[mythtv-users] How is this pricing possible?

[John Drescher]

> Sounds like it's unwise to get these, then? Should I spring for the
> higher-end drives and save myself headaches down the road?
>

I would still get them. Right now my recommendations are Hitachi
drives or any current generation SATA drive that is not made by
Seagate.

Backup all important / irreplaceable data and monitor the SMART raw data

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

Keep an eye on

05 - Reallocated Sectors Count

This value can be > 0 but if grows daily that is a sure sign the drive
is having problems.

196 - Reallocation Event Count
197 - Current Pending Sector Count
198 - Uncorrectable Sector Count

The three above parameters should normally all be 0. However sometimes
I have seen new drives have some values in these if you read a sector
that was never written. A full format or writing to every sector
corrects this.

199- UltraDMA CRC Error Count
This is a sign of a cabling or SATA failure. You want this number to
be 0 but under 100 probably is not too bad over a drives 5 year
lifespan.

On top of all of this all drives have a URE rate which is on the order
of every 20 or so TB of data read from the drive 1 sector will be
unreadable.

John