G-Tech, Glyph, Lacie, Seagate...they all go down

[Savva Svet]

What is it with external hard drives always having some issues?

I used to be a fan of G-Tech drives until one of my G-Techs (500GB) started giving me "corrupt files". A Toshiba hard drive that I had for less than a month (3TB) failed on me. A buddy of mine had a Lacie which failed on him as well. My Seagate ended up losing some of my footage.

A few people mentioned that Glyph drives are great and the fact that they have a 3-2-1 warranty is great. They have a 1-year warranty on any "advanced recovery", 2-year warranty for "basic recovery" and a 3-year warranty on the drive itself. Sounds great!

But guess what. Literally just got my GPT-50 hard drive in the mail today and already it's acting up...it doesn't mount on my MacBook. Read a few forums, did some troubleshooting, same issues. Yes I can send it back to Glyph and get it repaired, but come on! First day, first mount already an issue? (One guy on a forum mentioned that he got the drive repaired by Glyph got it back and a few months later had the same issue)

What is it with external hard drives and them constantly have some sort of issue. Or is it just me?

 

[joe hedge]

Are you checking the voltage of whatever you're plugging into?

Hard drives don't like less than 115 volts. Are you plugging them into the same circuit that G&E is using to light the set? Do you use battery back-up with power conditioners, or just assume that whatever current's coming out of the wall or distro is OK?

I never plug drives into anything but a UPS with a digital read-out voltage meter unless I know for sure what the voltage is. Might be your problem.

 

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

Having owened tons of disks, they either go down in the first week or after a few years.

 

[Filip Vandoorne]

spinning harddisks are alway vunerable when running and getting a bump = NEVER move a disk in use,
When using the lacie quadra disks, dont use/mount their small feet to put it upright : use it flat
if you bump a disk during operation, you could-will damage some sectors of the platter and sometimes you will only see the problem later on when using these sectors.

A solution is the use of SSD disks, they are also fast, but for mediadisks they are mostly too expensive.
You could use them as temporary disk, but extra copying takes time, sometimes lot of time.

The only and better solution is always have multiple copies.

-- there is a saying : there are people who lost data, and there are people who will loose data...

 

[Nick Pasquariello]

Are you checking the voltage of whatever you're plugging into?

Hard drives don't like less than 115 volts. Are you plugging them into the same circuit that G&E is using to light the set? Do you use battery back-up with power conditioners, or just assume that whatever current's coming out of the wall or distro is OK?

I never plug drives into anything but a UPS with a digital read-out voltage meter unless I know for sure what the voltage is. Might be your problem.

I've had this very issue with GTechs. I kept having the drive unmount. When I changed the power source so that it was getting it's own outlet from the power backup (rather than from a power strip off the backup) the problems vanished.

Aside from that, it's kinda . . . luck? I forget who it was, but a server company posted the fail rate of all it's drives, and the Seagates were the least reliable, while Western Digital and Hitachi were the most. Which is funny to me, because I've had the exact opposite experience; I've had very good luck with Seagate and slightly poor luck with WD.

 

[Isaac Marchionna]

I'm slowly phasing out all of my lacie drives. They're not terrible they're just not as good as their price and silly external design would lead you to believe.

I'm looking for a replacement for my d2 USB 3 drive and I'm thinking I'll opt for a g tech.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

While not the fastest drives out there since they're single HDD 2.5" 7200rpm, I'm having excellent luck with the 1TB G-Drive mobile units. They are bus-powered and have a USB3 and Thunderbolt connector on them. Super handy and clients are loving them too. Buffalo and LaCie also make similar units, but with 5400rpm spindle drives.

All things considered, I've had rather good luck with G-Tech over the past few years. It usually costs more, but I often roll my own with decent HDDs (often spares from other projects or installations) into third-party enclosures. I have a lot better reliability that way. The consumer externals from WD, Seagate, etc.. are always garbage. They may be cheap, but they usually die a swift death and it's more often than not the controller or enclosure and not the drive itself.

As for reliability, in regards to what Nick says above, my experience with consumer grade desktop drives mirrors his. With enterprise or RAID class hard drives, I have the best results with WD, followed by Hitachi, then Seagate. I won't even bother using hard drives from Samsung, Toshiba, Fujitsu or the one or two other minor manufacturers anymore. They're nothing but problems. Samsung actually made some nice drives a few years ago and for a time had the best 500GB drives on the market plus a decent 1TB offering. Unfortunately, that isn't the case these days. Actually, I think Fujitsu and Matsushita (Panasonic) have exited the hard drive game altogether.

 

[Savva Svet]

Joe, good call on the voltage check. Most of my drives are being plugged into a power strip at the studio, with Macs, hard drives, sound cards and other accessories being plugged in.

And Jeff, I know G-Tech has a good rep, but in my experience have had issues with (2) drives I'm a bit hesitant to go for them again.

Btw, I got in contact with Glyph and they said it might be EITHER a wiring issue (I can either send it back for repair or they can send the wire to me to replace) or it might be a software issue with the mac and compatibility. Their customer service has been great so far, and the hard drive is a tank, but having issues straight out of the box isn't good.

Anyone else used Glyph drives in the past? Any similar issues?

 

[Jason Osterday]

I haven't had as much luck with WD enterprise 1TB as I have with Ultrastar 2TB and 3TB. 1 Hitachi failure thus far but 3 WD in the past 2 years. Honestly, the Hitachi didn't entirely fail it just doesn't mount very well and is clearly on its way out. These are mixtures of 24 to 48 drive enclosures as well as 8 drive cart enclosures. I like the newer RE4's and so far so good. I don't touch anything beyond either of those. I used Seagates a few years ago but stopped after I was seeing an average of 2-3 drive failures every 6 to 12 months. They were all Raid 0 or Raid 1 arrangements though in smaller 2 or 4 drive enclosures.

I have a half dozen of the 8TB GRaid's from about 18 months ago that are still going strong. One is starting to have a bad fan but still has the same R/W and mounts promptly. No experience with Glyph. I'd just say make sure you have a power cleaner or a good UPS. I've zapped desktop drives before from willy nilly plugging them into a house outlet and a decent rain storm knocked them out. Nothing critical but still a pain to lose the drive itself. I have a few UPS in my house just for the sake of not losing any sensitive electronics.

 

[eric schneider]

What is it with external hard drives always having some issues?

What is it with external hard drives and them constantly have some sort of issue. Or is it just me?

Alot of times it is the enclosure failing and not necessarily the drive. I have had, easily, 6 drives fail, only to be ressurected once I pulled the actual drive from the enclosure and put into something like a Voyager-Q or another enclosure. In fact, for non Raid drive setups, I pretty much only buy internal 3.5 drives and mount them in Voyager-Q's and then store them in antistatic hard box cases. Ends up being alot cheaper too. 3tb for about $140. Lacie has always been the worst of the bunch in my opinion, failing the most. but have had G-raid and Glyphs fail as well. Most of the internals for all of these companies are made by Hitatchi, Seagate and samsung, so if you can find those as internal drives and buy reputable enclosures, you might have a more secure solution. Hope that helps..