percentage of hard drives fail

[MJA]

doe anyone know the percentage of Western Digital,and Seagate hard drives fail ? both laptop and desktop drives.

Thanx

[jameshgross]

I looked up the MTBF figures for WD they publish 1.2 millin hours.
MTBF = Mean Time Between Failure

Google the manufacture and MTBF

[bendixG15]

I doubt that the failure rate would be public information.

[Dv8ted2]

It is generally not public information because of the PR backlash it would cause if it became public. I have found Western Digital drives to be fairly reliable. I have had hard drives that have lasted for over six years of repetitive and hard usage.

[jameshgross]

Most HD manufactures publish this information in the OEM documentatiopn.
If you are buliding a high reliability system this data has to be pluged into the overall equation for system MTFB.

[jagabo]

MTBF is nearly meaningless with hard drives.
http://www.neowin.net/news/main/07/03/11/study-hard-drive-mtbf-ratings-highly-exaggerated

[zoobie]

whatever you do, don't buy on ebay...some sellers there buy HDD's by lots...some good...some bad...and let the buyer determine if the drive is any good

seems like a 5 year warranty would fill the bill

[bevills1]

I've only had 1 hard drive fail which was a 15GB Maxtor still under a 1 year warranty which was probably 6 to 8 years ago. I've used several Seagate, Maxtor and Western Digital drives since then with no failures yet. It seems to me newer drives are much more reliable now than they were 8 plus years ago.

[jagabo]

I've only had 1 hard drive fail

Out of how many? 2? 2000? I've had maybe three or four go bad, out of a couple dozen over the last 20 years. A few others were lost due to other problems like a PSU blowing out and taking most of the other components with it.

[stiltman]

doe anyone know the percentage of Western Digital,and Seagate hard drives fail ? both laptop and desktop drives.

Thanx

Care to explain why you need to know? Not trying to be a smart arse. Say is this for a research paper or are you trying to build a high reliability system?

I ask this because if you're trying to build a high reliability system, Manufactures have drives that are designed for this purpose. Not the ones you find in B/M stores..those are the consumer drives. These drives are different and you can use/change the firmware that is loaded on them to fit your specific setup. I have found over the years that Seagate has done the best with their drives and firmware.

[fritzi93]

I've had two fail in 12 years or so, out of 11 hard drives. One WD 30 GB drive failed after 7 years, one Maxtor 60 GB after 1 year. Presently have 2 Seagate 160s, 2 WD 250s, 1 WD 160, 2 Quantum 20s (old), 1 WD 40 (8 years old at least), and a Quantum 11 GB (over 10 years old!). At home we have my video editing machine, an HTPC, and the wife's surfing/email box.

A couple months ago a power surge fried my HTPC. (I have several surge protectors, but for some reason it was plugged into a plain power strip, dammit). It took out the CPU, MoBo, Ram, but, strangely, not the PSU or the hard drives. Dunno about the AGP card, it's an orphan now, nothing to use it in anyway.

[roma_turok]

Now my old hard drive WD 400GB give me warning in bios to backup data before its failed
purchased in February 2006

[minidv2dvd]

failure can be model specific, not manufacturer. not to long ago before ibm bailed from the hard drive arena they had a failure rate of nearly 100% on the deskstar dtla model line. i had built a half dozen systems with over a dozen of their drives, every single one died a horrible sudden unrecoverable death. most covered by warranty, but they would only replace them with the same model, mostly re-builds. threw them all out in the end. they are now called hatachi drives.... some of the recent seagate models seem to be suffering the same sort of meltdowns.

[AlanHK]

doe anyone know the percentage of Western Digital,and Seagate hard drives fail ? both laptop and desktop drives.
Thanx

100%.
I guess you really wanted to know the average time till failure.
Or dead on arrival?

Anyway, specify what you mean by "fail" and you might get an answer.

