Recommend me good HDD Brand for Server use

struct · 05-10-2010, 03:58 PM

Hi,

Can someone recommend a good brand of 1TB HDD? I'm planning to build a 10TB system + spare and would like to get an idea of a reliable HDD so that I don't worry too much about the hardware.

Which brand is more reliable between these brands? Seagate, Maxtor, WD, Hitachi, Samsung, etc. for server use.

There are mixture of ratings and I would like to get some idea's before pulling out my card to purchase 12 of them.

Your experience as server hardware administrator would help me greatly!

Thanks in advance.

fruttenboel · 05-11-2010, 04:35 AM

I run Linux for over 10 years and NEVER had hard disk trouble. No matter which brand. Windows people ALWAYS have disk trouble. So they need favorite brands. We do not. In some of my systems I run with SECOND HAND drives, for years on end now.

So: for Linux, the cheapest drive will do.

salasi · 05-11-2010, 05:10 AM

Whichever brand you choose, I would suggest that you go for a drive with 'enterprise' in the description (or maybe the longer warranty, and 24x7 operation included in that warranty).

syg00 · 05-11-2010, 06:08 AM

Solaris espouse zfs as the filesystem for commodity disks. In other words don't trust the disks and make allowance for junk.
Hopefully btrfs will offer similar for Linux. In the meantime, use hardware RAID.

But there is no excuse for not having good backups. Because it will be required.

catkin · 05-11-2010, 06:44 AM

StorageReview provide a lot of information.

Are you concerned about noise and power consumption (they are closely related)? If so SilentPCReview are well worth visiting.

NyteOwl · 05-11-2010, 01:31 PM

In 25 years of using HDD's in PC's I've had only 3 Seagate failures. I've had about a dozen Western Digital's fail. I've lsot about the same number of Maxtor. Those are basically the only three brands still around that I've used in servers.

All our machines at work (and my main workstation use Seagate) FWIW.

I still have my first XT (8088) in use and its 1987 vintage 85MB Seagate SCSI is still running without a hiccup.

Any brand can have a bad batch and most modern drives are pretty dependable but I personally prefer Seagate Enterprise (ES) drives. Many folks have had equally good experiences with Western Digital.

OS has little to do with drive reliability, though the way some are set up and used can affect drive longevity, and yes everyone has their favourite brands.

As always, YMMV.

fbsduser · 05-11-2010, 01:44 PM

Any one of the brands you posted, as long as you get the models that feature 24/7 operating capalities and/or are designed for "Enterprise" use.

johnsfine · 05-11-2010, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by struct

Seagate, Maxtor, WD, Hitachi, Samsung

I'm pretty sure Maxtor is just another brand name for Seagate drives. Long ago Maxtor had a premium reputation and price, which in my opinion was totally unjustified. In my experience their drives were far less reliable than other brands. IIUC, after purchasing Maxtor, Seagate rapidly phased out the Maxtor designs and put the Maxtor brand name on some Seagate drive models to take advantage of anyone who still has brand loyalty to the (undeserved) reputation Maxtor had.

I would only buy WD drives. Across many computers, at home where I have the brand choice and at work where I don't, all the drive failures I have seen in at least the last decade have been brands other than WD.

salasi · 05-11-2010, 05:16 PM

Also be aware that there have been reports of performance issues with 4k sector drives, so unless you have an appetite for being on the bleeding edge of debugging, maybe you should be cautious about those.

Laurens73 · 05-14-2010, 03:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnsfine

Long ago Maxtor had a premium reputation and price, which in my opinion was totally unjustified. In my experience their drives were far less reliable than other brands.

I can confirm that. Maxtor drives get overheated faster than others.

Quote:

Which brand is more reliable between these brands? Seagate, Maxtor, WD, Hitachi, Samsung, etc. for server use.

My top 5 drive failures / best drives over here below:

Total: 56 drives in use the last 21 years I got servers running

Code:

Position    Brand               Total drives were in use      Number of failures
    1       Samsung                       15                            0
    2       WD                            17                            5
    3       Seagate                       14                            6
    4       Maxtor                        14                           17
    5       Other/unknown                  4                            1

After modifying the cases of the machines using a Maxtor drive by giving them extra cooling the number of disc failures dropped dramaticly.

My opinion in this is more: not the brand of disk, but the type of the disk will be important. Some use SATA/IDE disks in their servers and these are of a worse quality than SCSI disks, cause of the chosen materials and ways of production by the manufacturers.

As some others already mentioned: words on them like enterprise, warranty, continous operation suggest a higher quality.

struct · 07-08-2010, 12:13 PM

Thank you to all for giving their valuable input. I did not know there was harddrive model especially designed for enterprise use.
This was new to me.

clcbluemont · 07-08-2010, 01:11 PM

look in the latest libata-core.c in the kernel source to make sure the one you use is not on the blacklist.

struct · 07-08-2010, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by clcbluemont

look in the latest libata-core.c in the kernel source to make sure the one you use is not on the blacklist.

there are harddrives that are on a blacklist? wow... didn't know this either...