Desktop HDD recommendations

Posted by: CrackersMcCheese

Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 13:20

So whats the manufacturer of choice these days? I have to say I've never had a drive fail on me ever but I don't want to lose data.

I like Western Digital. It will be my primary driive so it must be fast with a decent buffer, fast seek times etc etc and at least 200gb. Preferably at a good price

So... hit me
Posted by: jmwking

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 13:27

My recommendation? Buy two drives and set up a backup.

Drives will fail. Period. And usually at the least convenient time, too.

-jk
Posted by: Roger

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 13:28

Seagate Barracuda. Fast, quiet, and I've never had one go wrong on me.

Touch wood.
Posted by: CrackersMcCheese

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 13:35

Hmmmm what about this one?
Posted by: CrackersMcCheese

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 13:39

And yes a backup is a good idea!
Posted by: sein

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 14:25

I've had a few. A couple of things to note:
  • Seagate Barracuda V - Had one fail because it was in a place where its heat collected during a RAID sync. Seagate support is absolutely excellent, I shipped the drive to them, and they sent me a new one under warranty. The drives in my case now have a super quiet 120mm fan on 7v rigged up to them with cable ties. Have to say they have been very reliable since. Verdict: Heat sensitive, but recommended.
  • Samsung Spinpoint - This one is really really quiet. I like it for that. Price is very average.
  • Maxtor Diamondmax - On idle this drive is quiet, but when it is seeking it does make rather annoying rumbling noises. You get NCQ on most of them as a speed-bonus (does this make much difference?), and I find they are consistantly the cheapest per GB. I bought a 300GB SATA one last night on Komplett for 80 quid (+6 P&P) inc VAT. Can't argue with that.
Posted by: tman

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 14:37

7V? Eww. You're not doing that nasty hack of connecting a fan between the 5V and 12V lines are you? If that fan dies and goes shortcircuit then wave the entire contents of your PC goodbye.

I've had loads of issues with Maxtor drives. I've personally had about 5 drives fail and similar numbers for people I know.
Posted by: CrackersMcCheese

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 14:38

What about the Seagate one I listed. Any good?
Posted by: furtive

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 14:40

I've had 2 Seagates fail on me so avoid them myself now.

I have WD drives in my PC. Also don't Samsung (or someone) now own IBM's drive business - they are supposed to be pretty good.
Posted by: tman

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 14:50

At the end of the day, all brands are going to have horror stories so I guess you should just pick one that you like the look of and cross your fingers!

Hitachi bought out the IBM storage division. I think IBM might still have a small share in it.
Posted by: Roger

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 15:24

Quote:
I've had loads of issues with Maxtor drives. I've personally had about 5 drives fail and similar numbers for people I know.


I've had 2 IBM drives die, and 3 Maxtor drives die. Not yet had a Seagate die on me. As you say, everyone's got horror stories. As long as you've got good backup, it doesn't particularly matter.
Posted by: Dignan

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 15:31

It's really hard to ask a community like this which HDD brand they like. We've had a few discussions on this before, and each one had somebody posting something along the lines of:

"I've used ten hard drives from [company name], and they all failed on me, so I never buy from that company again."

I started out with Western Digital and I like them. I messed up one drive myself and found their warranty return process to be excellent. I now have two Western Digital drives in my machine, and two Seagates. All of them are SATA drives, and they all work fine so far (knocking my desk).

When it comes down to it, I don't worry about this stuff too much. Yes, it would supremely suck if I lost my drives, and I had to lose all my movies and music, but in the end it's just data and it's really just for fun for me. As long as I've backed up my important files (documents, pictures/photos, web site work, Quicken data, emails, etc), then I don't lose any sleep over it.

So get whatever drive you want. Go for the good performers with the big capacities. I picked the Seagates because I wanted quiet drives. They're very quiet (although they seem to have a veeery high-pitched whine to them, but I usually don't notice that).

