On Wed, 2013-01-09 at 11:19 -0500, Derek Atkins wrote: > That is kind of the point, but I'm trying to find ones that *will* last > 3-4 years but wont break the bank today. > > I don't mind buying new drives periodically. But I'm trying to figure > out which ones to buy now. Kinda hard to buy a bunch of drives > simultaneously that are different or from different batches. ;)
The Google 2007 paper "Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population" (http://research.google.com/pubs/pub32774.html) basically laid to rest the myth that there's any significant difference between drives or makers, and I don't think anything substantial has changed since. The current price/capacity sweet spot then becomes the focus, and last I checked that was 3TB 7200rpm. There have been issues with near-simultaneous failure of many drives from one manufacturer, though -- the massive failure of Fujitsu drives manufactured in 2000-2001 with Cirrus Logic chips encapsulated in faulty plastic being the most infamous example (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/09/24/great_fujitsu_hard_drive_fiasco/). Ever since I got bit by that, I've tried to mix drives from different manufacturers in arrays, but it's a real chore to source enough different types of drives with close enough specs, and I've sometimes had to cave. -Chris _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss