[ale] Do all new large SATA drives suck?

[Geoffrey Myers]

Jeff Hubbs wrote:
>   Consider that the vast majority of people buy and use those drives 
> without incident and never think to put a review saying so on any one 
> particular vendor site.

My thinking as well.  People don't post about things that don't work.

> 
> On 3/2/12 11:18 AM, Neal Rhodes wrote:
>> I've gone ahead and ordered an HP core i3 system to be our next Centos 
>> home/office server.
>>
>> It's  got a 1.5TB drive; normally on these off-lease units I'd buy two 
>> brand new drives and mirror them.  Or that's what we've done with the 
>> last 3 linux servers.     All of which are still technically 
>> functioning since Fedora core 1.
>>
>> This drive is likely about a year old, so I'm thinking I'll just buy a 
>> new 1.5TB drive and install Centos to mirror the primary.
>>
>> When I look at the crop of 1 - 1.5TB drives on TigerDirect and read 
>> the reviews, they seem to be uniformly terrible - DOA,  failed after 3 
>> weeks, replacement failed after a week, etc.  Seagate seems to be the 
>> worst, although WD not too far behind.
>>
>> Ummm, isn't one of the primary selling features of a disk drive that 
>> it's not supposed to blow up and take down all your data with it?    
>> Has there been a massive quality slip in the last couple years since I 
>> last bought drives?    Seriously -  I can lose a power supply, a 
>> motherboard, a display - you name it, and once I replace it I can 
>> expect to still have the data.    Yes, I should do backups, and I do, 
>> and yes, I should mirror the drives, and I do.    I should do SMARTD 
>> monitoring and I do.  But isn't this like selling tires that tend to 
>> shred randomly?    Isn't not blowing up catastrophically with no 
>> warning beforehand a basic selling point for disk drives?    What's 
>> the point of mirroring if the odds are good that both drives will fail 
>> completely the same week?   What's the point of SMARTD monitoring if 
>> the darn drive quits without warning?
>>
>> Does anybody make a decent drive in that size range?    
>>
>> I'm thinking that not even considering economy,  my old theory of 
>> buying a pair of new identical drives may not be wise anymore, and 
>> sticking with one drive that has lasted over a year and one new drive 
>> is a better plan.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Neal
>>
>>
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-- 
Until later, Geoffrey

"I predict future happiness for America if they can prevent
the government from wasting the labors of the people under
the pretense of taking care of them."
- Thomas Jefferson