external hard drive problems

[Ira]

We build massive off-the-shelf (commodity class - meaning repair parts are easily found since there's no proprietary hardware) storage servers (up to 14Tb space) and originally used Maxtor drives. We experienced a 17% failure rate with Maxtor and switched to Seagate or Western Digital (depending on which configuration the client ordered).

With Seagate we have less than 4% failure and with WD less than 2%.

The MTBF rate on Maxtor was way over inflated.

.

Now THIS is good information to know.

[Podunkfla]

We build massive off-the-shelf (commodity class - meaning repair parts are easily found since there's no proprietary hardware) storage servers (up to 14Tb space) and originally used Maxtor drives. We experienced a 17% failure rate with Maxtor and switched to Seagate or Western Digital (depending on which configuration the client ordered).

With Seagate we have less than 4% failure and with WD less than 2%.

The MTBF rate on Maxtor was way over inflated.

.

Now THIS is good information to know.

Yep... Ira... I agree! Good info from someone that deals with the issue every day.
I have always prefered WD hard drives mostly because the were the first to offer a 5 year warranty. That they would do that told me they must make a pretty good drive. I have not been disappointed either. I have yet to lose a WD drive... and I have had a couple of others croak in an untimely fashion. I am going to stick with Western Digital.

For many years I had good luck with Micropolis hard drives... but, then, for some reason, they seemed to go downhill with quality until they went out of business?

Here's a review of the best & worst hard drives!
It's a little dated now... from 2002?
http://www.driveservice.com/bestwrst.htm

[SaGR]

The bottom line with any of this is that you need a reliable backup source.

With larger hard drives (and storage devices) backup options are fewer and fewer - read as more and more expensive.

At home I have 2.4Tb of spinning disk on my 3 main machines. I back those up to a 1Tb WD MyBook Pro. Once a month I bring that to work and back it up to LTO tape.

You shouldn't rely on external drives alone as a backup source. If you do, you should at least plan on having two of those disks. One is a backup containing all the same data and should really be kept somewhere other than your home.

Depends on how much you value your data.