HD capacity vs. reliability

In article <fpq64e$dbi$1@aioe.org>, nospamatall <nospamatall.DeleteThis@iol.ie>
wrote:

> Hi, I'm looking for an external HD to use as NAS, and while 750 GB in
> the same box as a 500GB looks nice, I'm just wondering if there is a
> reliability trade-off. It's really hard to get info on these kinds of
> details.

I have never seen any direct correlation between hard drive capacity and
reliability. *All* hard drives are unreliable. :) That's why you keep at
least two, and preferably more, copies of data you care about.

--
Photography, kink, polyamory, shareware, and more: all at
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html
 >> Stay informed about: HD capacity vs. reliability 

In article <fpq64e$dbi$1@aioe.org>, nospamatall <nospamatall.RemoveThis@iol.ie>
wrote:

> Hi, I'm looking for an external HD to use as NAS, and while 750 GB in
> the same box as a 500GB looks nice, I'm just wondering if there is a
> reliability trade-off. It's really hard to get info on these kinds of
> details.
>
> I'm looking mostly at the Lacie ones:
> http://www.lacie.com/ie/products/product.htm?pid=10946
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Andy

Design quality matters more than density - head tracking and
aerodynamics, firmware, vibration, bearings, temperature, and platter
coatings. Factors associated with the media density are fairly
predictable.

Usually a bad design causes large numbers of drives to fail when they're
9 to 12 months old. Buy a hard drive that has been on the market for
longer than that without problems and you should be OK.

The NAS is a whole different story. Most of them don't work so well.
The LaCie at least supports Apple File Protocol. SMB is based on Samba
and it's often buggy.

--
I don't read Google's spam. Reply with another service.
 >> Stay informed about: HD capacity vs. reliability 

Jolly Roger wrote:
> In article <fpq64e$dbi$1@aioe.org>, nospamatall <nospamatall.TakeThisOut@iol.ie>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi, I'm looking for an external HD to use as NAS, and while 750 GB in
>> the same box as a 500GB looks nice, I'm just wondering if there is a
>> reliability trade-off. It's really hard to get info on these kinds of
>> details.
>>
>> I'm looking mostly at the Lacie ones:
>> http://www.lacie.com/ie/products/product.htm?pid=10946
>>
>> Any ideas?
>
> A few things to consider right off the bat with NAS are:
>
> 1. What format file system does the NAS use?
>
> FAT32 seems to be the norm with this type of device. FAT file systems
> have many limitations of which you should be aware. For Macs, HFS is a
> better choice, for obvious reasons.
>
> 2. What service(s) does the NAS run to allow computers to connect?
>
> CIFS/SMB seems to be the norm with this type of device. That means
> you'll be living with all the limitations and problems that come with
> CIFS/SMB. For Macs, Apple File Protocol (AFP) is a better choice, for
> obvious reasons.
>
> 3. What kind of warranty does it have?
>
> You'll notice most all-in-one products, like the Lacie offerings, have
> very short warranties when compared with good-quality hard drives. For
> instance, most of Seagate's hard drives come with a five-year warranty.
> I have yet to see a Lacie internal or external hard drive with more than
> a three-year warranty. If you were to, instead, purchase the enclosure
> and the hard drive separately, you'd control the quality of the hard
> drive itself, which is important.
>
> Personally, I think you'd be better off purchasing a Firewire hard drive
> enclosure from a place like http://cooldrives.com, and purchasing a
> Seagate 750 GB hard drive (with 5-year warranty) to put inside of it,
> hooking that up to your Mac, formatting it with HFS Extended, and
> turning on File Sharing to allow other computers to access it over your
> network.
>
> I have a Mac mini in my closet hooked up to a 4-bay Firewire hard drive
> enclosure from CoolDrives with four 750 GB Seagate hard drives in it,
> for a total of 3 terabytes of network storage for my home LAN:
>
> <http://jollyroger.kicks-ass.org/jollyroger/closet-server.jpg>
>
> Here are the Seagate drives I use in the enclosure:
>
> <http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148133>
>

thanks for the info. It does look worth looking into. I'd appreciate if
you'd help me out a bit more...

The lacie I'm looking at seems to have a few advantages, not least all
the setup I would save.
http://www.lacie.com/ie/products/product.htm?pid=10946

3 yr warranty, yes, longer would be nice but 3 years would be 'good enough'.

File Server: SMB (Windows/Linux), AFP (Mac); FTP Server; HTTP for online
browsing; Multimedia server: UPnP™ A/V; Apple Bonjour

I've had a couple of drives with the D2 enclosure, it's excellent,
strong, all metal. They do seem to have a weakness in the power input
socket, but I won't be moving it around.

