Need new 2x data drives but unsure which type to get

[pete_agreatguy]

Hi all,

Situation:

• I had a data drive (seagate 2tb barracuda hdd) fail just before Christmas
• Need to replace it and I've decided to get 2 new drives and put them in RAID 1
• I want to have the drives which will last the longest

Options:

• HDD - more space for my money and less speed
• Hybrid - the inbetweener
• SSD - all about speed

Questions:

Disregard:

• reliability - that's why I have decided to go with RAID 1 for total redundancy
• cost - not a factor but would rather go with the cheapest option due to getting two drives

1) Which type would last the longest? Am I correct in that it would be the HDD?

2) Does a hybrid last the same amount of time as a normal HDD?

Thank you for your aid in advance

 

[anruari]

the answer to this question is dependant on the use you will put your drives to
HDD's are mechanical drives, and wear out on a mechanical basis

SSD's use NAND Flash memory which can only be used to write data a limited number of times. this number of times varies significantly with the technology used. 3 main variants are SLC, TLC and MLC.

If longevity is your goal, a good quality SLC drive should last longest unless you're saving many many GB onto the drive every day.

REad the stickies.

HDD's last about 3 - 5 years of regular use before they are prone to burn-out.
top end SSD's may last up to 10 years.
Cheap SSD's are probably comparable to HDD's.

SSHD's will present the weaknesses of both technologies, and just provide more to go wrong. not a good option for long term storage.

 

[anruari]

Some SSD's use internal multi-raid technology as a safeguard against failure.
when the drive starts to fail... provided you check the logs, you'll get warning that it's nearing the end of life long before you loose data, as it intelegently moves data out of cells that are suspect

 

[pete_agreatguy]

the answer to this question is dependant on the use you will put your drives to
HDD's are mechanical drives, and wear out on a mechanical basis

I would be using it for data files (including documents, pictures, short digital camera videos). Some game files (mainly mods) would also be on this drive and their size can be in the GB range.

Game files would be written to the drives on a weekly basis but they would be read on a daily basis.

Documents would be written and read on a daily basis. Where as pictures and short videos would be monthly on average.

Does that help answer your question?

 

[Armageus]

I had a data drive (seagate 2tb barracuda hdd) fail just before Christmas

All brands fail, so don't be put off just because a Seagate failed - still just as much an option as any other brand.

Need to replace it and I've decided to get 2 new drives and put them in RAID 1

Disregard:reliability - that's why I have decided to go with RAID 1 for total redundancy

Have you got a backup in addition to running these drives in RAID 1? RAID isn't a backup, it doesn't protect you from Viruses, accidental deletion, data corruption (which can end up mirrored in RAID 1).

If you haven't already got a viable backup option, then yes still buy 2 drives, but use one and stick the other one in a USB caddy and use it to make weekly backups.

I want to have the drives which will last the longest

With hard drives, look at either NAS drives e.g. WD Red etc, or look a step above at enterprise drives (which are normally even better built - e.g. with 5 year warranties showing the confidence they have in them).

Unfortunately Enterprise drives tend to be at odds with:

cost - not a factor but would rather go with the cheapest option due to getting two drives

But you can't really afford to skimp if this irreplaceable data.


With regards to your other points about SSD or Hybrids, you can immediately rule out Hybrids, as the manufacturers don't provide "enterprise-level" hybrids, and so makes you question their long term reliability. SSDs if you can afford them in the sizes you need make sense, as providing you use a monitoring tool, should have plenty of indication that they are at the end of the life (although the exception being SSDs that are just instantly dead e.g. not recognised, but that is still a better situation than potentially flaky data on a failing hard drive - i.e. at least you know the data on that drive is gone).

 

[pete_agreatguy]

All brands fail, so don't be put off just because a Seagate failed - still just as much an option as any other brand.

Granted, I'm contemplating getting either Hitachi or Western Digital. Preferably the former.