Good luck to you! I love adding hard disk space!
Posted by: tman

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 15:35

Quote:
When it comes down to it, I don't worry about this stuff too much. Yes, it would supremely suck if I lost my drives, and I had to lose all my movies and music, but in the end it's just data and it's really just for fun for me. As long as I've backed up my important files (documents, pictures/photos, web site work, Quicken data, emails, etc), then I don't lose any sleep over it.

Yup. Exactly. The only stuff that is truely irreplaceable would be photos and emails. Everything else you can in theory recreate. Just remember to also test your backups!
Posted by: andy

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 15:49

Quote:
The only stuff that is truely irreplaceable would be photos and emails. Everything else you can in theory recreate. Just remember to also test your backups!


I'd add to that accounts and source code...

My photos are now taking up 30GB of my RAID5 drive, I'm either going to have to expand the drive sometime soon or start deleting MP3s.

The annoying thing is that I already have two extra 18GB drives to add to it, but before I can expand the array I have to:

- upgrade the motherboard BIOS
- upgrade some other bit of motherboard firmware
- upgrade the RAID card firmware
- upgrade the Windows driver for the RAID card

It isn't clear from the Dell docs which order these steps have to be done in...

It doesn't help that most of the upgrades have to be done from a floppy and that the floppy drive in the server is long dead.

What I should probably do is give up on the SCSI RAID5 array and just add a SATA card and three 200GB SATA external drives.

As to backup, I think I have said here before that I use a small mini-itx box with a 120GB drive in it at a friend's house, synced via rsync over DSL overnight. I've also recently added a 160GB drive to my desktop machine, so my data is now on the RAID5 drive on the server, a local mirror and a remote mirror. So I hope never to lose and data due to drive failure
Posted by: Cris

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 16:11

I use Maxtor Drives. Never had one fail yet. I've had IBM, Seagate and WD drives fail on me in the past.

They are cheap, quiet and run at an ok temp. But I would go with RAID also, I have that on my main server. You can't go without backup these days!

Cheers

Cris.
Posted by: tahir

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 17:26

Quote:
It doesn't help that most of the upgrades have to be done from a floppy and that the floppy drive in the server is long dead.


I had the same problem earlier this year, managed to find a boot cd creator that you could use to flash BIOS:

http://bootdisk.com/
Posted by: tahir

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 17:31

I've had most makes fail on me, there's nothing like having an on site AND off site backup. I use an HD in an internal IDE case thing to as my on site backup, I back up from that to a HD in my PC at work.
Posted by: tahir

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 17:33

Quote:
- upgrade the motherboard BIOS
- upgrade some other bit of motherboard firmware
- upgrade the RAID card firmware
- upgrade the Windows driver for the RAID card



I did it in the order you've listed, kept on until it started working.
Posted by: andy

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 17:39

Quote:
kept on until it started working


That is the bit that I don't like the sound of...
Posted by: Robotic

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 17:42

<shameless threadjack>
Let me see if I've got this straight-
It's no good to trust any particular brand of drive because drive failure is just a part of life and the best solution is to be prepared for it.
The best preparation is some sort of backup plan- either synced mirrors or RAID5 boxes.
Data storage has two basic 'constraints'- getting enough space and making it reliable/robust.
I'm trying to get an outline in my head of the specific 'robustness' strategy involved, so pardon my mental gear grinding. Please feel free to clarify or correct me (it's a forum, and that's the whole point).
Data is best to store on RAID - either internal (card) or external (NAS). I suspect that internal has faster access and is less obtrusive- what other advantages does it have?
OS and programs are best placed on individual drives (and/or separate partitions of an internal RAID).
OS and programs shouldn't (or can't?) be run from RAID and therefore should be backed up (or at least the personal configuration files) to some safe data storage configuration (again, either RAID or a mirrored drive).
If not backed up, OS and programs could just be rebuilt from the original source (which is just data). Hmm- if your OS is corrupt then you won't have access to the source data except via CD, so RAID storage of the source seems silly (but that's just the sort of thing I'm trying to figure out here, so go with me on this).
It seems from other threads that RAID card selection is deathly important, although (from this thread) drive brand is not.
I don't see the value in assembling arrays of small drives. Too much hassle for too little gain?

