There are extremely large difference in reliability between different drives makes and models. Here are a couple of numbers (we're building storage servers, running 24/24 in various environments):
* my company installed about 4500 Seagate Barracuda ES2 (500 GB, 750 GB and mostly 1TB) between 2008 and 2010. These drives are utter crap, in 5 years we got about 1500 failures, much worse than the previous generation (250 GB to 750 GB Barracuda ES).
* After replacing several hundred drives, we decided to switch boats in 2010 and went with Hitachi (nowadays HGST). Of the roughly 3000 Hitachi/HGST drive used in the past 3 years, we had about 20 failures. Only one of the 200 Hitachi drives shipped between 2007 and 2009 failed. Most of the failed drives were 3 TB drives, ergo the 3 TB HGST HUA drives are less reliable than the 2 TB, themselves less reliable than the 1 TB model (which is by all measure, absolutely rock solid).
* Of the few WD drives we installed, we replaced about 10% in the past 3 years. Not exactly impressive, but not significant either.
* We replaced a number of Seagate Barracudas with Constellations, and these seem to be reliable so far, however the numbers aren't significant enough (only about 120 used in the past 2 years).
* About SSDs: SSDs are quite a hit and miss game. We started back in 2008 with M-Tron (now dead). M-Tron drives were horribly expensive, but my main compilation server still run on a bunch of these. Of all the M-Tron SSD we had (from 16 GB to 128 GB), none failed ever. There are 5 years old now, and still fast.
We've tried some other brands: Intel, SuperTalent... Some SuperTalent SSDs had terrible firmware, and the drives would crash under heavy load! They disappeared from the bus when stressed, but come back OK after a power cycle. Oh my...
So far unfortunately SSDs seem to be about as reliable as spinning rust. Latest generations fare better, and may actually best current hard drives ( we'll see in a few years how they retrospectively do).
Yev from Backblaze -> We love Hitachi drives. They make us really happy. Unfortunately they are also more expensive than WD and Seagates, and since our #1 factor in drive purchasing is price, we don't get them very often :(
While operating under the same corporate umbrella, the engineering divisions of WDC and HGST are being kept separate for now as part of an agreement with the Chinese to get their approval for the acquisition. The upshot of this is that HGST drives are going to be a completely separate product line for at least the next few years.
Technically yes, especially from a manpower perspective (Takes folks to replace the drives), and it gets factored in to our "what are we willing to pay" model, so far, cheaper drive still win out over longevity. Now, this is different from other people with large data farms, we operate a bit differently, but thus far cheaper drives make more business sense. If that ever changes, we'll switch to the good stuff :)
I remember seeing somewhere that failure rates correspond strongly with number of platters (Something along the lines that doubling platters doubles chance of failure within 3 years).
* my company installed about 4500 Seagate Barracuda ES2 (500 GB, 750 GB and mostly 1TB) between 2008 and 2010. These drives are utter crap, in 5 years we got about 1500 failures, much worse than the previous generation (250 GB to 750 GB Barracuda ES).
* After replacing several hundred drives, we decided to switch boats in 2010 and went with Hitachi (nowadays HGST). Of the roughly 3000 Hitachi/HGST drive used in the past 3 years, we had about 20 failures. Only one of the 200 Hitachi drives shipped between 2007 and 2009 failed. Most of the failed drives were 3 TB drives, ergo the 3 TB HGST HUA drives are less reliable than the 2 TB, themselves less reliable than the 1 TB model (which is by all measure, absolutely rock solid).
* Of the few WD drives we installed, we replaced about 10% in the past 3 years. Not exactly impressive, but not significant either.
* We replaced a number of Seagate Barracudas with Constellations, and these seem to be reliable so far, however the numbers aren't significant enough (only about 120 used in the past 2 years).
* About SSDs: SSDs are quite a hit and miss game. We started back in 2008 with M-Tron (now dead). M-Tron drives were horribly expensive, but my main compilation server still run on a bunch of these. Of all the M-Tron SSD we had (from 16 GB to 128 GB), none failed ever. There are 5 years old now, and still fast.
We've tried some other brands: Intel, SuperTalent... Some SuperTalent SSDs had terrible firmware, and the drives would crash under heavy load! They disappeared from the bus when stressed, but come back OK after a power cycle. Oh my...
So far unfortunately SSDs seem to be about as reliable as spinning rust. Latest generations fare better, and may actually best current hard drives ( we'll see in a few years how they retrospectively do).