Reliable Hard Drives?

MartinBen · 30 Mar 2009 at 22:13

We have a PC at work that is used to run some CCTV cameras - basically the CCTV cameras are recording onto the 1 hard drive and it runs 24/7

Now the hard drive is showing distinct signs it is about to die so my question is.

1) What hard drive(s) would people recommend for reliability above size?

2) Would we be better getting 1 hard drive per CCTV camera so each one writes to its own hard drive rather than having several all thrashing the same hard drive?

ConnectionFX · 30 Mar 2009 at 23:06

a seperate drive for each CCTV would be most reliable. although costly depending on the amount of camera's used.

Seagate have a good reliability rate (1/10,000) someone from OCUK told me last week.

what about a few of these?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-206-SE&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=940

goujon945 · 30 Mar 2009 at 23:08

ConnectionFX said:
a seperate drive for each CCTV would be most reliable. although costly depending on the amount of camera's used.

Although I've heard that Seagate have had some issues recently, maybe go for Western Digital?

cje · 30 Mar 2009 at 23:17

I've used Western Digital Caviar's in all my builds. Never gone wrong.

I've also read that Seagate and Maxtor should be avoided.

I'd say Western Digital Caviar's. Or, I also have a Samsung Spinpoint F1, but that hasn't been with me long enough to say if it's reliable or not. It is noisier than the WD though.

CaptainCrash · 31 Mar 2009 at 08:31

cje said:
I've used Western Digital Caviar's in all my builds. Never gone wrong.

I've also read that Seagate and Maxtor should be avoided.

There will always be people who swear by "brand X" and others who wouldn't touch them with a bargepole.

The fact that one person may report several Western Seasungs failing in a row isn't statistically significant - they were just unlucky, although you can understand them coming to the conclusion that Western Seasungs suck under those circumstances. There are so many factors affecting a drive's potential lifespan that unless you're drawing on a sample size of tens of thousands, spread over a decent time period and a variety of outlets, you can't really draw any meaningful conclusions.

Consumer HDDs are built down to a price, and it's really best to work on the assumption that any of them can fail completely at any time, and plan accordingly.

To the OP: it looks like constant availability is important for your purposes, so you might want to look at a RAID-1 solution. It depends on the number of cameras, but if it's only a handful you could use the same array for all of them without undue thrashing - you'd be better protected than having a single HDD for each camera, which increases the probability of any one failing and leaving you with a blind spot. I suppose for ultimate reliability you could have a separate array for each camera, but obviously the hardware costs would rise in proportion.

FaceplantSi · 31 Mar 2009 at 09:39

CaptainCrash said:
To the OP: it looks like constant availability is important for your purposes, so you might want to look at a RAID-1 solution

I agree with CaptainCrash. Definitely a situation where RAID 1 would be best option, maybe even a NAS solution.

AtreuS · 31 Mar 2009 at 18:22

Keeping your hard drives nice and cool is going to help them live longer as well ( i would imagine )

cje · 31 Mar 2009 at 18:30

CaptainCrash said:
There will always be people who swear by "brand X" and others who wouldn't touch them with a bargepole.

The fact that one person may report several Western Seasungs failing in a row isn't statistically significant - they were just unlucky, although you can understand them coming to the conclusion that Western Seasungs suck under those circumstances. There are so many factors affecting a drive's potential lifespan that unless you're drawing on a sample size of tens of thousands, spread over a decent time period and a variety of outlets, you can't really draw any meaningful conclusions.

Consumer HDDs are built down to a price, and it's really best to work on the assumption that any of them can fail completely at any time, and plan accordingly.

To the OP: it looks like constant availability is important for your purposes, so you might want to look at a RAID-1 solution. It depends on the number of cameras, but if it's only a handful you could use the same array for all of them without undue thrashing - you'd be better protected than having a single HDD for each camera, which increases the probability of any one failing and leaving you with a blind spot. I suppose for ultimate reliability you could have a separate array for each camera, but obviously the hardware costs would rise in proportion.

That's totally true, I'm just saying that no WD has gone wrong for me, but 2 maxtor's have. But these things happen. It all depends who you ask

. You never know, if I'd have stuck with Maxtor in my current build they might have been just as reliable. It is just that when you get a bad experience, you tend not to go there again. But it isn't just me who's had problems with Seagate/maxtors recently though.

Ben M · 31 Mar 2009 at 18:58

Go for RAID 1 or RAID 5.

MartinBen · 31 Mar 2009 at 19:02

Thanks for your reply guys

Going to recommend to my boss we get WD Caviars - one for each CCTV - I will try to sell him on Raid1 but times are hard and I don't think he'll buy it!

Thanks again.

cje · 31 Mar 2009 at 19:15

Just tell him that not one drive is "more reliable than another" he'll quickly see the benefits of RAID 1 or 5 if he doesn't want to lose his data.

Ben M · 31 Mar 2009 at 19:30

MartinBen said:
Thanks for your reply guys

Going to recommend to my boss we get WD Caviars - one for each CCTV - I will try to sell him on Raid1 but times are hard and I don't think he'll buy it!

Thanks again.

well according to here:
http://www.ibeast.com/content/tools/RaidCalc/RaidCalc.asp

5 500 gb drives in RAID 5 give 1862.64gb of space... so you're only losing a drive and a bit of space... well worth it if you need your cctv to be safe.

Corasik · 1 Apr 2009 at 00:59

FaceplantSi said:
I agree with CaptainCrash. Definitely a situation where RAID 1 would be best option, maybe even a NAS solution.

How about Raid 5, with a hardware raid controller, and a massive write cache, that would pretty much elimitate thrashing, especially as both Scsi and Sata offer native command queueing.

Vegetarian · 1 Apr 2009 at 01:09

People might call me crazy - but Id go with IBM/Hitachi... forget past troubles, these drives aint fast but they just work, and keep working.