[Discuss] The perpetual question: current "best" HDD?

[Chris Tyler]

On Wed, 2013-01-09 at 11:19 -0500, Derek Atkins wrote:
> That is kind of the point, but I'm trying to find ones that *will* last
> 3-4 years but wont break the bank today.
> 
> I don't mind buying new drives periodically.  But I'm trying to figure
> out which ones to buy now.  Kinda hard to buy a bunch of drives
> simultaneously that are different or from different batches.  ;)

The Google 2007 paper "Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive
Population" (http://research.google.com/pubs/pub32774.html) basically
laid to rest the myth that there's any significant difference between
drives or makers, and I don't think anything substantial has changed
since. The current price/capacity sweet spot then becomes the focus, and
last I checked that was 3TB 7200rpm.

There have been issues with near-simultaneous failure of many drives
from one manufacturer, though -- the massive failure of Fujitsu drives
manufactured in 2000-2001 with Cirrus Logic chips encapsulated in faulty
plastic being the most infamous example
(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/09/24/great_fujitsu_hard_drive_fiasco/). Ever since I got bit by that, I've tried to mix drives from different manufacturers in arrays, but it's a real chore to source enough different types of drives with close enough specs, and I've sometimes had to cave.

-Chris