on NAND Flash production and Toshiba/Sandisk work together as well.

Samsung's EVO line is a very good alternative to their Pro line, with minimal performance difference (the bottleneck being mostly the SATA bus at this point), for a much better pricing.

 

[sfx2000]

Samsung's EVO line is a very good alternative to their Pro line, with minimal performance difference (the bottleneck being mostly the SATA bus at this point), for a much better pricing.

the 840 EVO had some firmware issues - but the 850 EVO is an excellent performer, and on-sale often, both on-line and big-box stores... I've got a couple of EVO's at the house, and an 840Pro in my MacBook Pro - all good performers...

Crucial's SSD's are very good, as are SanDisk...

 

[stevech]

I've put a lot of hours (like 12/7 for 2 yr) on Samsung EVOs.. 64GB then 240GB and now 500GB. In more than one computer. Zero problems.

 

[RMerlin]

the 840 EVO had some firmware issues - but the 850 EVO is an excellent performer, and on-sale often, both on-line and big-box stores... I've got a couple of EVO's at the house, and an 840Pro in my MacBook Pro - all good performers...

Crucial's SSD's are very good, as are SanDisk...

The 840 EVO firmware issue was fixed a long time ago. I've sold a few 840 EVOs, never had any issue. They're mostly used in engineers and architects workstations.

Got a 840 Pro in my desktop as well (in addition to a pair of older OCZ Agility 3 in RAID 0 containing my development VM - I had a spare one when I replaced my laptop, so I figured I might as well RAID it with the desktop's secondary Agility 3... Compensates a bit for the fact these are SATA 3G only devices )

I expect to upgrade my desktop once Intel launches their next platform. At that point I will most likely move to an M.2 SSD, move the Samsung 840 to host my VMs, and find something creative to do with the two Agility drives Possibly just recycle them in my desktop at work.

 

[RMerlin]

I'd be curious to see some reliable statistical data on SSD reliability. So far I've only seen some anecdotal feedback, which does not always match my own personal experiences. For instance a lot of people swore off OCZ/Sandforce SSDs, while out of the 6-8 OCZ that came through my hands (both personally and for customers), I've only seen one single failure, and it was a newer, non-Sandforce SSD.

I've personally owned a Vertex 2 (gave it to a friend) and three Agility 3 (one in my desktop, one in my former HTPC and is now in my desktop, and one in my previous laptop which was resold to a customer last summer).

 

[sfx2000]

SSD's, for the most part, have proven to be decently reliable - the aforementioned Samsung 840EVO issue, and a couple of Sandforce firmware upgrade issues not withstanding... Apple had a firmware issue with certain Toshiba SSD's that could have resulted in data loss (Sandforce controller at play here as well)...

Like anything, sometimes one will get fail upon first usage...

Just to share some insight, check out TechReport's SSD death march - some faired better than others, but all did pretty well considering the stress the team put on the drives...

http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

 

[sfx2000]

Back to SSD's - there was that tempest in a tea cup a while back about certain vendors and trim implementation - which ended up being a Linux kernel bug and not the actual drives themselves...

https://blog.algolia.com/when-solid-state-drives-are-not-that-solid/