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Lifespan of a spinning hard drive
- Thread starter garyleecn
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Have you guys looked at the latest Western Digital Black 5 and 6 TB drives? Those almost max out SATA 2. Those are the only hard drives I would use since they are so fast!
If using this spec:
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-771434.pdf
I calculate speeds pretty much in the middle of SATA II. Still incredibly fast for a hard drive, but I'm wondering if you're referring to a newer model.
Even with an SSD, I have never had more than 230MB/s on SATA 2. With those WD drives, I get a sustained at 190-200MB/s. How is that "in the middle" of SATA 2? Normal hard drives (around 100MB/s) is more "in the middle".
That spec sheet shows 191 MB/s for the 5TB model, and 218 MB/s for the 6TB model. That is just about as fast as an SSD on SATA 2, as on many computers have not gotten higher than 230MB/s
You should get several years out of a drive so long as it isn't subjected to massive quick temperature changes and isn't dropped. Keep it reasonably cool and so long as you aren't subjecting to loads of heavy I/O all day ever day then it should last long enough for you to out grow it.
bent christian
Suspended
SATA II on my old Thinkpad gives me ~300MB/sec using an SSD. Usually between 275 and 295MB/sec.
I wasn't trying to be critical, I was just using the the 218MB/sec and 194MB/sec of the WD's compared to the peak data rates for SATA I and SATA II of 150MB/s and 300MB/s respectively. To me those numbers put the WDs in the middle between SATA I and SATA II. Still quite fast at any rate! 😉
FYI: SanDisk was bought by Western Digital. Does this mean "super hybrids" are in the near future???? 😉
Actually, they haven't bought it just yet. The deal is still in process:
http://www.streetinsider.com/Corpor...+Related+to+SanDisk+(SNDK)+Deal/11421314.html
Going to the SanDisk website the first thing I was greeted with was a SanDisk logo with a WD logo beside it, so apparently they're under the impression the deal is done.
varian55zx
macrumors 6502a
I wouldn't think that.
How could you regress to 240gb after having 500gb and 1 tb for years?
How could you possibly use a computer taking up that little drive space. Don't get it.
T'hain Esh Kelch
macrumors 604
99% of the time drives fail due to component problems, and not lifetime wear out. These things are complex, and in the case of HDDs, they have mechanical movement which is not perfect.
You won't find the perfect drive, but if you REALLY want something reliable, go for enterprise level drives. Expensive as heck, but you'll get more reliable drives.
You won't find the perfect drive, but if you REALLY want something reliable, go for enterprise level drives. Expensive as heck, but you'll get more reliable drives.
maflynn
macrumors Broadwell
No, but it means that WD realizes that they need to expand the offerings, because hard drives are not the future.
When I used to have computers with mechanical hard-drives, I have at least one broke every year.
I have a drobo and I have to replace one of its drives every year or two at the least. I have had external drives not lasting even 3 months, and a replacement crapped out in less than a month. I have enough with mechanical drives.
Now, my laptop and all my external drives are SSD.
Interestingly, the only hard drive that is still ticking is an old 2GB drive. It's super slow, but it is still running.
I shivered looking at 3-6TB mechanical hard drives. Imagine what would you do if it craps out and you have to recover that amount of data.
I have a drobo and I have to replace one of its drives every year or two at the least. I have had external drives not lasting even 3 months, and a replacement crapped out in less than a month. I have enough with mechanical drives.
Now, my laptop and all my external drives are SSD.
Interestingly, the only hard drive that is still ticking is an old 2GB drive. It's super slow, but it is still running.
I shivered looking at 3-6TB mechanical hard drives. Imagine what would you do if it craps out and you have to recover that amount of data.
What does the manufacture say with that many warranty hard drives? Or were you using el cheapo no name hard drives with less than the standard 3-5 year warranty?
Also whats the difference between losing data on a mechanical hard drive vs a solid state drive? Regardless BOTH require a backup if the data is important so there isn't much difference.
I only used Western Digital or Seagate for internal drives, and Toshiba, WD, and Seagate for external. And please, no name hard-drives? As if you can actually buy no-name ones. There are only a few hard-drive mfg out there.
And no, the 3 to 5 yr warranty was not common until recently. It used to be 1 year, with seagate providing 3 years before they went 1 year as well.
The manufacturers couldn't care less. If it's within warranty, they send you a new one. That's about it. They don't care about you, they only care about their obligation.
Here's the thing. Yes, you can have warranty, replacement, etc. But how about your terabytes of data? Restoring from backups are painful enough when you have urgent things that are needed. I never have a failed SSD, not even once, from the days I put an SSD into my plastic Macbook. I have since had various Macbook Airs and retina Pros, and also some Samsung external SSD. Zero failure rate so far. Compare to my frequency of mechanical drive failure of at least one a year, SSD is already proving itself to be the better value.
Well, I base that on my own personal observations. I've never needed any more than about 175GB, which is my current, and might i add, abusive use of the drive. I guess if you have tons of videos, hi res photos, music, etc. then maybe you need more, but I don't and I don't think a lot of others do either. Big hard drives just encourage storage to become large garbage bins. People write to them for something they need only once or twice, and instead of getting rid of it when done, they leave it there. If you clean up after yourself, you'll find you don't really need that much storage.
