Drive purchasing strategies

[Chugiak]

Good day all!

 

I'm contemplating my first build and find myself dismayed at the level of quality coming from existing HDD manufacturers.  Reading online comments it seems all manufacturers have cut back on quality control and you are playing a version of Russian roulette when you buy a drive 2TB or larger.

 

I've gleaned from this forum a few techniques people use to get around the quality lotto issue:

 

1) Don't buy all the same model at the same time so as to avoid getting many disks from the same manufacturing batch.

 

2) Preclear a new drive two or three times before putting it into production.  This is likely to highlight defects in a drive and you want to know sooner rather than later if you'll need to RMA.

 

Given that, does anyone have strategies for how they purchase drives?  I'm including the RMA process in this too.  It's been a while since I've done any significant buys and builds and haven't had to do an RMA with Newegg, my preferred vendor, in several years.  Anyone have RMA experiences that drive the HDD purchasing strategy? (eh, sorry about the pun)

[marcusone]

If you need several I would buy from a trusted local store if possible. RMA exchanges/returns wih online retailers can be a pain (and costly in return shipping fees)

 

Sent from my SGH-I727R using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[whiteatom]

Not with newegg though. I have nothing but positive comments about newegg's rma process... They'll pay for the return shipping if you ask, they'll cross-ship (if your willing to leave a CC number), and they'll accept pretty much anything back.

 

I took all my old USB drives and put the disks (a mix of 5 1 and 2 tb drives) in my unraid server when I started, now I'm on a rotation... I buy whatever 2 TB drive is on sale at newegg.ca about every - 2 months. A year later, I now have a sizeable array and all but 1 of my 1Tb drives have been replaced.

 

Also I double preclear, and I have caught 2 bad drives before install (yes, that is 33%), one hitachi, and one Samsung.

 

Cheers,

 

Whiteatom

[BobPhoenix]

Not with newegg though. I have nothing but positive comments about newegg's rma process... They'll pay for the return shipping if you ask, they'll cross-ship (if your willing to leave a CC number), and they'll accept pretty much anything back.

 

I took all my old USB drives and put the disks (a mix of 5 1 and 2 tb drives) in my unraid server when I started, now I'm on a rotation... I buy whatever 2 TB drive is on sale at newegg.ca about every - 2 months. A year later, I now have a sizeable array and all but 1 of my 1Tb drives have been replaced.

 

Also I double preclear, and I have caught 2 bad drives before install (yes, that is 33%), one hitachi, and one Samsung.

 

Cheers,

 

Whiteatom

I agree mostly with your Newegg policy except I went through 3 attempts to get a good couple of drives from them (this was before I knew I could ask for a free shipping label I might add) before I just went directly to WD.  I had purchased 2 green WD drives.  One was DOA other died somewhere in middle of 3 cycle preclear.  Returned DOA right away other one after it failed and this separation of shipping continued through the exchange with Newegg.  Replacement drives were DOA that Newegg sent me.  Sent each of the RMA drives back back a 2nd time and got 2 more DOA drives.  So then just went through WD directly and the RMAs were working correctly the first time even after 3 cycle preclear.  I did have a different WD RMA drive go bad as well but it made it through 3 preclears with no problems first.  After such bad experiences with WD I started using Hitachi drives. Now have some Seagates as well.  The only real problem I have with Newegg is that I wish they could have tested the drives first since they got a bad batch of them from WD.  The original drives were the best (if you can call 1 DOA and another dieing in preclear best) and they came from TN the rest came from CA location.  By the time this was all done I spent over the price of one drive just on shipping.

[WeeboTech]

The preclear script is good, but if you really want to exercise your drive.

 

Do the badblocks test in write mode.

 

It does a 4 pass write/read on the drive using different patterns.

It's very obvious if there are errors as it will display it clearly.

 

Check the smart report after it.

look for pending sectors and a significant amount of reallocated sectors.

 

The preclear script is a good tool. Use it after the badblocks test and you will have a very high level of confidence of drive reliability.

 

The current preclear script only writes 0x00s to the drive.

 

The badblocks test writes 0x55, 0xaa, 0xff, then 0x00 you end up exercising all sectors with 1's and 0's to be sure there isn't an alignment problem.  By the ending pass of the badblocks run, if sectors can be repaired, they would have been or would have been reallocated.

 

hopefully one day we'll be able to merge the use of both tools into one.

 

I had some questionable drives at one point and after badblocks, all bad blocks had been reassigned and the drive passed all tests thereafter.

 

My new procedure for new drives is

 

smart -t long

capture smart log.

badblocks 4 pass write.

capture smart log

smart -t long

capture smart log

preclear shell.

 

I really can't afford to be down. So I always have a pre cleared drive ready just in case.

My process takes about a day on a 750gb drive and about a 5-6 days on a 2TB drive.

