[Discuss] Tired of unreliable external drives... recommendations?

[blu at nedharvey.com (Edward Ned Harvey)]

> From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org [mailto:discuss-
> bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org] On Behalf Of Tom Metro
> 
> It would be interesting to get an expert's opinion on this, backed up
> with some long term statistics, to see if drive reliability, at the
> higher capacities, is in fact trailing off.

def longwindedreply:
  print """

I can say that the BER of the actual media is definitely increasing with
increased density and decreased cost (especially in flash) - But you
compensate for this by implementing a more robust FEC.  One of the companies
I work for has been advancing the FEC for the last several years.  You can
compensate as much or as little as you want (but of course, it costs more
development dollars and time to market, in order to compensate more for high
BER).  So you choose a design requirement relative to some currently
accepted standard, and you stop developing when you reach that target.

So, based on what I just said, the reliability of the newer higher density
drives is the same as the reliability of the more traditional drives (by
design.)  But our chips don't go into every single drive in the world...
And I can't tell you what other manufacturers are doing.  I can't even tell
you who our customers are, thanks to NDA.  ;-)

One would hope, that when you buy a more expensive drive labeled
"enterprise," that you're actually paying for something - vis-a-vis good
engineering & manufacturing.  But there is really no way to be certain.

As an IT guy and Computer Engineer, and EE, working for CS/EE / chip
companies, I encourage companies to stick with big name brands where they've
sold millions of the same drive under warranty (such as ... buy your Dell
and Apple and Oracle branded drives rather than OTS
seagate/westerndigital/etc drives.)  But it's all just a superstition and a
balance of probabilities, and in fact, buying the supported name branded
drives does indeed cost more per drive.

Here's how I make my own choices:  In really big important servers, I use
the name branded officially supported drives.  Otherwise, I use the cheaper
OTS drives.  I have a bias in favor of Seagate, just because I've
experienced fewer failures and greater ease of warranty exchange on these
drives relative to their competitors.  And as mentioned before in this
thread, I have a bias away from Green or Environmentally friendly or cheap
drives.  I always look at the length of the Mfgr warranty, and nothing less
than 3-5 yrs is satisfactory.

If I buy the Dell/Oracle drives, I know I will have the opportunity to
extend the warranty after 3 yrs if I care to.  With apple, it's not an
option.  With commodity OTS drives, it's also not an option.  So in the
former case, I buy just how many I need, and with the latter case, I
pre-stock twice as many drives because I know 3 yrs from now, these things
won't be for sale anymore.  So ... If the commodity OTS drives cost half as
much as the big-name-branded drives and I buy twice as many of them ... It's
basically a wash.

:-)
"""