Re: Hard Drives

[Listmister]

On Jun 2, 2014, at 8:11 PM, Dale Hoffman  wrote:

> When I purchase a  new drive I look for those designated "enterprise grade".
> They're the ones with 5 year warranties.
> 
> On Jun 2, 2014, at 3:23 PM, Nestamicky  wrote:
> 
>> This is all very good discussion. Wonderful information here. Thanks a lot 
>> guys! Perhaps we could move it along more to the point of practical 
>> information, if folks could pitch in with specs to look for when buying 
>> modern hard drives. Most people simply go for size these days, but as Bruce 
>> and others have pointed, that could indeed be the curse. So, what tech specs 
>> must one keep in mind, folks?
>> 
> 
> 
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Re: Hard Drives

[Baldassare Guzzo]

I have a few Seagate 7200 3.5" ATA drives still running from 2001.   They are 
13 years old and have been transferred to different G4's but the drives are 
perfect.   They all came with the 5 year warranty.  Various Macbook and iBook 
drives I have had failures.  So far my Macbook Pro late 2011 with a Toshiba 
drive seems to be very good.  So what to look for in a drive these days?  There 
does not seem to be any concrete data on what to buy for extended reliability.  
SSD seems to be more reliable but prices are still a little high. Samsung and 
Intel lead with the lowest failure rates of SSD's.  HDD Brands have been sold 
or merged with other companies. Search around and you will get a hundred views 
on reliability and many ideas on warranty issues.  Seems like all you can 
really do is make good backup's and even replace your backup drives every so 
often.  


On Jun 2, 2014, at 9:03 PM, peterh...@cruzio.com wrote:

> 
>> When I purchase a  new drive I look for those designated "enterprise
>> grade". They're the ones with 5 year warranties.
> 
> Used to be everything had a 5 year warranty.
> 
> Then the consumer/prosumer drives drives were reduced to 3 years.
> 
> Now the consumer/prosumer drives are reduced to 2 years.
> 
> The enterprise drives remain at 5 years, which is good.
> 
> Seagate has relegated Barracuda to consumer/prosumer and has introduced
> new enterprise drives.
> 
> Seagate's 2.5" offerings (Momentus, for example) are still the best in my
> book, which is somewhat strange as Seagate didn't come out with a 2.5"
> offering until years after IBM (now Hitachi) and Toshiba, and, later, WD.
> 
> Historically, IBM's SCSI 2.5" drives (500 and 1000 megabyte capacity) were
> originally intended for a UC-Berkeley-inspired RAID product, with the
> drives physically mounted on a blade-type controller card.
> 
> Product never got off the ground, but IBM had already purchased Mylex
> (remember them ?) which was supposed to design the cards, with IBM
> supposed to make the packaging and firmware.
> 
> IBM had already confirmed the concept of commodity drives in a
> "Count-Key-Data" array product, the 9345, using its own 5.25" SCSI drives,
> and the 2.5" version was logically a "die shrink" concept applied to the
> 9345.
> 
> IBM is still largely "Count-Key-Data", a concept which never seems to die.
> 
> 
> 
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Re: Hard Drives

[peterhaas]

> When I purchase a  new drive I look for those designated "enterprise
> grade". They're the ones with 5 year warranties.

Used to be everything had a 5 year warranty.

Then the consumer/prosumer drives drives were reduced to 3 years.

Now the consumer/prosumer drives are reduced to 2 years.

The enterprise drives remain at 5 years, which is good.

Seagate has relegated Barracuda to consumer/prosumer and has introduced
new enterprise drives.

Seagate's 2.5" offerings (Momentus, for example) are still the best in my
book, which is somewhat strange as Seagate didn't come out with a 2.5"
offering until years after IBM (now Hitachi) and Toshiba, and, later, WD.

Historically, IBM's SCSI 2.5" drives (500 and 1000 megabyte capacity) were
originally intended for a UC-Berkeley-inspired RAID product, with the
drives physically mounted on a blade-type controller card.

Product never got off the ground, but IBM had already purchased Mylex
(remember them ?) which was supposed to design the cards, with IBM
supposed to make the packaging and firmware.

IBM had already confirmed the concept of commodity drives in a
"Count-Key-Data" array product, the 9345, using its own 5.25" SCSI drives,
and the 2.5" version was logically a "die shrink" concept applied to the
9345.

IBM is still largely "Count-Key-Data", a concept which never seems to die.



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Re: Hard Drives

[Alex Sciortino]

That isn't a bad idea...

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Re: Hard Drives

[Dale Hoffman]

When I purchase a  new drive I look for those designated "enterprise grade".
They're the ones with 5 year warranties.

On Jun 2, 2014, at 3:23 PM, Nestamicky  wrote:

> This is all very good discussion. Wonderful information here. Thanks a lot 
> guys! Perhaps we could move it along more to the point of practical 
> information, if folks could pitch in with specs to look for when buying 
> modern hard drives. Most people simply go for size these days, but as Bruce 
> and others have pointed, that could indeed be the curse. So, what tech specs 
> must one keep in mind, folks?
> 

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Re: Hard Drives

[Bruce Johnson]

On Jun 2, 2014, at 12:23 PM, Nestamicky  wrote:

> Most people simply go for size these days, but as Bruce and others have 
> pointed, that could indeed be the curse. So, what tech specs must one keep in 
> mind, folks?

