Ive seen hundreds if not thousands last longer than that. I guess it depends on what your sample size is.
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LaCie Unveils Three New Thunderbolt 2 Storage Solutions for 4K Video Editing
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Ive seen hundreds if not thousands last longer than that. I guess it depends on what your sample size is.
You probably have more authority than I do if you see that many. I was only talking about a few home computers of family and friends, whatever complaints I've seen on MacRumors, and the recalled iMacs. There's also that questionable failure rate statistics graph out there. All I know for sure is that Hitachi has always worked for me, so I'm sticking with that
I'll second that, in fact more than that they also need to have some UPS as well to shut down gracefully if the power goes out.
You probably have more authority than I do if you see that many. I was only talking about a few home computers of family and friends, whatever complaints I've seen on MacRumors, and the recalled iMacs. There's also that questionable failure rate statistics graph out there. All I know for sure is that Hitachi has always worked for me, so I'm sticking with that
This is not really the point. You should ALWAYS backup to a SEPARATE unit first, before doing a project. As any HDD or even multiple HDDs in a single storage unit can fail at ANY time, regardless of HDDs brand/enterprise vs. standard HDDs/RAID level used/storage device model or brand.
To repeat a tired phrase: RAID is not backup.
Anyway, the really interesting part of this announcement (apart from the 5Big now presumably having a proper RAID controller, thus being able to offer RAID 5 compared to the previous version: although a 6-drive unit would've made more sense, hence why I use Pegasus R6's), is the use of 6TB HDDs — wowser!
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Sorry, I think I wasn't clear when I said separate, I should have said external. Of course I expect it to have a power supply, but I'm sick of devices with external power bricks; while they may be easier to replace, they're also much more likely to fail in the first place in my experience, they also add to clutter and don't dissipate heat well.
With an internal power supply, all you need is basic cable, and the power supply components can benefit from the same cooling as the hard-drives, which should actually make it less likely to fail. Though of course a nice big warranty always helps; it annoys me even more when expensive, professional oriented, storage devices still have the same crummy one year warranty, as it tells you exactly how much faith the company has in their product. Of course we don't know what these will get, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt there, but yeah, I just don't like external power supplies; in my experience they've been nothing but an annoyance at best, and a menace at worst. In cheaper devices they've failed constantly, and even in more expensive devices I haven't had much luck with them.
Are you talking about blind ones? Because otherwise I can't see what my view on aesthetics has to do with my status as a professional. Again, if I'm going to pay professional prices for something, I expect an appropriate level of quality and attention to detail to justify it; to me that includes not sticking a gigantic bright blue LED on the front of a device that I should be able to just ignore while I get on with my work. Just take a look at the power LED on a Mac Mini; it's not massively bright, it's even kind of nice. It'd be nice if you could turn it off if you wanted to (I haven't seen a way to do it), but it's just one of many touches that make a Mac Mini what is.
You probably have more authority than I do if you see that many. I was only talking about a few home computers of family and friends, whatever complaints I've seen on MacRumors, and the recalled iMacs. There's also that questionable failure rate statistics graph out there. All I know for sure is that Hitachi has always worked for me, so I'm sticking with that
Well I work in a datacenter, we have over a thousand physical servers, each one containing 4 - 12 drives plus we have numerous SANs.
In that environment over the years I have seen many WD drives fail but not as many Seagate. Having said that though, servers are always powered on with drives being accessed constantly.
The real damage is done to drives when spinning up when cold (something our drives barely ever do) so quite possibly your observations with Seagate failures are just as valid, just different circumstances.
My favorite tech accessory is a roll of black electrical tape.
I use it with my 2TB G-RAID, my SURFBoard SB6141 modem, my 4th-Gen Airport Extreme, and my 1st-Gen Airport Express.
Best 79¢ tech investment I've ever made!
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The warranties are listed as 3 years, so there you go. I've had drives of the three remaining major manufacturers go out on me within the warranty periods, and I've used the warranties to get back on track. Restore from my backup, and I'm good to go.
My old G-RAID is out of warranty, but it's still chugging along. I keep a backup handy, tho'.
I'm pretty sure the every-big-budget-movie-that-has-come-out-since-2011 community is more than just a "small demographic", especially financially.
I do. Try keeping them cool to the touch, whatever it takes. You think? I've got 10 external seagates, the two oldest over eight years old and others older than 5, and in all that time I've only had two (of 12) fail on me, and that was when the fan I keep right above them failed for 8-10 hours and I wasn't there to replace it.
We're talking 24/7 operation here too.
Heat kills drives. Very little else.
The only issue with an internal PSU is that it places a larger burden on cooling the disks. Thus this means more fans or larger fan running at higher RPM, all leading to more noise. It's a trade off. Personally, I prefer to have the PSU outside the disk enclosure so that the disks can run cooler. If disks cannot be cooled sufficiently they will fail that much quicker... and this is bad news when in the middle of a tight schedule project.
On the issue of the large blue LED. I believe this really is LaCie trade mark identity so people looking at the device will immediately see that it's a LaCie product. If this is the only use for the blue LED, then I would agree that LaCie really should make it being lit a user option. For me, I don't care as these units (and all of my current LaCie 2bigs) get placed into a cabinets and are out of sight.