Have you got a backup in addition to running these drives in RAID 1? RAID isn't a backup, it doesn't protect you from Viruses, accidental deletion, data corruption (which can end up mirrored in RAID 1).

If you haven't already got a viable backup option, then yes still buy 2 drives, but use one and stick the other one in a USB caddy and use it to make weekly backups.

I got the impression RAID 1 was a case of complete data protection from videos on YouTube and Blogs by Backblaze

My choice of RAID 1 was purely based on "as a backup solution". Have I made the wrong decision here?

With hard drives, look at either NAS drives e.g. WD Red etc, or look a step above at enterprise drives (which are normally even better built - e.g. with 5 year warranties showing the confidence they have in them).

Duly noted

With regards to your other points about SSD or Hybrids, you can immediately rule out Hybrids, as the manufacturers don't provide "enterprise-level" hybrids, and so makes you question their long term reliability. SSDs if you can afford them in the sizes you need make sense, as providing you use a monitoring tool, should have plenty of indication that they are at the end of the life (although the exception being SSDs that are just instantly dead e.g. not recognised, but that is still a better situation than potentially flaky data on a failing hard drive - i.e. at least you know the data on that drive is gone).

Like I said I will be writing large files weekly.

 

[Armageus]

I got the impression RAID 1 was a case of complete data protection from videos on YouTube and Blogs by Backblaze

My choice of RAID 1 was purely based on "as a backup solution". Have I made the wrong decision here?

Whilst RAID has it's place, by itself it isn't a backup solution. It can help provide redundancy (hence the R in RAID), and provide improved resiliency against disk failure, but it does not protect against the things mentioned above/below.

E.g. Accidentally delete some family photos - oops RAID 1 will delete them from both drives, or Virus corrupts your important documents - yep again will be mirrored onto the other drive.

A good backup plan should include something completely separate to your main data store. So if your PC is your main store, then backup to a drive in another PC, or use a removable/USB hard drive. If you have a reasonable internet connection, then a cloud backup service is a good offsite option.

edit:
RAID is more about ensuring availability (or uptime) of data. E.g. in "my" servers at work, they all run RAID1 or RAID10, purely so that if a drive fails, the server stays up and doesn't impact people's work. Most of our servers are then "mirrored" to an identical standby server, so that if the first server fails, it's a relatively quick task to point at the other server. After that we have "cold" backups of data stored on several different servers and NASes around site that can be used to restore from different points of time e.g. from a day, or week ago (in case corruption or something else is noticed and need to roll back), but they take longer to restore from and require downtime. We also have backups taken off-site, so worst case the servers could be rebuilt in the event of something more serious like fire or flood.

 

[Disco_P]

6 years ago I pretty much lost my entire digital childhood and it was kinda heartbreaking. It taught me to be very thorough with my backups.

Regular backups make "reliability" a non factor. Other than avoiding pure garbage drives (OCZ petrol etc) I prioritise warranty such that if a drive dies I can get another without having to spend anything. WD occasionally sell portable drives with 5 year warranties - these are perfect.

You have to ask yourself whether you are protected against everything that might happen. Accidental deletion, file corruption, viruses/ransomware that affects every connected drive, (multiple) drive failure and localised destruction (fire/flood).

I use daily OS image plus important files backups to internal drives for the first two, a portable drive that has a backup of everything for next two and a 2nd portable drive at my parents for the last. I use bitlocker to encrypt my portable drives in case of theft as well.

 

[pete_agreatguy]

Hi all,

I've gone and replaced my failed hard Seagate Barracuda 2TB drive with a single internal HGST (Hitachi) 2TB Enterprise Ultrastar 7K6000. Got it for £135 which I thought was a great price considering it's a HGST and an Enterprise drive.

I also got an external 2TB Maxtor M3 USB 3.0 portable for backups. I'll use the Allway Sync to do weekly backups of my important data and data which I want to have backed up. I've already burned a few DVD's of software backups and pdf files I don't want to lose.

Thank you for your help. I also decided not to get 2x internal and put them in RAID. I'll just stick with the weekly backups and keep the 2TB HGST drive.