Sadly, for the majority of the models under discussion here the answer is 'See 
if you can find a 7200 rpm drive'. These systems are cursed with obsolete 
technology.

IDE-based SSD's are tiny and hugely expensive, 7200 RPM drives are getting 
scarce, particularly for laptops, but even in 3.5" models.

You can put good, fast SSD's in a G5 tower, and for a boot volume this probably 
make sense, since you can keep the older, slower drives for data.

Making sure you have a good, current backup is probably the very best strategy; 
this makes it much less of an issue when a drive dies.

But basically, the best possible speed-up strategy for a G3-G5 system is to 
move to an Intel Mac :-/

There you have a host of solutions: for instance a modern Mini with an SSD is 
like a different critter than the stock ones with their dog-slow 5400 RPM 
HDD's. Boot times go to seconds, from minutes, and Disk IO can finally keep up 
with the CPU and network IO, especially if they're on a gigabit network.

Also these drives are vastly cheaper:

 These were on sale for $104 a couple weeks ago. (get on their email list you 
can sometimes score awesome deals).


-- 
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs

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Re: Hard Drives

[Alex Sciortino]

On Jun 2, 2014 12:23 PM, "Nestamicky"  wrote:
>
> On 14-06-02 11:34 AM, Bruce Johnson wrote:
>>
>> This is all very good discussion. Wonderful information here. Thanks a
lot guys! Perhaps we could move it along more to the point of practical
information, if folks could pitch in with specs to look for when buying
modern hard drives. Most people simply go for size these days, but as Bruce
and others have pointed, that could indeed be the curse. So, what tech
specs must one keep in mind, folks?
>
That is a good point. What should we look for to ensure we get a reliable
HDD

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Re: Hard Drives

[Nestamicky]

On 14-06-02 11:34 AM, Bruce Johnson wrote:
> This is directly related to reducing the number of platters and the thickness 
> of platters as well. In the end it's futile race, because solid state drives 
> are also plummeting in price and leaping up in size, and since they're only 
> limited by solid state fabrication techniques, they'll be a lot more 
> reliable...when was the last time you had RAM go bad?
This is all very good discussion. Wonderful information here. Thanks a
lot guys! Perhaps we could move it along more to the point of practical
information, if folks could pitch in with specs to look for when buying
modern hard drives. Most people simply go for size these days, but as
Bruce and others have pointed, that could indeed be the curse. So, what
tech specs must one keep in mind, folks?

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Re: Hard Drives

[Bruce Johnson]

On Jun 2, 2014, at 10:02 AM, peterh...@cruzio.com wrote:

>> 
>> It's a consequence of the bottom falling out of HDD prices, and the
>> staggeringly high rate of HDD size increase, I expect.
> 
> AND, dropping the size (thickness) from 12.5mm (although a few of those
> are still around) to 9.5mm, or less.

This is directly related to reducing the number of platters and the thickness 
of platters as well. In the end it's futile race, because solid state drives 
are also plummeting in price and leaping up in size, and since they're only 
limited by solid state fabrication techniques, they'll be a lot more 
reliable...when was the last time you had RAM go bad?


-- 
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs

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Re: Hard Drives

[peterhaas]

> It's a consequence of the bottom falling out of HDD prices, and the
> staggeringly high rate of HDD size increase, I expect.

AND, dropping the size (thickness) from 12.5mm (although a few of those
are still around) to 9.5mm, or less.




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Re: Hard Drives

[Bruce Johnson]

On Jun 2, 2014, at 4:05 AM, Alex Sciortino  wrote:

> Hello! Today I made an interesting observation and was wondering if anybody 
> else has had the same experience. Today the 6mo old HDD in my MBP failed, but 
> I have the original 320gb in a PM G5 and even an original 13gb HDD in a iMac 
> G3 still running with out issues. I have had quite a few HDDs that were 
> newish fail in the past few years. Thanks!

It's a consequence of the bottom falling out of HDD prices, and the 
staggeringly high rate of HDD size increase, I expect. 

Engineering corners are being cut to keep prices low, and hardware is pushed to 
the limit to do things like put 1TB on one drive platter.

I'd wager that 320GB one has two platters, and that 13 GB one may even have 4. 
This means larger, more mechanically rugged read heads, and beefier mechanicals 
to move all that mass around.

The controllers will have more discrete, physically larger components. More 
mass == more thermal mass to deal with heat and power.

In the days when you could charge $400 for a HDD, QC could be much more 
thorough than when you can charge < $100.

-- 
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs

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Hard Drives

[Alex Sciortino]

Hello! Today I made an interesting observation and was wondering if anybody
else has had the same experience. Today the 6mo old HDD in my MBP failed,
but I have the original 320gb in a PM G5 and even an original 13gb HDD in a
iMac G3 still running with out issues. I have had quite a few HDDs that
were newish fail in the past few years. Thanks!

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