Hard Disk advice
Discussion
After yet another hard drive failure I'm looking for advice on the best brand to buy. The computers are almost exclusively used on-farm - in offices or other buildings - although I accept at least a couple are probably in less-than-ideal positions (high moisture/temperature fluctuations).
Up to now we've replaced with the same brands - mostly Seagate, but some Western Digital. The last 2 I've replaced with WD SSD's, so I'll wait and see on that.
I'm not too concerned about price if there's a better (more reliable manufacturer). Data itself is automatically backed up so the biggest PITA is reinstalling, especially as we have some legacy applications which still run on Windows 7, and even one (weighbridge) which won't run on anything later than XP.
Up to now we've replaced with the same brands - mostly Seagate, but some Western Digital. The last 2 I've replaced with WD SSD's, so I'll wait and see on that.
I'm not too concerned about price if there's a better (more reliable manufacturer). Data itself is automatically backed up so the biggest PITA is reinstalling, especially as we have some legacy applications which still run on Windows 7, and even one (weighbridge) which won't run on anything later than XP.
If you can run SSDs, you're probably better off going down that route. SSDs can and will fail but not in the same way that mechanical 'spinning-rust' devices do.
As storage is cheap and you want to avoid the agro of having to rebuild when things fail, have you considered configuring a pair of disks as a RAID1 (Mirror). That way, if a disk fails, there's an identical copy on the other disk. The system doesn't fall over, you swap out the faulty disk for a new one, it rebuilds the mirror and you don't have to reinstall anything.
M
As storage is cheap and you want to avoid the agro of having to rebuild when things fail, have you considered configuring a pair of disks as a RAID1 (Mirror). That way, if a disk fails, there's an identical copy on the other disk. The system doesn't fall over, you swap out the faulty disk for a new one, it rebuilds the mirror and you don't have to reinstall anything.
M
SSD should be a lot more resilient to environment than spinning disk.
For easy of reinstalling, what you could do is use cloning tool to make up a copy of the whole drive once you've built a new install (Norton Ghost used to be the standard tool, not sure what the goto one is these days but there's loads out there), then when a drive next fails you just put in a new disk, clone the image, and you're ready to go.
For easy of reinstalling, what you could do is use cloning tool to make up a copy of the whole drive once you've built a new install (Norton Ghost used to be the standard tool, not sure what the goto one is these days but there's loads out there), then when a drive next fails you just put in a new disk, clone the image, and you're ready to go.
RizzoTheRat said:
For easy of reinstalling, what you could do is use cloning tool to make up a copy of the whole drive once you've built a new install (Norton Ghost used to be the standard tool, not sure what the goto one is these days but there's loads out there), then when a drive next fails you just put in a new disk, clone the image, and you're ready to go.
You would need a means of getting the backed up image onto any new device but not a bad shout. However, approach with caution as you can end up with the BSOD, if there are device driver issues when the new drive goes in.M
Thanks for all the replies! I'm hopeless at multi-quoting, but I'll put some questions here.
...bearing in mind they're owned by Seagate.Manufactured by rather than owned and as always its a little more nuanced than that.Most of the failures have been Seagate traditional (not SSD) drives, varying in size from 500GB to 2TB. The 2TB ones seem to fail the most. I looked online and Samsung aren't more expensive than other brands. It's not a brand I associate with hard disks so I hadn't looked. If they're made by Seagate what makes them better?
Thanks for the suggestion of RAID. All the PC's are HP desktops - mostly Prodesk models. Do they support RAID? It's something I mostly associate with servers.
The cloning suggestion is also a good one. I'll certainly try to do this.
Thanks again!
geeks said:
otherman said:
geeks said:
Mr Pointy said:
Samsung SSDs. Just Do It.
This!Thanks for the suggestion of RAID. All the PC's are HP desktops - mostly Prodesk models. Do they support RAID? It's something I mostly associate with servers.
The cloning suggestion is also a good one. I'll certainly try to do this.
Thanks again!
sunbeam alpine said:
Thanks for the suggestion of RAID. All the PC's are HP desktops - mostly Prodesk models. Do they support RAID? It's something I mostly associate with servers.
You can either RAID in hardware (you'll probably need a different controller card) or you can do it in the OS.Server RAID is often done at the hardware level, so you can hot-swap failed drives, without having to take the server down... That's probably overkill for what you want.
M
sunbeam alpine said:
Most of the failures have been Seagate traditional (not SSD) drives, varying in size from 500GB to 2TB. The 2TB ones seem to fail the most. I looked online and Samsung aren't more expensive than other brands. It's not a brand I associate with hard disks so I hadn't looked. If they're made by Seagate what makes them better?
I wouldn't be too hung up on the manufacturer as long as they're 'Tier 1'. Personally, I'd be more interested in the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) figure quoted and making sure they're PMR (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording) rather than SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording).M
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