HDD Spins up and down again at power on

[momaka]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

Perhaps down to different usage. My 6TB hard drive had over 800GB torrented to it over 3 days recently. That P4/C2D lightly tickled an office suite or the internet if it was lucky.

Right.
But I don't think usage affects mechanical HDDs as much. Rather, the failure modes usually seem to be related either to spindle bearing wear (long power-on hours), head wear (frequent power-cycling or head parking), and magnetic surface quality of the platters (variations in manufacturing, so nothing can be done against this.)

[diif]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

Well, maybe not in months, but certainly a good number of them probably drop out after 2-4 years (maybe longer if the HDDs do come with a long warranty, like in your case.) Still, I just can't see them approaching the durability of the older 160 GB and smaller HDDs that still putter around in PCs in a forgotten corner of a dusty office somewhere. Even though most have gone to the recycler now, I still see such old dinosaurs at various small businesses running Dell Optiplex or similar PCs from the P4 and C2D era for whatever task they were assigned to in the first place from 10-15 years ago.

Perhaps down to different usage. My 6TB hard drive had over 800GB torrented to it over 3 days recently. That P4/C2D lightly tickled an office suite or the internet if it was lucky.

[dicky96]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

I have two of these 2TB Seagate drives

Date codes

16021 - failed
14266 - still working

So the newer one failed

[momaka]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

I don't think all multi terabyte drive fails in months, like you would assume reading this forum

Well, maybe not in months, but certainly a good number of them probably drop out after 2-4 years (maybe longer if the HDDs do come with a long warranty, like in your case.) Still, I just can't see them approaching the durability of the older 160 GB and smaller HDDs that still putter around in PCs in a forgotten corner of a dusty office somewhere. Even though most have gone to the recycler now, I still see such old dinosaurs at various small businesses running Dell Optiplex or similar PCs from the P4 and C2D era for whatever task they were assigned to in the first place from 10-15 years ago.

[CapLeaker]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

do they still do that? haven't bought a WD green since.

[redwire]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

Older WD Green drives had problems with Intellipark, it was auto parking heads so frequently (after every 8 seconds) the drives wear out. I changed that setting to 500 seconds using WDIDLE3.exe and no problems with them.

[CapLeaker]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

Back a few years ago I bought a WD green 2TB EARS drive. 13 months later, bad sectors without an end. Actually 2 weeks after the warranty ran out.

[SMDFlea]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

"I don't think all multi terabyte drive fails in months, like you would assume reading this forum"

It depends if you`re mixing SMR and CMR drives

[Per Hansson]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

When I see someone tell me they had a 2+ TB HDD work for more than 5 years, that's they day I'll switch to modern HDDs for long-term storage.

Until then, my important data is to still remain on 7200.7 Seagates and similarly old drives that have proven to be reliable.

Well, I have 4TB WD Se hard drives in a RAID5 array since the summer of 2014.
They come with 5 year warranty that is now expired.
I am sure that you can find more experiences like that.
I don't think all multi terabyte drive fails in months, like you would assume reading this forum

[CapLeaker]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

At the moment we've got 14 WD regular Reds spinning. 4x2TB, 4x3TB and 8x4TB.
The 4TB EFRX has 2 different versions. Out of them 8 drives 2 went bad and those were both the early version. These run also 4 degrees C or so hotter than the second version of the EFRX. So far so good... had no more failures (knock on wood).

[momaka]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

its not only the corrosion problem. recently, all the wd drives seem to have the annoying head parking problem.

Neither of these are major problems, though.

Like I said, the main problem is that there is too much data per cm^2... or in^2... or whichever way you want to measure it. Data tracks are much narrower now on the HDD, and as such, the landing zones for the heads have very little room for error. This is probably not an issue when the HDD is new and the magnetic coating still fresh. But as any magnetic media, age will only make it worse over time. And with today's high density HDDs, it just doesn't take much degradation before the HDD can no longer read a sector, track, or even entire area(s) on the platter(s). Sure they have made improvements in the firmware the way the head tracks and also today's HDDs probably have much finer mechanical tolerances compared to older HDDs. But I think we are reaching a point where those improvements can get us so far, and now manufacturers are just increasing HDD space at the expense of reliability and storage lifetime.

looking forward, the founder of the internet seems to be looking into dna based data storage where data/information is stored in/on dna molecules. looks very interesting with regards to how much data can be squeezed in there!

Maybe.

I think a longer-term solution would be to stop producing/storing so much unnecessary data. But that's probably not going to happen. :\

4TB WD Reds

Yeah, that's what I expected.

When I see someone tell me they had a 2+ TB HDD work for more than 5 years, that's they day I'll switch to modern HDDs for long-term storage.

Until then, my important data is to still remain on 7200.7 Seagates and similarly old drives that have proven to be reliable.

[larrymoencurly]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

I just had that happen a few weeks ago because I used a SATA-IDE adapter that measured at least 1.2 ohms per wire, with some wires measuring 6 ohms.

[CapLeaker]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

Yes.
Anything from them made in the last 10 years I would consider unreliable.


2+ TB HDDs??
Not a surprise. Modern drives are pushing data density way too far.

4TB WD Reds

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

if Western Digital can't get their corrosion problem sorted out!

its not only the corrosion problem. recently, all the wd drives seem to have the annoying head parking problem. even the enterprise level wd hard drives also park their heads. its not as aggressive as the blue/green drives but still annoying to have. not sure whats up with that. even seagate is in on the head parking bandwagon.

i think i give up on any new high capacity hard drive now. the tech seems to have reached saturation point and can no longer be squeezed further without taking liberties with your priceless data. looking forward, the founder of the internet seems to be looking into dna based data storage where data/information is stored in/on dna molecules. looks very interesting with regards to how much data can be squeezed in there!

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

Modern drives are pushing data density way too far.

Even when you're talking about spinners, that reminds me of the reason I was frowning at QLC SSDs! What's next? Are they going to manufacture PLC (pent-layer-cell) SSDs without getting the kinks worked out?

[momaka]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

Seagate - aren't they known for their failure rates?

Yes.
Anything from them made in the last 10 years I would consider unreliable.

Don't get me wrong, but I just had a bunch of WD Red's fail that were only 18 months old. Arrgh!

2+ TB HDDs??
Not a surprise. Modern drives are pushing data density way too far.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

Don't get me wrong, but I just had a bunch of WD Red's fail that were only 18 months old. Arrgh!

Looks like the tables may have turned. Seagate with their high-end HDDs, possibly better than Western Digital now!

They extremely likely will be, if Western Digital can't get their corrosion problem sorted out!

I have a recent Black HDD sitting around and it looks like corrosion happening already!

[CapLeaker]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

Don't get me wrong, but I just had a bunch of WD Red's fail that were only 18 months old. Arrgh!

[Stefan Payne]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

Seagate - aren't they known for their failure rates?

[Chaos-Acid]

Re: HDD Spins up and down again at power on

I had this issue before on a macbook that a friend asked me to look at - the hard drive was only detectable sometimes, i managed to format the entire drive again and then use a data recovery application to get about 90% of his data back,

Hope that helps?