Hard Drive replacements

[Cerr]

Does Toshiba still make drives?

Not sure if they do for desktops, but do not, under any circumstances use Toshiba laptop drives (optical or HDD); their failure rate is staggering.

My laptop has a Toshiba HDD. I've had it for a year and half, so far haven't had any problems with it.
I did order a 1TB external HDD about a week ago just in case it does die.

[DontSayBanana]

My laptop has a Toshiba HDD. I've had it for a year and half, so far haven't had any problems with it. I did order a 1TB external HDD about a week ago just in case it does die.

Actually, I misstated the problem. Toshiba put out excellent laptops, but there's a big problem with defective drives (at an informed guess, probably in the range of 20-25%). Mine came with a defective Toshiba drive that won't let the computer read any SMART info on the drive, and constantly complains about unreadable sectors on the disk; I'm just limping along with it until I've got the cash to plunk down on a WD drive.

[Barrister]

My laptop has a Toshiba HDD. I've had it for a year and half, so far haven't had any problems with it. I did order a 1TB external HDD about a week ago just in case it does die.

Actually, I misstated the problem. Toshiba put out excellent laptops, but there's a big problem with defective drives (at an informed guess, probably in the range of 20-25%). Mine came with a defective Toshiba drive that won't let the computer read any SMART info on the drive, and constantly complains about unreadable sectors on the disk; I'm just limping along with it until I've got the cash to plunk down on a WD drive.

With the greatest respect, I have found you tend to take your own personal experience and then make it universal.

Do you have any kind of link or resource that even comes close to support your 20-25% failure rate?

[DGuller]

How do you actually use the SMART thing to analyze how good your drive is? I've never done it, I've only tested the hard drive by turning on a computer and seeing if it started.

[DontSayBanana]

With the greatest respect, I have found you tend to take your own personal experience and then make it universal.

Do you have any kind of link or resource that even comes close to support your 20-25% failure rate?

It was a guess, but Toshiba failures are pretty common due to design flaws, explained here: http://www.dtidata.com/resourcecenter/2007/02/17/toshiba-laptop-hard-drive-recovery-failed-bearings/

[grumbler]

How do you actually use the SMART thing to analyze how good your drive is? I've never done it, I've only tested the hard drive by turning on a computer and seeing if it started.

If you get a program like SpeedFan (http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php) you can not just read the SMART results, but compare them to other drives of that same make and model, to see how your results compare 9and especially to see how healthy your drives are).  The actual control features of SpeedFan are, in my opinion, secondary to its diagnostic use.  Try it out.  It is free.

[grumbler]

It was a guess, but Toshiba failures are pretty common due to design flaws, explained here: http://www.dtidata.com/resourcecenter/2007/02/17/toshiba-laptop-hard-drive-recovery-failed-bearings/

That is a guy who makes a living from having people send him their "defective" drives.  Not an impartial source (espacially when he doesn't tell "marissa" that the likeliest cause of her "hard drive not seen" fault is that some connections came loose whn she dropped the case (vice the "you might need hard drive recovery" message he sends).

Having said that, a quick scan of Toshiba laptop drives on NewEgg doesn't place them at the top of the pack.  Their highest-rated SATA 3.0 drive is rated 11th (worse than any other manufacturer).

[Caliga]

If you guys are coming up with these figures based on NewEgg reviews, keep in mind that the typical NewEgg reviewer is posting a review for two reasons: a) they are a fanboi and the item is the OSSUMMIST HDD/VID CARD/MOBO EVAR, or b) it's defective and therefore the WURST HDD/VID CARD/MOBO EVAR!  I am perfectly happy with my WD Caviar Greens so far but didn't feel compelled to post a review to that effect.

[DontSayBanana]

If you guys are coming up with these figures based on NewEgg reviews, keep in mind that the typical NewEgg reviewer is posting a review for two reasons: a) they are a fanboi and the item is the OSSUMMIST HDD/VID CARD/MOBO EVAR, or b) it's defective and therefore the WURST HDD/VID CARD/MOBO EVAR!  I am perfectly happy with my WD Caviar Greens so far but didn't feel compelled to post a review to that effect.

Yeah. That, and those reading the link failed to read the comments where I actually extracted some user sentiment from. A few were shops estimating the frequency of work on Toshiba hard drives versus work on other hard drives.

[grumbler]

If you guys are coming up with these figures based on NewEgg reviews, keep in mind that the typical NewEgg reviewer is posting a review for two reasons: a) they are a fanboi and the item is the OSSUMMIST HDD/VID CARD/MOBO EVAR, or b) it's defective and therefore the WURST HDD/VID CARD/MOBO EVAR!  I am perfectly happy with my WD Caviar Greens so far but didn't feel compelled to post a review to that effect.

Since the reviews are going to be motivated by the same impulses regardless of the maker of a drive, they can be used for comparative purposes, as I have done.  I would agree that the numbers are not reliable as absolute values.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think disk space has become so cheap that by and large the concept of a "quality drive" doesn't exist.  I think most people just build for redundancy now, knowing you're going to run into drive failures.

In this PC I'm typing from I have 2 x 400 GB HDD and then another 400 GB external that is usually hooked up to it.  All told I probably use about 350 GB of "real" data and have 800 GB of space essentially for backup.  All the drives are WD and two years old, and I'm pretty impressed none of them failed out of the box--I do agree with the earlier sentiment that with WD they do usually seem to last if they aren't dead out of the box.

Two years ago 400 GB weren't that expensive, now, 1 TB drives are roughly the same price.  Disk space is cheap and getting cheaper so I just I personally just utilize a lot of redundancy in the expectation that my drives will fail.

[DontSayBanana]

I think disk space has become so cheap that by and large the concept of a "quality drive" doesn't exist.  I think most people just build for redundancy now, knowing you're going to run into drive failures.

In this PC I'm typing from I have 2 x 400 GB HDD and then another 400 GB external that is usually hooked up to it.  All told I probably use about 350 GB of "real" data and have 800 GB of space essentially for backup.  All the drives are WD and two years old, and I'm pretty impressed none of them failed out of the box--I do agree with the earlier sentiment that with WD they do usually seem to last if they aren't dead out of the box.

Two years ago 400 GB weren't that expensive, now, 1 TB drives are roughly the same price.  Disk space is cheap and getting cheaper so I just I personally just utilize a lot of redundancy in the expectation that my drives will fail.

True. You could set up a decent RAID 0 array for about $100, and even a RAID 5 for about $200-$250.

[DGuller]

Isn't RAID pretty bad for backup, though?  The only situation where I can see it being useful is if the hard drive suddenly drops dead without a warning.  If the failure is any more gradual, or not hardware-related, then you have a big risk of overwriting the good backup data with the bad.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Isn't RAID pretty bad for backup, though?  The only situation where I can see it being useful is if the hard drive suddenly drops dead without a warning.  If the failure is any more gradual, or not hardware-related, then you have a big risk of overwriting the good backup data with the bad.

Depends on what you want the RAID for.  If you are using it for a database then it might improve the speed. 

As for backups it depends on the OS.  Sun's ZFS supposedly performs constant checksums to identify bad data as soon as it appears and prevent dataloss. 

[DontSayBanana]

Isn't RAID pretty bad for backup, though?  The only situation where I can see it being useful is if the hard drive suddenly drops dead without a warning.  If the failure is any more gradual, or not hardware-related, then you have a big risk of overwriting the good backup data with the bad.

RAID isn't really designed for backing things up; it's designed for system integrity.