...and then there's the concept of data protection from threats external to the computer- ie: fire, flood, etc.
For this, some syncing of data to a remote RAID/server seems the proper way to go. Sort of out of the range of my concerns on this day, but probably an important consideration for the next few years.

My usage is simply personal/home use- I'm not thinking in terms of business operation, just music/photos/entertainment/personal records/etc storage and manipulation.
I'm running an old HP Pavilion with two large (40GB+) drives in it (no mirror) and a homebrew NAS (Debian/RAID5).
I'm sort of lazy about the whole back-up thing, so I haven't tried many things to ensure I can recover the HP (stuff on the Debian box should survive a drive death). I tried to set up an automatic backup via the tools Bill Gates provided me in the WinME on the HP, but that software only wants to store the recovery data on a 'removable' device, so I couldn't create the backup on the second drive or the NAS. Could I mount a directory on the NAS as such a device?
Or would that defeat the whole purpose? (ie: recovering the HP would then require the NAS to be reinstated as such a device before the HP could be rebuilt)
Then there's the technology-timeline to consider... new drives and storage solutions might make some of these concerns (above) moot. Like the Hitachi vertical bit drives. No worries with storage space, there!
If data storage solutions of the near future solve issues of space and reliability, then it doesn't seem like investing loadsof time, effort, and money into backup solutions for personal use is warranted. Obviously, some effort/time/money should be invested, but it's just a balance thing, I guess.

Hmm- lots to think about for my backup/recovery-newbie brain.
If you've stuck with me this far, I thank you for your time.
If you're inclined to respond, I'm interested and appreciate hearing your thoughts.
I should just dump $200 on an external USB drive to make my backups to, eh?
</shameless threadjack>
Posted by: tahir

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 17:44

Quote:
That is the bit that I don't like the sound of...


Depends how desperate you are, it took me 3 nights after work to sort it out. Brought my psoriasis up a treat too.
Posted by: JBjorgen

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 18:01

Quote:
<shameless threadjack>
Data storage has two basic 'constraints'- getting enough space and making it reliable/robust.
</shameless threadjack>


You forgot at least one other...speed.
Posted by: julf

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 18:18

Quote:
OS and programs shouldn't (or can't?) be run from RAID

Why not? I keep OS and progs on RAID 5 too. No probs.
Posted by: sein

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 19:03

Quote:
7V? Eww. You're not doing that nasty hack of connecting a fan between the 5V and 12V lines are you? If that fan dies and goes shortcircuit then wave the entire contents of your PC goodbye.

Is that likely? My fan actually came with a little cable which was wired up like that. Next time I open that machine, I'll see whether it still spins at 5v.

Quote:
When it comes down to it, I don't worry about this stuff too much. Yes, it would supremely suck if I lost my drives, and I had to lose all my movies and music, but in the end it's just data and it's really just for fun for me.

Yeah, if my movies, or MythTV recordings disappeared, I would barely blink. But my music, documents, photos and config is nice to have in RAID and backed up regularly.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 19:10

Quote:
7V? Eww. You're not doing that nasty hack of connecting a fan between the 5V and 12V lines are you? If that fan dies and goes shortcircuit then wave the entire contents of your PC goodbye.

I've done that hack myself at times. For adjusting fan speeds, it's quite convenient. Do you have a good reason to suspect it might damage a fan?
Posted by: Mataglap

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 19:34

Quote:
It's no good to trust any particular brand of drive because drive failure is just a part of life and the best solution is to be prepared for it.
The best preparation is some sort of backup plan- either synced mirrors or RAID5 boxes.

Any particular brand is a bad thing to make decisions on, all manufacturers have different model lines and different levels of manufacturing quality.

RAID (5 or 1) is not a backup. That's just hardware redundancy.

--Nathan
Posted by: tman

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 20:31

Quote:
Do you have a good reason to suspect it might damage a fan?