EDIT:

I did consider the SSD option but the price was too high for me as I'm going to be upgrading my system soon.

 

[Big.Wayne]

That's a good result pete, I'm glad Armageus chimed in with his suggestion because I was thinking the same thing.

It's a common mistake for some people to think RAID-1 will give their important files extra protection but that is actually only in the worst case scenario should one of the hard drives fail. As has been said above if you accidently delete an important file its gone from both drives.

In theory I think the best use of RAID-1 is for a cheaper enterprise solution than RAID-5 on a machine that really must not go offline. In this scenario if one of the hard drive fails then the machine doesn't blue screen and the user/s connected to it can carry on working until the techie can pop down to replace the failed drive and rebuild the array.

I've got a three drive solution I use for my builds for friends and clients

• C:\Windows & Games = Fast SSD
• D:\My Documents = Medium speed 3.5" HDD (1TB WD Blue)
• E:\Backups = Slow speed 3.5" HDD (3TB WD Green)

Just using Acronis True Image to take weekly snapshots of both the windows drive and data drive so the user has quite a good level of protection. The computer would have to burst into flames, be stolen or have two drives fail at the same time for data to be lost. To prevent utter disaster I personally have a small 2.5" SATA drive mounted in a USB3.0 caddy that gets connected every now and then just to keep a backup of my Data.

A three or four drive backup solution may seem OTT to some users but if you ever had a drive fail that holds irreplaceable data you will know it's not something you wish to go through again and one views backup solutions in a whole new light haha!

 

[pete_agreatguy]

It's not a networked computer (not in a business sense anyway) and there is only 1 user (me). It's my home rig which I use mainly for gaming (though to be precise, simulations), though I will start to learn video editing in the future as want to get back to doing Simulator videos.

 

[Big.Wayne]

Was the Seagate 2tb barracuda that failed under warranty? . . . also was the barracuda mounted in a cramped area where perhaps it overheated?. It's not uncommon for drives to fail but in my experience as a techie at least half the examples of a bOrked drive are when it's not been given adequate ventilation. I've seen some horrible OEM case designs that include extra drive bays buried in a stuffy corner of the case so the inexperienced user crams in a couple of fast WB Blacks 7,200rpm in the expansion bays and 15months down the line curses their bad luck at having a disk fail.

This may not be relevant to you pete but just thought it was worth mentioning, does the mounting point for 3.5" disks have a little bit of ventilation in your chassis? . . . do you have monitoring software to check the drives temperatures?

 

[Armageus]

Thank you for your help. I also decided not to get 2x internal and put them in RAID. I'll just stick with the weekly backups and keep the 2TB HGST drive.

Sounds like a great result and thanks for posting the outcome

In theory I think the best use of RAID-1 is for a cheaper enterprise solution than RAID-5 on a machine that really must not go offline.

RAID1 still has it's uses at home, but it primarily is about removing inconvenience. I.e. it would be catastrophic if a single drive failed and you had no backup, with a backup that becomes merely inconvenient. With RAID1 a drive failing has no effect on how you operate, but saves you the time of restoring all your data from a backup, and e.g. with a NAS etc, setting up network shares, user permissions etc.

RAID (and indeed reliability) is more important in business environments though, whilst backups are essential, have a drive failure cause downtime in some businesses can cause major disruption

 

[pete_agreatguy]

Hi guys,

Just want to pick your brains a bit more:

Currently I have a backup system image of my OS drive (with the use of Backupper - great software - better than Symantec's System Recovery in my opinion).

In your opinion, rather than using Allway Sync software [original plan] to do weekly backups, would it be better for me to simply make a drive image backup of my new HGST drive [containing my docs etc] or would it be better to stick with my original plan?

