Re: [LUG] OT: Hard Disk Reliability - Which manufacturer to choose?

[Roland Tarver <roland.tarver@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 05/10/13 23:43, Rob Beard wrote:
> On Sat, 05 Oct 2013 20:53:50 +0100, Roland Tarver
> <roland.tarver@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>  wrote:
>    
> > On 05/10/13 19:28, lhs47crewe@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> >      
> > > I have been having problems with 2.5" Toshiba hard drives.
> > > Sent from my BlackBerry smartphone on O2
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Simon Waters<simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > Sender: list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2013 19:25:04
> > > To: list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > Reply-To: list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > Subject: Re: [LUG] OT: Hard Disk Reliability - Which manufacturer to
> > > choose?
> > >
> > > The big players like Google have stats, but without them I think any of
> > > the manufacturers mentioned are fine. Last time I dug deep WD had a
> > > slight lead in firmware support for various interesting new bits of the
> > > standards, but unless you plan to use those functions that won't matter
> > > to you. Possible the gap has closed.
> > >
> > >        
> > Thanks for your replies both of you. I am thinking I will probably go
> > for a couple of seagate drives.
> >
> > cheers roly :-)
> >      
> Get two drives from different manufacturers.  You'll know then they'll be
> from different batches, different plants and not as likely to have the same
> issue.  If you get two identical drives then they could in theory get two
> drives with the same fault.
>    

Sounds very sensible to me Rob :-)

> Personally I've had drives fail from lots of manufacturers (Seagate, WD,
> Hitachi/IBM, Samsung, Maxtor).  There aren't many manufacturers out there
> these days, the big guys seem to be buying the smaller guys up (IIRC WD
> bought Hitachi which was IBM before that) and Seagate I gather recently
> bought the hard drive unit of Samsung.  Maxtor drives are now re-badged
> Seagate drives too (well they have been for the past few years).
>
> If it was me I'd maybe go for a Western Digital drive and maybe a Seagate.
> Not because I prefer them, it's just if you go for say Verbatim or Freecom
> etc, chances are you're going to get maybe a Western Digital or Seagate
> drive in the case.  You know with Western Digital you're unlikely to get a
> Seagate drive in the case, and you're unlikely to get a Western Digital
> drive in a Seagate case.
>    

Also, sounds very sensible. :-)

> You can buy a bare drive and get your own case but it might just be as
> easy to get an external drive.
What I had concluded.

>    eSATA will be quicker than USB as USB uses
> the host machine's CPU for data transfer.  But USB is readily available and
> backwards compatible (so a USB3 drive will work on a USB2 or USB 1.1
> controller albeit at the slower interface speed).  eSATA is handy if you
> have the interface on your PC.
>
>    
I don't the eSATA card in any of my computers (laptops or desktops), so, 
for ease I'm just going with the USB option. Speed is not absolutely 
critical. I am quite happy to set rsync running and go get on with the 
rest of my life. As long as the job gets done I don't think it's going 
to make a massive difference to me. If it does, I could always consider 
buying my own cases for the discs in the future.

Thanks for your help Rob et al.


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