[Chugiak]

Thanks for the comments.  My one RMA with Newegg was painless.  So long ago I can't even recall what it was for.  I just remember thinking "This is the way to treat a customer."  Been using them ever since.

 

Kinda sucks up here in Alaska, not much in the way of a computer store I can trust.  I do make use of BestBuy when stuff is on sale or I don't want to pay shipping on bulky items.  The free ground shipping you can get with some vendors doesn't usually apply for shipping to Alaska.  I know, first-world problem.

 

 

 

 

 

[neilt0]

But you all fly everywhere in your own seaplanes and get to eat free salmon and wear bearskins and stuff.

 

We know, we've all seen Northern Exposure and Yukon Men. And Sarah Palin.

 

[Influencer]

I did not know I could ask for a shipping label. Hmm....

 

I've always had good experiences with newegg, only issue I've ever had was one stick of ram was bad, went through the rma and never looked back.

[seanant]

This is a excellent quick read.

 

http://pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Western-Digital-Red-3TB-SATA-SOHO-NAS-Drive-Full-Review

[whiteatom]

I can't seem to get a straight answer on whether unraid will benefit from TLER. My thought is no... Because there is no raid controller. Does anyone know the absolute answer to this?

 

Whiteatom

[Chugiak]

I continue to move slowly but with some forward motion toward my first unRAID build.  I'm watching HDD prices drop bit by bit and have reached the following conclusions and decisions for my HDD purchasing strategy.

 

1) Warranty period matters.  Given the apparent drop in overall manufacturer quality control I can anticipate having to have some number of drives replaced/serviced under warranty.

 

2) DOA drives aren't generally a problem.  Thus any drive defects are more likely going to occur beyond the retail vendor's return period.  Vendor RMA reputation won't be a primary consideration.

 

3) Some drives just suck.  There are several models that have high reported numbers of DOA or other defects reported by users at Newegg, etc.  Avoiding those will keep 2) relevant.

 

4) Western Digital Red drives are worth a premium.  The three year warranty as well as features designed for use in an array should yield longer functional life for drives and longer effective life if replaced under warranty.  With drive prices dropping, the Red premium is starting to become more acceptable.

 

Given these points, I've decided to purchase WD Red drives and will primarily shop on price.  This strategy is akin to the pirate code, more of a guideline than a rule.  As I said I'm moving slowly on my build and probably won't be buying drives in multiples until Black Friday, which could result in all of this carefully considered analysis being thrown out the window.

 

I welcome any experiences (or opinion) anyone wants to share regarding my points above.  Also, NCIX is looking to give Newegg some competition when it comes to price and availability.  Any pro or con experiences with NCIX?

 

BTW, my 880GM-LE FX motherboard should be arriving today and I'll start assembling the goodies.  Yay!

[TheDragon]

Am in a similar position to you and came to the same conclusion re hard drives!

 

Have my first 3TB Red drive pre clearing at the moment.

 

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S2 using Tapatalk 2

 

[korith]

I share your frustration on buying/selecting drives. The price and the warranty period is two things I'm looking at for sure. Used to stick with seagate because of the 5 year warranty when replacing drives, but that's a thing of the past now. A one year warranty is really not enough. The past few times I've had to buy drives gone with hgst deskstar drives, 3 year warranty. They were around the same price range as the seagate and wd drives. Take a look at the various credit cards you have, depending on the type of card you have from the credit card company, some will automatically extend your warranty an extra year on purchase of electronics. The amex card I have does this. Also I try to buy locally when I can, less of a hassle than mailing packages back and forth for rma.

[Influencer]

Reading online comments it seems all manufacturers have cut back on quality control and you are playing a version of Russian roulette when you buy a drive 2TB or larger.

 

I think the cutting of warranties is a culmination of many factors. I do think it is partially because of the flood situation, they tasted blood and liked it. If you look at the history of harddrives, they are growing at breakneck speed. The first 500GB drive was released in 2005, first 750GB drive in 2006, 1TB in 2007, 1.5 in 2008, 2TB in 2009, 3TB in 2010, 4 TB in 2011(albeit barely).

 

Seagate released in 2006 a projection saying they expected 3TB drives in 2010, which they were correct. They also project 12TB drives by 2014 which I'm not sure about, but anythings possible.

 

As many people on here have found, when they RMA a drive towards the end of its warranty, they often get a larger drive back due to the quick increase in sizes the manufacturer doesn't have any of the smaller drives to send. This affects their bottom dollar, even if just slightly. I think this is a factor as well.

 

I also think there is some truth in the press releases a year ago where WD and seagate announced the warranty reductions. I do believe they did it to move money from the "warranty fund" to their "science" department. It is a race right now between the companies, who can release the bigger drive. They recognize they are slowly but surely losing the standard boot drive war. As prices drop for SSD's, its not a stretch to see companies like HP to start using SSD drives as their boot drives. Especially in laptop and netbook applications. Add that to the people who are opting for tablets over laptops, they have serious competition now!