 

[pete_agreatguy]

Was the Seagate 2tb barracuda that failed under warranty? . . . also was the barracuda mounted in a cramped area where perhaps it overheated?. It's not uncommon for drives to fail but in my experience as a techie at least half the examples of a bOrked drive are when it's not been given adequate ventilation. I've seen some horrible OEM case designs that include extra drive bays buried in a stuffy corner of the case so the inexperienced user crams in a couple of fast WB Blacks 7,200rpm in the expansion bays and 15months down the line curses their bad luck at having a disk fail.

This may not be relevant to you pete but just thought it was worth mentioning, does the mounting point for 3.5" disks have a little bit of ventilation in your chassis? . . . do you have monitoring software to check the drives temperatures?

The drive was out of warranty. Here's what I was told from the data recovery company I used:

The diagnosis has been completed on your damaged HDD and the technician involved on the recovery has advised the following:
Diagnosis results have shown that the head assembly unit has failed. The technician has advised the next stage of the recovery process is to replace the complete head assembly unit, rebuild the HDD and then attempt to extract your data. This is a highly skilled process but unfortunately isn't infallible. The chance of a successful recovery once the process has been completed is approximately 70%.

With regards to cooling, there are no issues there. I've pasted below my setup from another thread on another forum where I was aiding someone with their cooling setup.

Last year I spent 2 weeks researching, developing a spreadsheet and programming some macros to find out which fans were the best for each type of fan [high air flow or high static pressure] (from those available on the market).

Here's what I found:

Useful information - What is PWM and what does it mean?


1. The best Static Pressure fans were produced by Noctua, specifically the industrial PWM fans 140mm. No surprise to us computer geeks.
2. The best (though "most" seems more appropriate) air flow fans were the Bitfenix Spectre Pro PWM series 140mm.

Here's an example for you on how they can affect your cooling ...

I own the Corsair 750D case. It came with 2x front high airflow fans 140mm and 1 more 140mm at the rear. For my full current setup see this post.

After the research, I upgraded my fans (if you want fans with LEDs I'd have to get the spreadsheets out. Off the top of my head I think Xigmatek fans were best when it came to those with LEDs as they had PWM); anyhoo, I digress.

As I was saying I upgraded my fans to the following:

3x Bitfenix Spectre Pro PWM 140mm fans (1 at the rear, 1 in the top [rear slot] and 1 in the front [top slot]) - to cool my graphics card and cpu (high airflow fans).

1x Noctua 140mm NF-A14-industrialppc 2000 ip67 pwm in the bottom front slot - to cool my 3.5" hard drives (high static pressure fan). And you thought graphics cards were named badly lol.

Let's compare ...

Original 140mm Corsair fans:
Airflow = 67.8 CFM
Static Pressure = 0.84 mmH20
Noise = 24 dBA
Speed = 1150 RPM

Upgraded 140mm fan (Bitfenix Spectre pro pwm):
Air Flow = 122.2 CFM <<< --- Highest air flow
Static Pressure = 2.8 mmH2O <<< --- not as much static pressure as the noctua but a considerably higher airflow
Noise = 29.2 dBA
Speed = 1800 RPM ±10%



Upgraded 140mm fan (Noctua):

Air Flow = 107.4 CFM <<< --- not as much airflow as the Bitfenix but a considerably higher static pressure
Static Pressure = 4.18 mmH2O <<< --- Highest static pressure
Noise = 31.5 dBA
Speed = 2000 RPM

RESULTS OF UPGRADING FANS:

Upon stress testing (click the link in the square brackets to see what software I used) [CPU, M/B, GPU, HDD], I found that my temperatures decreased by ... [I've listed the average temperature over a time period of XX minutes and in deg C].

CPU dropped by 27% under load = 34 [idle] to 39 [under load] - tested for 6 hours
GPU dropped by 15% under load = 22 [idle] to 67 [under load] - tested for 1 hour
M/B sensor dropped by 5% under load = 35 [idle] to 39 [under load] - tested for 1 hour
Hard drives dropped by 8-10% under load (3 SATAII 7200rpm hard drives, top one by 10%, middle by 10% [rounded] and the bottom by 8%) - tested for 30 minutes

As you can tell from my results, in my case there was a significant reduction in temperatures. Lower temperatures are always good

So you should certainly consider what I have typed up here

ps: I removed my other hard drive cage from the case as I am not using it. It allows for better air flow onto the GPU and CPU. The hard drive cage/bay is filled with three 3.5" drives but with a high static pressure Noctua fan as described above.