I never said it might damage a fan. More that if the fan does die for some reason then you have the chance that 12V will now be connected to the 5V line.
Posted by: tman

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 20:33

Quote:
RAID (5 or 1) is not a backup. That's just hardware redundancy.

Yup. RAID is for when a drive fails. It doesn't stop you from accidently formatting the wrong partition or deleting the wrong file.
Posted by: Robotic

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 21:06

Quote:
Quote:
OS and programs shouldn't (or can't?) be run from RAID

Why not? I keep OS and progs on RAID 5 too. No probs.

Hmm-
When I set up the Debian machine I had to create partitions for the OS that were definitely not part of the RAID protected portion.
That was for software RAID, though, so I guess I have a little more to learn about the possibilities of drive arrays. (no suprise there)
Posted by: Robotic

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 21:12

Quote:
RAID (5 or 1) is not a backup. That's just hardware redundancy.

--Nathan

Yes, of course. I meant to differentiate between a single drive that you just copy files to (as a backup) vs. copying files to a storage array. My post was not very clear.
The 'syncing' is the backup, the storage arrangement is simply that.
Both require some amount of concerted selection process... which is what I'm trying to inform myself about.
Posted by: Ezekiel

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 21:24

Hardware RAID:
Upside: speed & transparency to the OS
Downside: typically controller-specific. You can't unplug your raid drives from one controller and plug into another brand and expect it to work. Costs $.

Software Raid:
Upside: Free (no extra $) if your OS supports it
Downside: Possible performance issue since the CPU has to think about it.

In all cases RAID won't protect you from virii, or human error.

If you must choose bewteen RAID and an easy, complete data backup plan, my money is to set up a backup first. Unless you have 100% uptime needs and can't cope with rework since last backup, set up the backup first.

I prefer NAS devices (roll your own included) over a fast network for backup.

Backup and RAID are complimentary. RAID helps keep your machine up when a HD fails. Backup can save your bacon in the event of a drive failure as well, it just takes longer.

The best solution is to use both. Use backup to save you from yourself, and RAID to keep you up in case of HD failure.

Apologies if I've overstated the obvious.

-Zeke
Posted by: Robotic

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 21:26

Quote:
You forgot at least one other...speed.

Yup- speed, flexibility, ease of use... all important factors, no doubt. In my mind and for my uses, though, none are as important as the two primaries: space and reliability.
I'm not too worried if my backup solution runs slowly, just so long as it does what it's supposed to.
That said- if my 'backup solution' is actually part of the standard function of the machine, then, yes- speed rapidly becomes an issue. (heh)
I'll have to read some more about hardware RAID5- Is it completely invisible to the motherboard? I mean, does the OS and everything go onto the array (unlike my software RAID5) ?
Posted by: AndrewT

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 15/12/2005 23:58

Now that we've kinda ventured into data security here I have a question; can anyone suggest a good program for backing up across DVD RW media in a WinXP environment? I'm talking file recovery as opposed to restoring a bootable WinXP OS from a trashed HDD. I feel very self-conscious saying this, but cheap or free is good for me!
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 16/12/2005 00:46

Many software RAID solutions cannot be used on boot partitions for the simple fact that the BIOS (or whatever boots your computer) has to be able to read it in order to get to the OS where the RAID software can run, and, obviously, the BIOS doesn't have the ability to work against a RAID. This is irrelevant when talking about hardware RAID, since it will be presented to the computer as a standard storage device.

There are some software RAID solutions where you can mirror your boot drive. The BIOS boots off of one of the mirrors, and once the OS loads the RAID software it attaches the other mirror(s) to the "main" mirror. Not all of them can do this, though, as it requires that the mirrors be indistinguishable from unRAIDed partitions, and many keep metadata on the same partition as the actual data.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 16/12/2005 02:59

Quote:
if the fan does die for some reason then you have the chance that 12V will now be connected to the 5V line.