 

Failure rates aren't that bad. For instance in 2010(two years after release), the average failure rate of 1 TB drives was at 2.79%, which while that isn't GREAT, its not horrible. From trends it appears there is a ~1 year teething period for new larger capacity drives. Each new larger capacity has upwards of 7-8% failure rates for a year after its release(for instance, 2 TB drives were released in 2009, the failure rate for 2010 was an average of 5.47%, in 2011 the failure rate was down to 3.87%.)

 

 

 

Anywho, like I said, I don't think its solely because of worse quality control standards, but the sum of many different factors.

[Chugiak]

Influencer,

 

You raise a lot of points that I hadn't in my earlier comment, mostly due to ignorance on my part.  While I don't know all the factors driving the changes I perceive in consumer hard drives, I do see significant changes and the whole point of my post was to get a handle on how best to adapt to these changes.  In my personal experience I have never had a hard drive fail within its warranty period.  These things just kept on running.  Now as I look to invest in many new drives it gives me a knot in my stomach when I see reviews such as these where 25% of evaluators give it the lowest rating :

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136891&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&PageSize=10&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&IsFeedbackTab=true#scrollFullInfo

 

It was easy when all I had to do to get a good HDD was to not buy a Deathstar.  Now it seems there are no standout brands for quality and no simple purchasing decisions.

 

Your comment about replacement of drives near the end of a warranty period offers me some solace in opting for the red drives with the three year warranty.  While I don't expect or plan to have a drive fail, the longer warranty period does have that little bit of a potential bonus.

 

I'm giving myself some feedback on my mobo, CPU and RAM purchase.  On a lark I bought my 880GM-LE FX, Sempron 145 Sargas, and 8 GB DDR3 from Amazon, as they do offer free shipping to Alaska on some purchases.  Just checked my email and the mobo isn't expected until Nov 6, some 24 days after placing the order.  That bites and really takes the fun out of Amazon's free shipping.  I may as well go with the tried and true and just quit whining about shipping. :-)

[fogducker]

Influencer,

 

I would be grateful if you could reference the data sources you used regarding hard drive failure rates.

 

Thanks,

 

PS  I'm a big fan of "Use the source, Luke"

[Influencer]

About an hour ago, I would of been happy to comply. I had left the tabs open all night, but just closed them. I'll see if I can dig them out of the history.

[Influencer]

Here's a few, I've lost others in a mound of history links.

 

A study on hardware failure rates(focusing on HDD's):

http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/ftp/Failure/CMU-PDL-06-111.pdf

 

Seagates forecast for HDD's:

http://www.idema.org/wp-content/downloads/1550.pdf

 

Here's one on the return rates(I can't find the link to the original source):

http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-6/components-returns-rates-5.html

 

Here is a forum post with translated results, including a link to the original french source:

http://forums.storagereview.com/index.php/topic/29329-ssd-failure-rates-compared-to-hard-drives/

 

Link about warranty decrease and official response as to why:

http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_and_seagate_cut_hard_drive_warranty_lengths

 

I'll add more if I find them. I was looking up sources on my phone before I got home, so I've lost those sources. I wanted to provide accurate details so I made sure to have sources, didn't think to add,

 

 

[Chugiak]

Thanks for those links!

 

The BEHardware.com report is pretty fascinating.  Would love to see something more recent.

 

/* wishes for access to Amazon and Newegg RMA databases */

 

 

[Influencer]

As would I, but I suspect those cards are played a bit closer to the chest.

 

Without good records we are forced to go with reviews such as the link posted for newegg reviews of the wd 2tb drive. But with this it is important to remember its much more common to receive negative feedback than positive.

[fogducker]

Dear Influencer.

 

FWIW there is an updated article [in French] dated 25/10/2012 by the same Marc Prieur here:

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/881-1/taux-retour-composants-7.html

 

Those links are very interesting and useful.  However, most such statistics are like a bikini: What they reveal is interesting; what they conceal, essential. :-)

 

Merci beaucoup pour votre gentillesse,

 

 

 

 

[Influencer]

Very true! But without resources to dig into what isn't shown, I have to make due with what I'm given! Although I would like to see what Western Digitals reply would be if I asked them to take their proverbial bikini off.

[atom]

So guys i'm in the market for 3 3TB drives. My preferred retailer is Amazon. How do you guys suggest I go about ordering these? I prefer just to order all 3 at once, but from reading i'm seeing this is not a good idea?

[seanant]

Which brand drives?  Buget?

[atom]

Which brand drives?  Buget?

 

I just pulled the trigger on 3 WD greens but was considering the reds too. Thoughts?