Doesn't say what software it's running.

Not dependent on a computer (other than what's built into it).

The main unknown thing here is the reliability of the drive. As you say,
I can't control what drive they will put into it. I have to gamble this
against not having to plug the thing into a computer to do the serving,
which would be very useful. I'm intending to get a mini as a web and
mail server, and to play with some other things like the wiki server and
possibly podcasts, so it would be possible to do it that way eventually,
but then the mini is going to have its work cut out anyway, so itwould
be good to have a file server that stays up through all the inevitable
outages while I play. It's not a mission-critical thing, but one of the
things I'm offering as an incentive to get the others on the network to
let me take over the internet connection and run a server for them
(backup mostly). It's sort of an experiment so's I will already be able
to set up the real network when I need to. If the main server goes down
I'll be able to quickly plug them back into the router and with luck
they won't even notice.

Yes I know only I can make the decision in the end, but, what's the
chance of lacie putting in a drive that's not as good as that Seagate
(it says OEM)? I might even end up with the exact same drive... it's a
shame they won't tell you!

Andy
 >> Stay informed about: HD capacity vs. reliability 

tacit wrote:
> In article <fpq64e$dbi$1@aioe.org>, nospamatall <nospamatall RemoveThis @iol.ie>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi, I'm looking for an external HD to use as NAS, and while 750 GB in
>> the same box as a 500GB looks nice, I'm just wondering if there is a
>> reliability trade-off. It's really hard to get info on these kinds of
>> details.
>
> I have never seen any direct correlation between hard drive capacity and
> reliability. *All* hard drives are unreliable. :) That's why you keep at
> least two, and preferably more, copies of data you care about.
>

I haven't seen anthing about it, it just seems to me that if you cram
more into the same space, tolerances would become more critical. But I
don't know that, it just seems to make sense.

Andy
 >> Stay informed about: HD capacity vs. reliability 

In article <fpqhrh$kd3$1@aioe.org>, nospamatall <nospamatall.DeleteThis@iol.ie>
wrote:

> thanks for the info. It does look worth looking into. I'd appreciate if
> you'd help me out a bit more...
>
> The lacie I'm looking at seems to have a few advantages, not least all
> the setup I would save.
> http://www.lacie.com/ie/products/product.htm?pid=10946
>
> 3 yr warranty, yes, longer would be nice but 3 years would be 'good enough'.
>
> File Server: SMB (Windows/Linux), AFP (Mac); FTP Server; HTTP for online
> browsing; Multimedia server: UPnP™ A/V; Apple Bonjour
>
> I've had a couple of drives with the D2 enclosure, it's excellent,
> strong, all metal. They do seem to have a weakness in the power input
> socket, but I won't be moving it around.
>
> Doesn't say what software it's running.
>
> Not dependent on a computer (other than what's built into it).

It does look promising, in that according to the user's manual, it
supports MS-DOS/FAT 32, HFS+ and Linux file system formats
(ext2/ext3/reiserfs). Not bad. If you feel a three-year warranty is
enough, then I'd say go with this one. Overall, it seems to be a good
product, at first glance.

> The main unknown thing here is the reliability of the drive. As you say,
> I can't control what drive they will put into it. I have to gamble this
> against not having to plug the thing into a computer to do the serving,
> which would be very useful. I'm intending to get a mini as a web and
> mail server, and to play with some other things like the wiki server and
> possibly podcasts, so it would be possible to do it that way eventually,
> but then the mini is going to have its work cut out anyway, so itwould
> be good to have a file server that stays up through all the inevitable
> outages while I play. It's not a mission-critical thing, but one of the
> things I'm offering as an incentive to get the others on the network to
> let me take over the internet connection and run a server for them
> (backup mostly). It's sort of an experiment so's I will already be able
> to set up the real network when I need to. If the main server goes down
> I'll be able to quickly plug them back into the router and with luck
> they won't even notice.

Yep, so if having it be stand-alone is important, I say go for the Lacie
above - it does look promising.

> Yes I know only I can make the decision in the end, but, what's the
> chance of lacie putting in a drive that's not as good as that Seagate
> (it says OEM)? I might even end up with the exact same drive... it's a
> shame they won't tell you!

Could be Maxtor (older Maxtor drives sucked), Western Digital, Seagate,
or any other brand. I would think they would use one of the cheaper
brands (Seagate isn't known for cheap). This is the gamble, but the rest
looks good to me.

--
Note: Please send all responses to the relevant news group. If you
must contact me through e-mail, let me know when you send email to
this address so that your email doesn't get eaten by my SPAM filter.

