Hard drive longevity?

[PinkyMacGodess]

What happened to hard drives? I had a client that had a Windows 3.1 system that ran on the original drives until they were forced to upgrade their payroll software 5 years ago. I had a client with a Novell 3.1 server that was never rebooted for over, 8 years? Same drives.

I had three drives die over the last week. Two Seagate ST3000DM001 drives, and a Western Digital 'server grade' drive. The later was so slow to draw data off of it, it took days to try to copy data from it. I have another of the same model, and it is still performing like a champ, but I'm thinking it's not reliable. None of the tree are all that old.

How many people have drive arrays?

If so, post what you use, please.

Thanks...

 

[Huntn]

I’ve got 2 external hard drives, one acts as a backup for the other, plus a third external that acts as my Time Machine backup. My experience is that hard drives last 2-5 years. Why run an array? I know the term but am not familiar with what the advantage is.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

I’ve got 2 external hard drives, one acts as a backup for the other, plus a third external that acts as my Time Machine backup. My experience is that hard drives last 2-5 years. Why run an array? I know the term but am not familiar with what the advantage is.

Properly configured, an array can survive a single, and actually two drives failing, and still retain all of the data. Obviously a two drive failure array is likely overkill for home use, but having an array that would survive a single drive failure is sounding more and more like a necessity, especially after my recent failures.

I'm aware of a few 'residential' array manufacturers out there. I was looking for input on what to consider. Western Digital, at one point, and may still sell one, sold an external 'drive' that was a raid 1 mirroring box including two drives, that could be setup mirrored, or setup with double the storage. I do remember hearing about someone who bought one and set it up as two separate drives, and had one die, losing lots of data. Yes, drives die, some seem designed to die quickly (that Seagate drive is one). There are ways to insure your data doesn't disappear in the very likely chance of a drive failure.

 

[Huntn]

That is why I like my setup, although it involves 3 external hard drives. It is unlikely that 2 drives would simo fail. I need to look at what exactly the advantage of an array is over what I’m doing. Can you describe it?

My 2 drives mirror each other so based on the following I’m not seeing the advantage of array, yet:

Multiple hard drives working together: All about RAID setups

Stevey, admittedly confused regarding the benefits of RAID arrays, asked the Answer Line forum to explain these hard-drive groups.

www.pcworld.com

RAID 1​

Turn two 1TB drives into a RAID 1 array, and you get the capacity and speed of a single 1TB drive. So what’s the point? Protection.

In a RAID 1 array, the two drives mirror each other, so that they both contain the exact same data. If one drive fails, the other keeps working. No files are lost, and there’s no downtime.

 

[eyoungren]

1 Fantom Drives 2TB RAID enclosure. This is my primary drive for my G3 Server. It's connected to the G3 via a Sonnet PCI-SATA card. I have a eSATA bracket in the back of the G3 so the RAID can connect.

Western Digital Reds, 2x 1TB. I bought them new off eBay in 2017 I think. No more than a month old. They've both performed fine.



ICY Dock, 2TB RAID connected via USB to a Mac Mini (not the MP it's sitting on top of). One old WD Green and one old WD Black, both 1TB. The WDs I got in 2015-16 I think. Originally used the black as my primary hard drive on my G4. I believe it's 2010-2011 vintage. The Green is a bit older I think. Again, zero issues with these drives.



6TB ZyXEL NAS. This has two 3TB WD Reds. Bought used of eBay, couple of years old I think.



Finally, I have two 3TB WD Greens in a G4 PowerMac that I am using as a glorified NAS. Bought off eBay, again, a few years old. My MacPro has a WD Enterprise 4TB hard drive and a couple of other WD drives. I think those are greens, but haven't been inside the case in a while. My boot drive is an SSD though.

My 2.3 DC G5 has two WD Blues, bought used in 2016-2017, both working and probably five or six years old. I also have a couple of WD Greens lying around in enclosures, mainly 2TB.

I'm partial to Western Digital.

All of my arrays are RAID-0. That's a risk of course, but I want the full capacity of the two drives. And I have Carbon Copy Cloner backups that fire off regularly on the important stuff. The disk images they back up to are stored inside a folder connected to Dropbox, so I'm not going to lose the data.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

1 Fantom Drives 2TB RAID enclosure. This is my primary drive for my G3 Server. It's connected to the G3 via a Sonnet PCI-SATA card. I have a eSATA bracket in the back of the G3 so the RAID can connect.

Western Digital Reds, 2x 1TB. I bought them new off eBay in 2017 I think. No more than a month old. They've both performed fine.

View attachment 1927255

ICY Dock, 2TB RAID connected via USB to a Mac Mini (not the MP it's sitting on top of). One old WD Green and one old WD Black, both 1TB. The WDs I got in 2015-16 I think. Originally used the black as my primary hard drive on my G4. I believe it's 2010-2011 vintage. The Green is a bit older I think. Again, zero issues with these drives.

View attachment 1927256

6TB ZyXEL NAS. This has two 3TB WD Reds. Bought used of eBay, couple of years old I think.

View attachment 1927257

Finally, I have two 3TB WD Greens in a G4 PowerMac that I am using as a glorified NAS. Bought off eBay, again, a few years old. My MacPro has a WD Enterprise 4TB hard drive and a couple of other WD drives. I think those are greens, but haven't been inside the case in a while. My boot drive is an SSD though.

My 2.3 DC G5 has two WD Blues, bought used in 2016-2017, both working and probably five or six years old. I also have a couple of WD Greens lying around in enclosures, mainly 2TB.

I'm partial to Western Digital.

