External Hard Drives Don't Last? Generic Rant...

[Jonathan Stevenson]

Maybe I buy the wrong brand? Maybe I am just unlucky? Maybe I've been doing things wrong since the beginning? But I've never owned an external hard drive that has lasted for more than 8 months. Especially in the last two months, I've had more external 1TB WD Passports fail than I can care to count. Last week I lost not one, but TWO Thunderbolt Western Digital 6TB raids that I only had for about a month each. (These ones I had laying on their side on my desk instead of upright. Could that be why? Seriously? WTF!!!!) :banghead:

Is it because I format them for Mac OS?
Is it because I handle them too often?
Is my office too dusty?
Is it because the Gods hate me?

What the hell is going on!?!

:rant:

My point is; I would love to hear people's "best practices" when it comes to hard drives: handling them, storing them, formatting them, whatever. Any tricks you may have that could prevent me from continually losing data??

Would also love to hear people's preferred methods of backup. LTO? SSD?

 

[Alex H Liu]

At work, we use G-Tech pretty exclusively, both their G-Raid and G-Drive brands. Also, G-Raid Minis whenever somebody needs to take a project home with them. We use G-Drive minis or LaCie ruggeds for transferring footage (but not for editing off of).

A couple have failed over time but in general 95% of the ones we have are still functional. And they have had multiple projects cut off them/deleted/restored, etc.

As for storage, we backup old projects to LTO once they are done and free up the drives for other use.

 

[Clovis Ong]

Get lots of smaller capacity drive. when they fail you lose less... 6tb is way too dangerous. also get ones with external power supplies, there's a powersurge with usb powered drives that would cause drives to "click" occasionally, which sometimes is fatal

 

[Elliott Balsley]

That sounds like a pretty high failure rate, Jonathan.
Mac OS? Not a problem
Handling? Could definitely be a factor, especially if you are moving them while powered on.
Dust? Possible, but do you think your office is more dusty than average?

You might have voltage fluctuations or other types of dirty power in your office. I'd suggest plugging everything into a power conditioner.
Also — whenever a drive does fail, I always remove it from its enclosure and try somewhere else, like an IcyDock. Sometimes it's just the enclosure that fails, and the data is still okay.

 

[Ryan De Franco]

Western Digital = death.

G-Tech, Glyph, Caldigit, or RAID storage.

 

[joe hedge]

I never plug client's drives into just a wall receptacle/power strip - always use a UPS, which conditions/protects current

And yes, pretty much anything sold at Best Buy (Western Digital et al) is forbidden, I've turned down jobs when the client inisited on using them

 

[Matthew B]

...And yes, pretty much anything sold at Best Buy (Western Digital et al) is forbidden...

I was going to comment that there is a reason WD has the market cornered at office max... Looks like I'm not alone in this

But yes - WD is the lowest on my list of reliable history.

 

[sarah chavarria]

I'M SORRY GUYS BUT

I'M SORRY GUYS BUT

What is an LTO? Thanks for answering. :confused1:

 

[Andreas Herzog]

What is an LTO? Thanks for answering. :confused1:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open

 

[Robert Hart]

The spindle bearing on several consumer level drives I have had a look at is a plain bearing sliding round a very shiny immaculately finished shaft. Whatever they use to lube the surfaces must be some miracle mix. They appear to be dry.

Caution 1.
There is less gravitational load on the bearing/shaft if the drive is sitting flat. If it is upright like a book on edge in a bookshelf then the bearing/shaft is working harder with loadbearing along its entire length versus the smaller thrust faces at the ends = more friction. With the SI2K recording to a laptop with HDD, we found that the laptop had to be sitting flat otherwise the performance of the drive fell away and the buffer memory rammed out.

Caution 2.
Before moving any drive, let the spindle run down a few minutes until it has surely stopped. If you pick it up and twist it on axis, the spindle bearing may become overloaded by gyroscopic forces and pick up ( seize ).

Caution 3.
When connecting a drive to a USB port which is supplying power, make sure the drive itself is not flopping about due to movement of the cord as you attempt to shove the plug in the port. Make sure the drive is secure against movement during its duty cycle. Tape it down to the desk surface if need be. If you pick up a still-spinning drive and you feel a little thud when you move it, the bearing has locked up on the shaft. Even if it comes free when it cools down, it may become worn enough that the drive becomes unreliable.


I have had two identical WD passport drives bought the same day become as cheese and chalk. One was formatted on a Mac to copy vision files for playback and archiving on a Windows machine. Until it was Mac formatted it would not work on the Mac. Since then, even if reformatted in Windows NTFS, it is as slow as a wet week compared to its brother. There may be some proprietary firmware which gets munted during a Mac format. I am only guessing here, so heed the wisdom of others who comment, versus my ramblings.


This is only my observation of the behaviour of some drives and should not be regarded as technically or scientifically valid.

 

[Martin Drew]

Most of the drive failures we have had seem to be attributable to heat problems. Either through poor case design or compromised ventilation.