[bevills1]

The 1 I had fail is 1 out of 15 drives, but I've never had damage due to power surge or PSU failure. I wouldn't consider it drive failure if the damage was caused power surge, PSU or other hardware failure.

jagabo, were any of those failures within the last 6 to 8 years or so, or were they more than 6 to 8 years ago?

[disturbed1]

I've owned a few hard drives. More than a couple hundred. Seagate and Western digital account for the most followed by Maxtor. Thrown in there are a few Samsungs as well.

Out of 30 or so Maxtor drives (including the Quantum Fireball line, which was actually manufactured by Maxtor) I have one working Maxtor drive left. It is an 80 gig model. The last Quantum Fireball (40 gig) started to get bad sectors 8 months ago. Every single Maxtor OEM 20 gig hard drive (common in Dells) has not lasted longer than 12 months. On my 120-160 gig models, they all lasted more than 12 months, less than 24.

As far as longevity is concerned, I have 2 really old drives. A Seagate 500MB model and a Western Digital 1.2GB model. Both of these drives are still in top working order, and pass extended tests without errors. I checked them in Jan. they were in 2 PCs that are only used a couple of times monthly now. I did buy them brand new sometime around 1995? I think

I honestly do not have enough experience with Samsung drives to give them a thumbs up or down. The 8 I do own (60gig to 200gig) are all in perfect working order.

Between Western Digital and Seagate, I put them about equal, considering the same models in the same price point. I do favor Seagates more. Western Digital drives are much lighter than Seagate, and tend to feel warmer to the touch as well. I've noticed my Seagates make a little more noise than the WD.

I think I've had a higher failure rate on the WD's compared to Seagate. But not enough to make me not buy any more WD's. These failures are typically caused from heat, or instant power offs, which, after enough, would kill any drive

Model by model is what you have to watch for today. Seagate drives are not all manufactured at the same factory. They even have at least two China factories. One of which produced bad 1TB drives.

I have contacted Seagate for warranty repair once. The drives had a 5 year warranty, they lasted a little over 4 years in a Raid 0 setup. Didn't have any issues getting the drives replaced.

If you're worried about quality, stay away from OEM drives, and the consumer line. Both WD and Seagate make a higher line of drives. They might cost you a little more per gig, but it is worth it in the long run. If you're worried about price, why even consider quality?

[MJA]

so the bottom line there is no study/research about % of faulty drives made by every company

[jagabo]

Out of 30 or so Maxtor drives (including the Quantum Fireball line, which was actually manufactured by Maxtor) I have one working Maxtor drive left. It is an 80 gig model. The last Quantum Fireball (40 gig) started to get bad sectors 8 months ago. Every single Maxtor OEM 20 gig hard drive (common in Dells) has not lasted longer than 12 months. On my 120-160 gig models, they all lasted more than 12 months, less than 24.

And they all probably had ~500,000 hour MTBFs. I guess the "service life" is about as long as it takes to format them.

so the bottom line there is no study/research about % of faulty drives made by every company

And that's the way the manufacturers like it.

[MJA]

end of the story then

[Ditka1985]

My initial temptation was to respond to the thread with "they all fail", but thought that actually sharing some experiences would be more useful.

I happen to be in a situation where my department is responsible for (literally) several thousand computers, so I've gotten to see first-hand various drive experiences.

We have had, by far, the best luck with Western Digital and Seagate. With these, it is more common for the machine to be retired (due to age > 4 years) or the drive replaced (capacity) than it is to have a defective drive. Between those two, it is hard to differentiate. At any given time, one or the other might be performing slightly better in terms of reliability.

We have had, BY FAR, the worst luck with Maxtor. The worst of these, the maxtor slim-line 40GB and 80GB varieties, have soured us to Maxtor to the point that we no longer buy their drives.

Second to Maxtor on the FAIL list would be Samsung, but in fairness we do not have as many of these for the numbers to be statistically as meaningful as the previous three. They are, in my experience, about where IBM/Hitachi 'Deskstar' (or, as we say, 'Deathstar') drives fall in the reliability scale.