A few decades ago people thought a 30MB HDD was a real whopper, and yet they survived with it. A 240GB disk is enormous compared to that. Where's all the space going? Obviously things like music, videos, and even photos were impractical decades ago, but still, the fact that people write once, read once, and then let the one time only files remain in place forever explains this enormous need for space. Like I said, big drives encourage not garbage collection but garbage keeping. It's sort of like everyone has become a pack rat.
colodane
macrumors 65816
I'm with FrtzPeter on this one. I've used my 2011 iMac many hours every day since 2011 for both business and personal use, and have a total of 87 GB on the drive. Fits very nicely into the 256 GB SSD ;>)
And, the 87 GB includes hundreds (thousands?) of photos and 6 GB worth of music. So not being at all frugal with the space. Not everyone watches movies or videos on their computer - or, if they do, they don't see any compelling reason to save them!
And, the 87 GB includes hundreds (thousands?) of photos and 6 GB worth of music. So not being at all frugal with the space. Not everyone watches movies or videos on their computer - or, if they do, they don't see any compelling reason to save them!
Most of that is just not true.
You consider "generic" a name brand?
WD for example will refuse warranty drives from their distributor if they aren't actually warranty, and then the distributor will refuse them from you stating WD won't warranty it. I know this because I was trying to use WD Caviars in a very large NAS because I had a large amount of them. They were rejected from WD.
2+ years has been the industry standard warranty for name brand HDD forever. All WD model names carry the same warranty, so a RED has a 3 year warranty, a Caviar has a 3 year warranty, Black has 5 year warranty, Blue has 2 year warranty. None of those are recent products.
Here is a 13 year old IDE WD Caviar I was using for off site storage. I'm pointing to its date from 3-13-2003...
I ran the serial number.
Warranty expired in 4-20-2006. That is a 3 year warranty on a consumer grade HDD from 13 years ago. More than a 1 year warranty is anything but a recent thing.
That thing still works btw, I just haven't destroyed it yet.
Warranty is besides the point though, I only brought it up because 2 years and usually more has been the industry standard for years, except the no name brands (pictured above) that have 1 year warranties (one of them even says that in its description) or none. Which is why I asked you if that is what you were using.
I still don't understand your point with losing data either. Because YOU haven't had a SSD fail yet that means what? It will be easier to recover from a failure? Honestly the way you are wording it makes it sounds like you are using a faith based system that an SSD just won't fail.
Since I use SSD's in machines and HDD's for back up in a RAID array I find it infinitely more convenient to have a HDD fail vs a SSD. HDD fails and I just swap out the disk and let the RAID do the rest, I even have a couple HDD laying around just in case.
SSD fails and I'll be spending quite a bit of money and/or time heading to the Apple store. But thanks to the HDDs in RAID I shouldn't lose any data.
Regardless SSD or HDD failure, its only as difficult as you make it. Both REQUIRE backups even if we were to lie to ourselves and say there is no way an SSD can fail that doesn't prevent them from being destroyed (water/fire/drop) or stolen. Reliability should be pretty far toward the bottom of the list when deciding HDD vs SSD.
I'm not clear what you are trying to say here? There is no such company as Generic making hard drives. Those Amazon Generic drives are all from one of the "name brand" drive companies and just sold as generic since they were likely bought by the seller from the OEM market. If you look through the reviews of all those Amazon drives, you will see each one has reviews that mention what brand the drive really is..
How? Try re reading the conversation?
Those generics are typical relabeled refurbs, you could get anything from a WD to a Chinese HDD manufacturer. What I was trying to say is the no name brands (I said "el cheapo no name" specifically because you don't know what you'll get) are the only way you are going to get below industry standard warranty.
I really don't know how to make it more clear.
I did read the conversation and it was not clear to me what you were trying to say. No need to be rude.
Thank you for explaining.
You've never needed more then 175gb which is what you currently have.
Which means your storage requirements are expanding since you are currently at the maximum just more slowly than some peoples. And since you micro manage all your disk usage you'll eventually need to deleting something you do not feel is junk. Or buy external storage.
I try to avoid that method. Like you its unlikely my storage requirements will every reduce from what they are now. Its been increasing since decades ago when those 30mb hdd were whoppers. My media collection is growing, app sizes are growing, OS space requirements are growing. 2 years ago I would never have believe that I would need more then 120gb for just my programs.
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Sorry I wasn't trying to be rude, I re-read my post and it does come off that way. I apologize for that.
varian55zx
macrumors 6502a
It just depends on your usage of the computer.
I guess I'm the type of user who likes to collect stuff, whether it be content or anything else I get my hands on.
I generally like to hold onto as many things as possible after I use them, preferring to do that rather than just trash them. I like having a drive I can bog down with whatever I want and not have to worry about having space left over.
So for me, that's why I struggle with the idea of moving back to 256 gb after being used to 1 tb, and now, 2 tb with the fusion.
There's just something about relying on external storage I'm just not that fond of.
I'd really rather just see SSD technology move along and drop the disk drive technology entirely, but in the meantime, the 2tb fusion is a satisfactory compromise for me.
dimme
macrumors 68040
Before I got my iMac with the 2 tb fusion drive I used my rMBP with a 512 SSD as my primary computer. I love the speed of the SSD but I was always moving or accessing files on my server because I could not fit all my current projects on the SSD. Like others have said until I can get a 2 or 3TB SSD (and be able to afford it) I be using spinning drives. I am very happy with my fusion drive on the iMac.