JR
 >> Stay informed about: HD capacity vs. reliability 

Kevin McMurtrie wrote:
> In article <fpq64e$dbi$1@aioe.org>, nospamatall <nospamatall.RemoveThis@iol.ie>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi, I'm looking for an external HD to use as NAS, and while 750 GB in
>> the same box as a 500GB looks nice, I'm just wondering if there is a
>> reliability trade-off. It's really hard to get info on these kinds of
>> details.

> Design quality matters more than density - head tracking and
> aerodynamics, firmware, vibration, bearings, temperature, and platter
> coatings. Factors associated with the media density are fairly
> predictable.
>
> Usually a bad design causes large numbers of drives to fail when they're
> 9 to 12 months old. Buy a hard drive that has been on the market for
> longer than that without problems and you should be OK.
>
> The NAS is a whole different story. Most of them don't work so well.
> The LaCie at least supports Apple File Protocol. SMB is based on Samba
> and it's often buggy.

Good advice. I suppose that would rule out 'ready made' ones, cos
there's no knowing what they might put in there. I'm just thinking that
maybe the Lacie one would be good because they have a good reputation
generally, so may not be tempted to cut corners for a few bucks?

andy
 >> Stay informed about: HD capacity vs. reliability 

On 23-Feb-2008, Jolly Roger <jollyroger DeleteThis @pobox.com> wrote:

> > Yes I know only I can make the decision in the end, but, what's the
> > chance of lacie putting in a drive that's not as good as that Seagate
> > (it says OEM)? I might even end up with the exact same drive... it's a
> > shame they won't tell you!
>
> Could be Maxtor (older Maxtor drives sucked), Western Digital, Seagate,
> or any other brand. I would think they would use one of the cheaper
> brands (Seagate isn't known for cheap). This is the gamble, but the rest
> looks good to me.

Maxtor is now part of Seagate and their drives carry a five year warranty as
do Seagate drives.

All of my drives are either Seagate or Maxtor except one which is Western
Digital. I have not had good luck with WD except for this one The other WD
drives I have had came with only a one year warranty but I always paid an
additional $14.95 to increase it to three years. One 80GB unit was replaced
twice within the three years and I had no problem with WD getting that done.
At least WD stands by their drives and saw to it that I got three years plus
usage of the drive.
 >> Stay informed about: HD capacity vs. reliability 

In article <8M6wj.166$A93.71@trndny08>,
"Little Sir Echo" <just wondering@all this.com> wrote:

> On 23-Feb-2008, Jolly Roger <jollyroger RemoveThis @pobox.com> wrote:
>
> > > Yes I know only I can make the decision in the end, but, what's the
> > > chance of lacie putting in a drive that's not as good as that Seagate
> > > (it says OEM)? I might even end up with the exact same drive... it's a
> > > shame they won't tell you!
> >
> > Could be Maxtor (older Maxtor drives sucked), Western Digital, Seagate,
> > or any other brand. I would think they would use one of the cheaper
> > brands (Seagate isn't known for cheap). This is the gamble, but the rest
> > looks good to me.
>
> Maxtor is now part of Seagate and their drives carry a five year warranty as
> do Seagate drives.

Right - hence "older Maxtor drives sucked" (and boy did they).

> All of my drives are either Seagate or Maxtor except one which is Western
> Digital. I have not had good luck with WD except for this one The other WD
> drives I have had came with only a one year warranty but I always paid an
> additional $14.95 to increase it to three years. One 80GB unit was replaced
> twice within the three years and I had no problem with WD getting that done.
> At least WD stands by their drives and saw to it that I got three years plus
> usage of the drive.

Yes, I've had similar experiences with WD drives. They are not to be
trusted, in my book. I put them in the same category as older Maxtor
drives - cheap garbage. Personally I usually play it safe and stick
with Seagate these days.

--
Note: Please send all responses to the relevant news group. If you
must contact me through e-mail, let me know when you send email to
this address so that your email doesn't get eaten by my SPAM filter.

JR
 >> Stay informed about: HD capacity vs. reliability 

Jolly Roger wrote:

>
> Yep, so if having it be stand-alone is important, I say go for the Lacie
> above - it does look promising.
>
>> Yes I know only I can make the decision in the end, but, what's the
>> chance of lacie putting in a drive that's not as good as that Seagate
>> (it says OEM)? I might even end up with the exact same drive... it's a
>> shame they won't tell you!
>
> Could be Maxtor (older Maxtor drives sucked), Western Digital, Seagate,
> or any other brand. I would think they would use one of the cheaper
> brands (Seagate isn't known for cheap). This is the gamble, but the rest
> looks good to me.

Thanks, yeah, it's a gamble. Basically it's just a choice between price
and quality. Naturally enough. Discerning quality is difficult without
good knowledge. I could manage with less capacity. 500 would probably do
if I abandon the idea of getting rid of all my DVDs and just use it for
the job in hand.