 

[Michael McLaughlin]

As lot of others say above, and adding Roberts number summary is perfect, I would add/repeat the following.

Not all UPS line conditioners are what they say; be careful of misleading print.
If you suspect electric load problems, have it checked.

Better lost in a couple hundred dollars in a device rented or professional check... than a thousand (or thousands) dollars lost to a "will to be cheap".

Check capacitors on bad drives (if possible, knowing what to look for) for popped caps, this could be a sign. But of bad manufacture or your personal household electric problems will be the next search.

I always take for granted that the consumer, and even prosumer hardrives (that I buy) are the rejects from the server grades. True or not... with that opinion taking hold in my mind, I act accordingly and go with multiple saving data devices with multiple locations, whether at home or work.

THIS is the only way to negate what sometimes becomes a futile effort in finding "what is at fault" if it does not easily and timely reveal itself.

BUT my line of course, for the last 20 years has been: check plug/cord, then the area "it" sits, then temperature of room, then power delivery, then manufacturing run of device in question (was it a Hitachi deathstar type group of drives etc.).

I have mostly stayed away from WD because of to many drives failing for friends, for me at work, and because of chatter I hear around. Rightly or wrongly my opinion of them leads me not to chance my data on their consumer drives.

I like G-raid to.

But that can always change when bought by other companies, so always, always, beware of chatter from professionals in the know who lively hoods really rely on constantly having the best drives for all levels.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Hmm, We used and reused multiple times a few hundred WD wallet sized drives, those between 250GB to 1TB with USB connection an without external power and so far not a single issue... However we had quite a few Bigger Laice Drives with external power supply, where the discs gone bad and the power supplies for them, I find, that they are going bad even more often than the discs... So from where I stand WD looks pretty good, and we buy them where we can find them for the lowest price possible.

I have had a Max Digital Raid gone bad, both discs and power supply and a several STONE fiber arrays. So from my experience (I have to admit it sounds odd) the thumb rule is that the more expansive and bigger drive you buy the more data you will loose...

 

[Noel R.]

Curious, has anyone considered external SSD's. I know they are more expensive, but less moving parts probably = reliability.

 

[joe hedge]

Curious, has anyone considered external SSD's. I know they are more expensive, but less moving parts probably = reliability.

A 1 TB SSD is close to $1000, and Epics shoot close to 500 GB's an hour at 5KFF 5:1

Plus you'd need 2 of them to create 2 copies, which is the bare minimum for secure data back-up

So no, no one's considered them

 

[jimhare]

I would never use the WD passport style drives but I have used dozens of WD internal SATA drives (Green/Caviar etc.) for the last few years and never had a single failure. I mount drives I haven't mounted in a year or two and they always work. 100% success.

Again, stay away from pre-packaged external drives. Get a good enclosure or mount internally, and get raw drives.

I'm up to about 90TB and can't think of the last time I had a failure. All on Mac OS.

 

[Noel R.]

A 1 TB SSD is close to $1000, and Epics shoot close to 500 GB's an hour at 5KFF 5:1

Plus you'd need 2 of them to create 2 copies, which is the bare minimum for secure data back-up

So no, no one's considered them

Compared to REDmags, that's a bargain.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Western Digital = death. G-Tech, Glyph, Caldigit, or RAID storage.

Note that neither G-Tech, Glyph, nor Caldigit actually manufacture actual hard drives; they merely take off-shelf drives and package them in (very nice) enclosures. Open them up and see for yourself.

I think the higher-end Enterprise class Western Digital drives are fine and extremely reliable, but you won't find those at Office Depot.

 

[Antonio Ribeiro]

At work, we use G-Tech pretty exclusively, both their G-Raid and G-Drive brands. Also, G-Raid Minis whenever somebody needs to take a project home with them. We use G-Drive minis or LaCie ruggeds for transferring footage (but not for editing off of).

A couple have failed over time but in general 95% of the ones we have are still functional. And they have had multiple projects cut off them/deleted/restored, etc.

As for storage, we backup old projects to LTO once they are done and free up the drives for other use.

Exactly my experience too, although between G-Raid and Lacie, I find G-raid sturdier.

 

[Bill Sepaniak]

Note that neither G-Tech, Glyph, nor Caldigit actually manufacture actual hard drives; they merely take off-shelf drives and package them in (very nice) enclosures. Open them up and see for yourself. ...

Not exactly true with respect to G-Tech. G-Technology (G-Tech) is now owned by Hitachi. They tend to use Hitachi drives (for obvious reasons). I just picked up 2 new G-Tech Mini-Sas Es Pro's (the deal of the century ... $450.00 each for 4TB ... so $900.00 for 8TB) and I can tell you that they use Hitachi Enterprise Drives. Of course, you then need an expensive ATTO card to run them. But, they certainly kick ass. All in all, I'm into the whole set-up for about $1,700.00.

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