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I do. Try keeping them cool to the touch, whatever it takes. You think? I've got 10 external seagates, the two oldest over eight years old and others older than 5, and in all that time I've only had two (of 12) fail on me, and that was when the fan I keep right above them failed for 8-10 hours and I wasn't there to replace it.
We're talking 24/7 operation here too.
Heat kills drives. Very little else.
Ditto.... Agree that heat will kill disks in short order. My experience with LaCie products has been nothing but exemplary. The only issue I've had is with the Rugged product line. These units do seem to run very hot and the means for having them cooled is not very well thought out. Laying the Rugged on a flat surface only provides the top surface exposed to air so I've found that they need to be elevated about an inch to get more surface area exposed to the surrounding air.
Thanks for the info. The circumstances I'm describing were in external hard drives and iMacs in home use, including my friend's, and he barely saved his data. Why is it that only one of my friends backs his data up?
if you can't see the benefits of having an external power supply in what you would consider to be a product for professionals, then i have serious doubts that you are anything more than an enthusiast. anybody who has worked in a professional environment knows that the fewer non-internal, non-replacable components within a system is universally preferred. you keep getting fixated on cosmetics. unless being a "professional" involves showing off your hardware to your friends, then who cares about the color or brightness of the LED? mentioning that you have a mac mini and that you essentially stare at it while at work only makes you look ridiculous and tells me that you're not even using it as an affordable server solution
So in your world professionals are happier with the external power supplies that either produce a ton of cable clutter or get tucked away somewhere to overheat and stop working? In my experience I have never had a single internal power supply fail on me (something else has always failed first in a system, or the system's survived until I need to upgrade it), meanwhile I've had at least six external power supplies fail on me despite taking care in where I put them, usually at the cost of tidiness, three of which were on "professional" hard drive products. In a hard drive system that includes a fan anyway, it makes more sense to have an internal power supply, as it can benefit from the same cooling, which is usually all you need to keep one running.
Besides which, any professional in your world that is relying on external power supplies being replaceable is just begging for the RAID controller or some other component to fail inside the unit, rendering your spare power supplies useless, doubly so since so many of them use different connectors.
Any professional who has to work in a room with it. As an example I have an HDD dock I bought that is otherwise dead handy, but has a blue LED that is almost painfully bright to the point that I had tape a piece of thick plastic over it. It was a relatively cheap dock so that's not completely unexpected, but devices marketed at professionals that slap annoying LEDs or non-functional, obtrusive, embellishments onto their enclosures don't exactly inspire confidence about the internals of their devices.
Apple at least usually manages to marry form and function seamlessly together, which is why I like their products as they put thought into the details, even if it occasionally means making compromises (though I respect them for that in most cases).
No, what it does is prove that you didn't really read what I wrote; I gave the Mac Mini as an example of a product with well designed LED, and really as a well made product in general and that any professional device should aspire to.
The LED on the Mac Mini is stylish, but not obtrusive, similar to the rest of the case. Despite being compact it also manages to keep a neat (and capable) internal PSU, and well designed airflow (dust only really builds up just under the cover, where it's easy to remove). It shows what you can achieve with attention to detail, and to be frank it's something that's been sorely lacking from many Thunderbolt devices, which is what makes it especially hard to pay such high premiums for them.
Perhaps I should have mentioned my experience is 95% SAS, not SATA.
Besides, look at the drives they are using... consumer junk! Which are then being placed in a datacenter environment? The mere fact that they admit spending thousands on "green" drives with the intention of using them in a production environment says a lot...
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Green Drives in Production? Are they amateurs?
Well they stated that they bought 100+ WD and Seagate green drives for production.
Our company looked at them for non-critical uses because of the cheaper cost. We stress tested them 24/7 (using Bonnie++) for a few weeks and half died. The difference is that we bought only four (and even then only for testing).
For any NAS if you getting WD NAS systems then get their Red Drives which are decided to be on 24/7. The green drives are for consumer internals ONLY! The Red Drives are for NAS bays.
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I used "professional" at the start when referring to products I don't consider professional at all, despite their price tag and marketing. Over the years I've used numerous so-called professional oriented storage devices, only to be bitterly disappointed at what I get for the money. So much so that until recently I've actually just preferred to buy a heap of bus-powered consumer drives and software RAIDing them; you take a performance hit, but you can easily buy spares to swap in on failures.
My current storage solution is now a home-made RAID chassis; it doesn't look very good at all, but it has room for 15 3.5" hard drives (more 2.5" if I swap back-planes in future), I have total control over the components, and it's cost about $600 all-in to use drives I already have (since I'm replacing an old Mac Pro and the aforementioned heap of external drives), though it does include the addition of some more spare drives. The only downside really is that modifying the case was far more trouble than it was worth (I underestimated the strength of even thin steel) and there are no consumer Thunderbolt ports so I'm limited to eSATA. Currently I'm only using it for my Time Machine volume as I haven't actually replaced my Mac Pro yet, but since I'm still using spinning media the performance isn't really limited by the connection anyway.
Anyway, my point being that when it comes to "professional" storage I've more often than not been deeply disappointed by the actual quality the steep premium prices pay for. Both of a lack of attention to detail (including aesthetics) and quality of components (including external power supplies). Maybe other people have had more positive experiences, but I've just generally found that desktop devices are often just a con; I've had better experiences with racked storage, but they're way beyond what I need when working from home.