 

[Big.Wayne]

Just want to pick your brains a bit more

I'm not sure I follow the original plan but if I tell you what I do perhaps you can extrapolate your answer from that

I don't do automated backups of the O/S drive but do manual snapshots every now and then. I take a backup after fresh install with Windows updated, I take another snapshot with all the drivers installed and main programs/games installed and this is manly the one I fall back up every time I kill my O/S through drivers experimentation and registry hacky etc

The Data drive is on a weekly automated backup, everything on the 1TB WD Blue is backed up automatically to the 3TB WD Green. My Data is still just 400GB so I didn't really need a 3TB green but the price wasn't much extra and it allows me to keep several backups of my data.

Ideally you want to automate your backups and set the time when the machine is on and not being fully used, for me that's 9pm Friday. Once its automated you can pretty much forget about it and have one less worry in life!

 

[pete_agreatguy]

Ideally you want to automate your backups and set the time when the machine is on and not being fully used, for me that's 9pm Friday. Once its automated you can pretty much forget about it and have one less worry in life!

I'll stick to my original plan then. The bonus of syncing the files every week (automated or manually [when ever I chose to do it]) as well is really useful I find as the software only backs up what needs to be backed up. It's a bit like the briefcase MS developed for Windows but I find it works a lot better. See my post above with regards to cooling and why the Seagate failed

 

[Big.Wayne]

Pete, if your backup system gives you controlled redundancy of data and you are able to recover your operating system to a time when its working lovely and you are able to recover important data that got accidentally deleted or was on a drive that failed then you are golden, several ways to skin a cat kinda thing.

I'm glad you're getting a proper solution in place, reading that support email about your drive recovery gave me the shivers, that's just a horrible place to be so good one for making your life a bit easier.

Losing an O/S is a pain and causes inconvenience but it doesn't compare to losing original photos, videos etc i.e user generated content. I've been through the whole of this process on behalf of a friend/client who's MAXTOR drive borked and he had all the digital images of his five year old son from birth on the hard disk. I was able to recover most of it by freezing the drive and then scooping swathes of data from it before it got warm again, had to keep putting the drive back into a plastic tub in the freezer until I got everything I could.

I suppose data backup is similar to a seat belt or air bag in the car, in reality its often not required but in the case of user error or hardware crash you will be mighty glad you took the precaution.

anyhoo, I digress.

That would be an understatement but thanks for sharing anyways, looks like you have your hard drive cooling under control. I did ask if you had some info on your drives temps but I can't find it? . . .CPU, GPU, M/B yes but hard drive no?

 

[pete_agreatguy]

Hard drives dropped by 8-10% under load (3 SATAII 7200rpm hard drives, top one by 10%, middle by 10% [rounded] and the bottom by 8%) - tested for 30 minutes

You must have just missed it

I was actually, VERY lucky with the recovery. I managed to get back the important data [uni work, college work, photos, documents etc - majority of it all was backed up but I lost some important documents which I did require]. I lost my game backups and game projects that I did [majority projects were uploaded on the net somewhere]. So I lost game data but that I can get over. The only down side was it cost me just over £1000. Thankfully I have savings in place but I'd rather pay a max of £150 for a new hard drive now lol. Hence why I'm getting my backups sorted.

EDIT:

Sorry the temperatures themselves are about 20-33 degrees depending on if under load etc. No higher. That's on the 72000rpm. The SSDs never go above 25 [deg C].

 

[Big.Wayne]

Oh wow that's a big bill, that's not something you ever want to go through again . . . consider yourself baptized by fire!

So you have a decent drive cooling solution in place as well as backups, your all set . . . enjoy!