[mythtv-users] OT: Predicted hard drive failure; replacement consideration

[Jay Ashworth]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Drescher" <drescherjm at gmail.com>

> At work I am having seriously high failure rates with Seagate drives
> for the last 3+ years. I am talking about >8% annual failure rates out
> of around 75 drives. I would stay away from them and get an hitachi
> 5K3000 or WDC green drive. We have had 1 hitachi failure in the same
> time out of 30 or so 2TB drives and less than 10 WDC black failures
> out of 50+ drives.

I, too, have, sadly, had much bad luck with Seagates, from 500GB up to 2TB,
failing in much less than the expected life, and all, uniformly, in a very odd
way which I've mentioned before here:

once you hit a block in the Red Zone, the drive adapter goes completely off
line, never to return until you power-cycle the drive, which of course
generally means the machine.

If you never hit a block in the Red Zone, the drive works fine.

Obviously, given the cycle time, this makes them effective impossible
to work around, even if you could theoretically do so; DDrescue is
likewise useless, since "real" reverse read isn't implemented in that
program, and the author declines to do so.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
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