What is an acceptable fail rate for HDDs?

December 12, 2008 7:22 AM

I am thinking about buying a new hard drive, but all the "amazing deals" I see have a sizable number of reviewers stating that the drive was DOA, or died within weeks / months. How much failure is acceptable?

I've been checking Newegg, because I feel the reviewers won't be completely uneducated about how to handle and install a hard drive. But whenever I see a great deal on hard drives (or most other items, for that matter), the deals seem to be less appealing once I check the ratings.

How much failure is acceptable? How much should I consider reviews to reflect the greater population of sold hard drives? On the linked item, reviewers note failure while still giving scores of 4/5, so it's not just the bottom 11% in this case.

posted by filthy light thief to computers & internet (17 comments total)

Good question - how much failure is acceptable to you?

In a server environment, you can look at things like the number of drives in an array, rebuild time, and technician cost. Along with the actual failure rate and cost per drive, you can compute the drive that makes economic sense.

At home, I prefer to spend 10-20% more on a drive that seems much more reliable.
posted by b1tr0t at 7:30 AM on December 12, 2008

Here's some background.

The 'CliffsNotes' version: failure rates for hard disks (the likelihood that a drive currently in use will fail in a given year) are somewhere between 2% and 13%, and depend on a whole host of factors, but particularly the system in which they are installed.

Bear in mind that reviewers on sites like Newegg may not be equally likely to submit reviews of good and bad experiences. In other words, for something like a hard disk, the fact that it worked fine on arrival is unlikely to result in a positive review.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 7:35 AM on December 12, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

People rarely complain when something works. Every manufacturer is going to have a bad run of drives, but when you compare that to the total number of drives sold, it's going to be a pretty small proportion. Heck, all those reviews could be explained away by one case of drives getting dropped. Don't know if that's what happened, but it's possible.

Newegg is fairly "enthusiast" focused, and a lot of enthusiasts don't know what the hell they are doing. They buy the cheapest crap they can and then complain when a hard drive doesn't work...

I have one of those drives, and it's fine. I would stick to a known drive manufacturer and a known seller, and avoid "deals" that involve refurb drives or off brand ones. Seagate and Newegg are hard to beat.

And Seagate does have a 5 year warranty for most of their drives- that's enough for me to choose them for my hard drive needs. If you back your data up, drives failing shouldn't be a problem.

As for "deals" being worse quality, it's *possible* that they are unloading some suspect inventory. It's also possible that there is a new model coming out and they are clearing inventory for the new model. You just never know. It's a gamble.
posted by gjc at 7:37 AM on December 12, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

There was a previous AskMe question on this topic. The consensus seemed to be that if the drive you purchase is defective, you will know. If it is not defective, it's not defective - and won't fail until it runs itself dead through normal use. Generally.

So, just make sure the store you purchase from has a good return policy, and that you don't need it yesterday.
posted by odinsdream at 8:01 AM on December 12, 2008

There seem to be trends in which one or two drive manufacturers have the best reputation for reliability: IBM was recommended until the DeathStar, then Seagate, and so on, and if people get consistently burned, the drive maker gets a bad rep that's hard to shake off. If you spend a bit of time at hardware forums, you can generally tell who has the best QC at the moment.

There's clearly a reporting bias in reviews: I've never reviewed the drives I've bought from NewEgg that work fine. (Right now I like Samsung, but friends who buy the more expensive ones with higher stated MTBF ratings for production environments like Western.)
posted by holgate at 8:04 AM on December 12, 2008

I have a feeling a lot of failures in external drives are a result of setting them vertically on those laughable "stands" they come with. Besides the fact that the drive was engineered to operate horizontally, IT'S GOING TO FALL OVER.

It's also possible that there is a new model coming out and they are clearing inventory for the new model.

It's the right time of year for these deals. It's after Christmas that you really need to watch for the discounted returns. Also keep in mind that over the past year prices of electronics have dropped to ridiculous lows, and specs to ridiculous highs, so even something regular priced is a pretty good deal. Just buy from someplace big and reputable where you're less likely to get screwed and more likely to get your money back should the need arise.
posted by Sys Rq at 8:05 AM on December 12, 2008

Even if you get a high-rated drive from a well known manufacturer, there's still a chance you'll get a bum drive. The good news is that most HDs come with good warranties these days. I bought a Seagate last year that had great reviews... and it died 3 months out of the box. The drive had a 5 year warranty and Seagate made good on it, sending me a replacement drive that was actually slightly larger that the one I bought. I now have 2 Seagate drives (as well as a Maxtor and Western Digital) and they've both performed very well so far.

Your best CYA tactic? Backup your data. I do nightly backups so when my drive died, I didn't lose any data. The worst part of the whole deal was waiting the 1-2 weeks it took to get my replacement drive.
posted by geeky at 8:28 AM on December 12, 2008

People rarely complain when something works.