Reliable drives are still no replacement for reliable, recoverable backups, though!

[jagabo]

Thanks Ditka1985 and Disturbed1 for reporting your personal experiences with large numbers of drives.

[RabidDog]

Ask google: they have a sqintillion of drives and even their own filing system.. designed so they never lose anything. They have probably the best indicators of reliability, beyond the drive Mfrs themselves.
Only drive ever died on me was an IBm darkstar: Replaced by Hitachi : presently have maxtor, seagate, Samsung..I go on cost per GB mostly liking the Samsung tho...

[guns1inger]

The google document : http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf

[jagabo]

Unfortunately, that google document doesn't reveal the failure rates by manufacturer or model although they say the tracked that information.

[disturbed1]

The google document : http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf

That has to be one of the most long winded and run around articles I've ever read.

2% of all drives fails. Usually if the the drive does not fail inside 3-6 months is should last ~3 years. If you have heat issues, it will fail sooner. If you have heat issues and constant use, it will fail even sooner than that. Stuff that was already common knowledge. Hope that person wasn't paid per word

[jagabo]

nevermind

[disturbed1]

nevermind

Where's that damn delete post button.

[jagabo]

Maybe I'm reading the graph wrong (figure 2) but it looks to me like 2 percent fail in the first year of use, and 6 to 8 percent fail in years 2, 3, 4, and 5. Meaning a total of about 30 percent of drives have failed after 5 years. They do say the higher rates in years 3 and 4 were more model related (especially bad drives made in those years) than age related. But when you're buying a new drive you don't know if that model is going to turn out to be a good one or a bad one. Unless you think the manufacturers have learned their lesson and now only make good models. I think in the current economic downturn they are more likely to be cutting corners. They've already started cutting warranties again.

[Nelson37]

Look to what the manufacturers are betting on and buy drives with 5-year warranties. Couple them with a good battery back-up.

Personally, I recommend either WD or Seagate. For myself, I buy nothing but Western Digital. Seagate cost me a lot of money, time, and frustration with a run of 8 SCSI drives that all failed within a few weeks. To be fair, WD had a batch of I believe 6 or 8 Gb drives with unusually high failure rates, replaced at least a couple dozen of these. That was the one where the heads fell off. County gov had a large number of PC's with these drives, but I do not now the exact total. About 1000 Pc's altogether, no other drives, either older or newer, were replaced nearly as often. Warranty replaced with different model, no further problems.

RMA'd multiple drives from multiple makers, never had a problem getting a return. Make sure and ask if a larger model is available for a small fee, but WAIT until they tell you what they are sending. Often they are out of stock on the older models for Warranty replacement and will send a new, larger drive anyway.

The good news is that newer drives seem to be more reliable compared to 5-10 years ago, but the bad news is that when they do fail, they tend to do it suddenly with little warning. SMART somewhat makes up for this, but not entirely.

[SCDVD]

It's difficult to get a reliable and accurate idea of failure rates by brand (or any other criteria for that matter). The manufacturers hide information or "spin" it. Anecdotal reports about their one or few drives from individual users have no statistical validity. In fact, single experience anecdotal data can be very misleading. Neither does obsolete drive failure reports for earlier generation drives. What a manufacturer's 40GB drive did or didn't do has no relevance to current models.

You also have brand loyalists who root for their favorite brand with the same zeal that they root for their favorite ball team. You won't get any useful information from this crowd.

Large OEM buyers of drives probably have some pretty good data but they won't release this information because it can hurt their reputation and increase liability for any problems that people are having.

You can pick a "feel good" reason for buying a particular brand and the chances are that your choice will be "right" because the odds are that your single drive won't fail. You can then go on a forum in a few years and expound on how good your Brand X drive is. Or if it fails, you can be an "expert" reporter on how bad Brand X drives are. In either case your single experience is of no validity.