Just thought of another possibility. Jobs referred to the Time Machine
thingy as having a 'server grade' HD. I might wait and see if that's
true, or at least it may have a better than average HD. Hell, if they
just say what drive it is, that would be a plus! 'Server grade' does
sound suspiciously unusable in court, though.

I tried the phrase "server grade hard disk" in google and sure enough
the whole first two pages (at least) are about time machine. I don't
know much about HD tech, beyond what used to be in the norton utilities
manual (hah) but from one of those google pages I found out that some
people at least don't consider SATA to be 'server grade'. But that's
just the interface isn't it? Or is that less reliable in itself? I
remember Apple used to use scsi but that went by the board because good
couldn't compete well with 'good enough'. I'll have to spend a day or so
finding out more about this!

The amount of use it will get is not really more than an average desktop
I reckon, (squid etc will be using the mini's disk) and I don't really
know enough to sort out the marketing guff from the truth. Before I got
my first computer I had used both macs and PCs (and an Amstrad PCW), but
I remember this same thing, only magnified many times when looking at
the 'choices' offered by PCs. I gambled then and went for apple, mainly
because it got rid of all the uncertainty. The PC world is like the
phone operators and the privatised utility sellers. They make it as hard
as they can to make a good comparison because basically they are all
selling the same things in competition with each other. Apple has turned
out a good bet overall, and it wasn't a really rational decision, more
like throwing my hands in the air and walking away from the mess.

If it was just another domestic HD for me to use I'd just get another
Lacie for a couple of hundred, and not care too much. At this stage
nothing is crucial, I have long-term backups, but I really should know
about this stuff if I'm going to run servers. That's the only reason I'm
dithering.

I know why bosses are forever telling me "just give me the bottom line".
They spare themselves the boring research and can blame me if things
don't work out.

Bottom line...
One thing that could eliminate a lot of prevarication: is there actually
an alternative to SATA that would be easy to implement in a mostly macs
server setting for less than 400 dollars? If not then I might just wait
for the Apple thing and check it out. Sorry it may seem like wasting
your time, but it's helping me. I'm getting an idea of what to avoid at
least, and the whole purpose of this exercise is to learn before I need to.

Andy

P.S. I added -apple to the google query, and the results went down from
564 to 8, 4 of which were still about time machine! A good example of
the RDF if ever there was one.
 >> Stay informed about: HD capacity vs. reliability 

In article <fprv6t$4sh$1@aioe.org>, nospamatall <nospamatall.DeleteThis@iol.ie>
wrote:

> Just thought of another possibility. Jobs referred to the Time Machine
> thingy as having a 'server grade' HD. I might wait and see if that's
> true, or at least it may have a better than average HD. Hell, if they
> just say what drive it is, that would be a plus! 'Server grade' does
> sound suspiciously unusable in court, though.

server or enterprise grade generally means a drive that's more reliable
and certified to run 24/7 as opposed to typical usage patterns. also,
the time capsule drive supports f_fullsync which helps keep the
filesystem from being corrupted.
 >> Stay informed about: HD capacity vs. reliability 

nospamatall wrote:

>
> Good advice. I suppose that would rule out 'ready made' ones, cos
> there's no knowing what they might put in there. I'm just thinking that
> maybe the Lacie one would be good because they have a good reputation
> generally,

Google may change your perspective somewhat.

Seagate or WD
 >> Stay informed about: HD capacity vs. reliability 

In article <fpss94$eo3$1@aioe.org>,
Chris Brown <cbrown.TakeThisOut@medicine.adelaide.edu.au> wrote:

> nospamatall wrote:
>
> >
> > Good advice. I suppose that would rule out 'ready made' ones, cos
> > there's no knowing what they might put in there. I'm just thinking that
> > maybe the Lacie one would be good because they have a good reputation
> > generally,
>
> Google may change your perspective somewhat.
>
> Seagate or WD

They have both mass-produced defective drive designs too. It's best to
research by model, not manufacturer.

IBM is the only maker I know of that mass-produced defective drives over
a long period of time - the infamous Deskstar.

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I don't read Google's spam. Reply with another service.
 >> Stay informed about: HD capacity vs. reliability 

On 2008-02-23 17:40:53 -0800, nospamatall <nospamatall RemoveThis @iol.ie> said:

> I haven't seen anthing about it, it just seems to me that if you cram
> more into the same space, tolerances would become more critical. But I
> don't know that, it just seems to make sense.

I think that, given the exact same technology, this would certainly be
true. But there's too many other factors.
 >> Stay informed about: HD capacity vs. reliability