Second this. Depending on what kind of hurry you're in, I might recommend monitoring the forums at slickdeals or fatwallet and looking for hard drive deals. Two benefits are that you'll probably get a good deal, plus, to address your quality concern, generally the comments will pretty quickly identify lines of drives that are notoriously bad.
posted by inigo2 at 8:28 AM on December 12, 2008

Google also did a study on failure trends in their drives, since they use so. so. so. many commoditized, low-cost drives. They're careful not to get into specific brands, but they talk a lot about failure rates, types, and SMART details and it's pretty interesting to see what they turned up with such a large sample size.
posted by disillusioned at 8:56 AM on December 12, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

I usually only write negative reviews. I dont feel motivated to say "Yeah, it works," but I do feel that if most reviews are in the poor/very poor categories then its probably a good idea to avoid the product. In this case poor and very poor are about 200 reviews while good and excellent add up to around 1,000. That, to me, says that its probably safe to buy, although I would feel a little cautious about the whole thing.

On top of this, if I learned anything about computer enthusiasts is that they are all about performance are rarely about cooling. Heat is what decides how long your drive lasts. Most geeks just crack open the case and just shove another drive in there without ever measuring temperature. Geeks also grind drives much worse than your average user. So newegg reviews are skewed a little more towards the "we break things" crowd.

Lastly, a lot of these newer cheap high capacity drives are not designed to be run hard. In fact the manufacturer comes out and states that these things should not be used in a RAID array or in a multi-user environment (server). I always recommend paying a little extra for a server class drive (or drives that are typically used by pros) than whatever is on sale at the moment. This probably isnt a big concern for the average user, but if youre going to be working that drive hard then you might as well pony up a little.

For drive recommendations you may want to ask at a IT-centric forum like tek-tips.com.
posted by damn dirty ape at 9:13 AM on December 12, 2008

Thanks! I figured there would be a good amount of commenting when things failed, but NewEgg seems to have more folks post positive replies, and general feedback, than many other online stores. And probably because the deals result in more sales, there are more negative replies than non-deal items. I was wondering if I was over-thinking the situation when reading all the negative reviews. Cheers!
posted by filthy light thief at 10:18 AM on December 12, 2008

Something to keep in mind:

Hard drive companies/brands become popular like any other commodity. If everyone is going around saying that Seagate drives are the best (and I've certainly had good experiences with them) then more people will buy them. If people buy them then the incidence of failure rate among owners of Seagate drives will rise because -all- hard drive fail at some point just like no stock automobile could be driven forever.

This is not to say that there haven't been certain drives that were sent to market with poor design or design flaws, simply that you should weigh complaints in the context of popularity.

I'll second "damn dirty ape"'s motion to pay more for the drive if you'll be running it really hard. Most of the time on sites like newegg the difference between a cheap high capacity drive and a more robust enterprise class drive really isn't all that much.
posted by JFitzpatrick at 3:44 PM on December 12, 2008

I have a feeling a lot of failures in external drives are a result of setting them vertically on those laughable "stands" they come with. Besides the fact that the drive was engineered to operate horizontally, IT'S GOING TO FALL OVER.

Minor quibble- hard drives are designed to work in the vertical as well as horizontal plane. They aren't designed to work in any other plane besides that, however.

Otherwise, spot on. I can only imagine the abuse these things suffer... And people somehow have that confirmation bias thing that because it's external, it's safer. I still have people proclaiming to me that saving their important work on a 10 year old floppy disk is safer than on their network drive (enterprise SCSI drives, RAID, backed up every night, etc) because it's a tangible thing.
posted by gjc at 8:51 AM on December 13, 2008

That google study is very interesting. However, I'm a little disappointed that they wouldn't come out with the raw drive make/model failure data. Maybe revealing the details will say too much about their sourcing and business relationships, but I'm affraid it is really just corporate thinking (basically, don't upset anyone who might want to buy adds from you later)..

I remember seeing an AskMe answer referencing a hard drive reliability database based on user submitted information. I think it was probably the reliability survey at storagereview. I haven't spent much time there though, so I don't have any sense of how useful it would be.


a lot of these newer cheap high capacity drives are not designed to be run hard. In fact the manufacturer comes out and states that these things should not be used in a RAID array or in a multi-user environment (server). I always recommend paying a little extra for a server class drive (or drives that are typically used by pros) than whatever is on sale at the moment.

I don't know.. It isn't clear that these factors are anything but marketing signals designed to drive differential pricing. Consider the CPU market, where you get differentiation between extreme edition parts, regular desktop parts, budget parts, and server parts. In fact, except for final stage crippling and marking, all CPUs of a particular generation are the same. I don't know how similar the hard drive market is. There is certainly much more possibility of real differences between different hard drive models, but.. I guess my argument is that there are only two useful metrics, warranty terms (length of coverage, how easy it is to make a claim), and third party performance studies. Marketing driven things like "manufacturer recommendations", the more subject points on specifications sheets, and model naming are not useful metrics!
posted by Chuckles at 2:29 PM on December 13, 2008

"more subjective points on specification sheets"
posted by Chuckles at 2:31 PM on December 13, 2008

Bad note: Recently bought a 250GB TrekStor using a gift card, and it was bad out of the box. :(
Good note: Wound up returning it to the manuf., and they replaced it with a 500GB. Now I've got stupid amounts of space, and nothing to do with it. ;)
posted by Orb2069 at 3:32 PM on December 13, 2008

I don't know.. It isn't clear that these factors are anything but marketing signals designed to drive differential pricing.

I think something real and tangible is going on here. If you read the reviews on newegg you'll see that these drives do fail in a raid arrays and warranty support has told people that they shouldnt do this.
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:52 PM on December 14, 2008