Is this really what would happen? And if so, would the power supply be damaged?
Posted by: lectric

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 16/12/2005 04:06

For backup, I use AMANDA. As far as the fan shorting out, sure, it could happen. Most likely it'd harm the power supply and possibly kill the drive. You would, however, notice problems before that, I would wager.
Posted by: julf

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 16/12/2005 08:02

Quote:
Many software RAID solutions cannot be used on boot partitions

True. The solution is to have a really minimal partition (a few Mb) containing just bootloader/kernel. Everything else (including root partition) can usually be on RAID. With multiple boot blocks spread over several disks, you still have the redundancy.
Posted by: Roger

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 16/12/2005 09:36

Quote:
Is this really what would happen? And if so, would the power supply be damaged?


It could happen. And it's not the power supply that you're worried about. It's all of the 5v components in the PC suddenly being made to run with 12v.
Posted by: Roger

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 21/12/2005 13:08

Quote:
Drives will fail. Period.


A good point I just saw on Slashdot (Seagate buying Maxtor): Check the warranty period on any new disk. Most manufacturers will only offer 1 year warranty. Others will offer 3 years, others 5 years.

Generally speaking, pick the one with the longest warranty -- it means that they're willing to stand behind their product. And, even if it does fail, you can get a new one.
Posted by: matthew_k

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 21/12/2005 14:40

Quote:
it means that they're willing to stand behind their product. And, even if it does fail, you can get a new one.

Not necessarily. I think seagate finally looked at the statistics and realized what they could do to stand out. The majority of drives die immediatly or not for many many years. Some die at all ages, but they're the exception. The kicker is that replacing the top of the line drive 3 years ago costs next to nothing today. The waranty won't get your data back, and it's not going to prevent your drive from dieing.

So, buy the longer waranty if it's the same price, but it's really not that great of a deal to have a 1/100 chance of getting a three year old hard drive sometime in the future.

Matthew
Posted by: Roger

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 21/12/2005 14:48

Quote:
The majority of drives die immediatly or not for many many years. Some die at all ages, but they're the exception.


The manufacturers at the time were saying: "there's no point in having an extended warranty because it's not going to fail after a year".

Which is arse. If it's not going to fail, you can have a warranty as long as you want, because it'll never get claimed against.

There's no harm in having a 3 year warranty, because your product's not going to go wrong.
Posted by: Robotic

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 21/12/2005 15:46

Quote:
Quote:
The majority of drives die immediatly or not for many many years. Some die at all ages, but they're the exception.


The manufacturers at the time were saying: "there's no point in having an extended warranty because it's not going to fail after a year".

Which is arse. If it's not going to fail, you can have a warranty as long as you want, because it'll never get claimed against.

There's no harm in having a 3 year warranty, because your product's not going to go wrong.


If you change that wording to:
The manufacturers at the time were saying: "there's no point in having an extended warranty because if the drive is faulty it will fail within a year."
you'll see that it makes a little more logical sense. I'm sure they never expected the drives to last forever.
Mathew makes the best point- if your three year old drive fails, do you really want to replace it with a similar drive? I wouldn't.
What's that addage about memory size and cost changing? It's some 'law' named for an early computer engineer.
My $0.02 is now submitted.
Posted by: Robotic

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 21/12/2005 16:49

There's a raucous exchange going on at Slashdot in the discussion forum regarding the announcement of Seagate buying Maxtor.
Everyone is weighing in on what drive they like best or worst or how they dodge the drive failure bullet.
Fun times!
Posted by: hybrid8

Re: Desktop HDD recommendations - 22/12/2005 02:39

The same discussion that went on when Maxtor scooped up Quantum?

This is a case of, arguably, the two best desktop drive manufacturers merging a product line (eventually). Wonder if quality will go up or down... Seagate was the biggest before, now they should be "by far" the biggest drive manufacturer/supplier. Interesting times.

I used to buy Seagate SCSI products, then went Maxtor exclusively for IDE. More recently went back to Seagate when putting together my meda system and have purchased 4 drives since. Knock on wood, they've all been fine (and quiet).

Bruno