All of my arrays are RAID-0. That's a risk of course, but I want the full capacity of the two drives. And I have Carbon Copy Cloner backups that fire off regularly on the important stuff. The disk images they back up to are stored inside a folder connected to Dropbox, so I'm not going to lose the data.

Awesome!

What's got me freaking towards a RAID based array is losing that 3TB drive, and if I hadn't been able to get things off a Time Machine backup. So many early pics of family, and past lives. I was ready to commit to a Drobo array, but heard some sketchy things about them, and had other things that needed the money shower instead.

I have a Mac Pro I can use as a server, but it's so old. I don't want it to die and then still take everything with it. I realize nothing lasts forever, even 'forever', but I don't want to lose everything, yet...

Thanks for your post. Appreciated...

 

[eyoungren]

Awesome!

What's got me freaking towards a RAID based array is losing that 3TB drive, and if I hadn't been able to get things off a Time Machine backup. So many early pics of family, and past lives. I was ready to commit to a Drobo array, but heard some sketchy things about them, and had other things that needed the money shower instead.

I have a Mac Pro I can use as a server, but it's so old. I don't want it to die and then still take everything with it. I realize nothing lasts forever, even 'forever', but I don't want to lose everything, yet...

Thanks for your post. Appreciated...

Mac Minis are great as servers. And you can pick them up for cheap. You don't need them to run the latest OS either as all they'd be doing is sharing a drive. My G3 Server? That runs OS X 10.4.11 Server. I could do it just with Tiger, but I wanted Server. But I have two active Minis that also share drives. One is a Snow Leopard only Mini and I use part of it's main drive for the download folders of all my Macs.

That ICY Dock I mentioned, is connected to the other Mac Mini which is running Catalina. It's a USB connection but it work just fine.

Totally get the hesitancy about drives dying. I've had that happen once and it took sending the drive in for data recovery. Fortunately, while it was MY drive, it was on my boss's warranty with the software I'd been using. This is why I make routine backups to drive images. Drive images are easy to store and move. It's also why I pay Dropbox each month for 3TB of storage. If I lose the drives, I can still get access to the backups from Dropbox. And I make multiple backups. My NAS gets daily backups and Dropbox gets weekly backups.

I used to be all in with Maxtor when I was a PC guy, but they started going downhill and eventually got sold off. I don't care for Hitachi, I've had too many laptop drives die fast on me. So far WD seems to be performing.

WD Reds are designed for NAS and the WD Enterprise drives are server grade. So I tend to go after those whenever buying for frequently accessed storage.

 

[ptfuzi]

I don't know how you bet your data with wd greens..

 

[TiggrToo]

12 bay Synology with ~ half full of Iron Wolf Pro drives either mirrored or Raid 5.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Mac Minis are great as servers. And you can pick them up for cheap. You don't need them to run the latest OS either as all they'd be doing is sharing a drive. My G3 Server? That runs OS X 10.4.11 Server. I could do it just with Tiger, but I wanted Server. But I have two active Minis that also share drives. One is a Snow Leopard only Mini and I use part of it's main drive for the download folders of all my Macs.

That ICY Dock I mentioned, is connected to the other Mac Mini which is running Catalina. It's a USB connection but it work just fine.

Totally get the hesitancy about drives dying. I've had that happen once and it took sending the drive in for data recovery. Fortunately, while it was MY drive, it was on my boss's warranty with the software I'd been using. This is why I make routine backups to drive images. Drive images are easy to store and move. It's also why I pay Dropbox each month for 3TB of storage. If I lose the drives, I can still get access to the backups from Dropbox. And I make multiple backups. My NAS gets daily backups and Dropbox gets weekly backups.

I used to be all in with Maxtor when I was a PC guy, but they started going downhill and eventually got sold off. I don't care for Hitachi, I've had too many laptop drives die fast on me. So far WD seems to be performing.

WD Reds are designed for NAS and the WD Enterprise drives are server grade. So I tend to go after those whenever buying for frequently accessed storage.

I did buy a Mac Mini that cane with their server OS. Then I realized the difference between 'server', and standard macOS wasn't as large as it used to be, sadly. I wouldn't call it a joke, but...

 

[ItWasNotMe]

Awesome!

What's got me freaking towards a RAID based array is losing that 3TB drive, and if I hadn't been able to get things off a Time Machine backup. So many early pics of family, and past lives. I was ready to commit to a Drobo array, but heard some sketchy things about them, and had other things that needed the money shower instead.

I have a Mac Pro I can use as a server, but it's so old. I don't want it to die and then still take everything with it. I realize nothing lasts forever, even 'forever', but I don't want to lose everything, yet...

Thanks for your post. Appreciated...

Assuming you go that route, you need to think about how you back up the array. If that's all you have then you've a single point of failure - the array controller itself. Same argument you make about losing the Mac Pro if you use that as a server.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Assuming you go that route, you need to think about how you back up the array. If that's all you have then you've a single point of failure - the array controller itself. Same argument you make about losing the Mac Pro if you use that as a server.

True, but I was hearing about some controllers that could backup their information in case the controller did die. But it is so true that nothing lasts forever.

 

[ItWasNotMe]

True, but I was hearing about some controllers that could backup their information in case the controller did die. But it is so true that nothing lasts forever.

I've a pair of WD Duos. Each contains two drives. The drives are linked to the chassis where you first format them. The only way you can move them to the other chassis is reformat them first - thus losing all you data. So if the chassis in one fails then the data on those drives has gone forever...

Dumb.

Now, other systems might allow you to move the disks, but you'd have to factor in the time to procure another chassis.