[ale] [semi OT] encouraging and discouraging HDD and SSD observations

[Brian MacLeod]

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To some folks chagrin, I'm about to continue this subject, but it's
because I feel this is now a point on which I can hopefully shed some
light on why buying one hard drive at a time is a bad idea, and
encourage those in the community to think a little farther ahead to
save time and money.

Most of that commentary is at the end, so if you'd like to skip to
that and avoid my rebuttals, go ahead.


On 11/4/13 3:17 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
> 
> Obviously.  My experience is my experience.  I would be delighted 
> if my experience is worse than average and if I get other brands / 
> models of drives in the future and they last longer.


Okay, you don't seem to be understanding the point most of us have been
trying to make every time you talk about drives.

Your experience certainly appears to be worse than average.


> I think it's a good idea to periodically run mechanical devices 
> above their average use case.  NOT to redline it.  NOT to abuse it.
> NOT to race it, using your analogy.  But to get it a bit above it's
> typical use case.  So, for a car, I might drive it in 3rd gear 
> rather than 4th for a few miles once in a while, just to get the 
> tach up to 3500 instead of always cruising at 2500, etc.


If you make GRADUAL changes to a use pattern, that's fine.  But you
indicated that your drives tend to be idle most of the time, with short
periods of intensity.  That's not gradual, and that's not good for the
drives.


> B) The other assumption is that this tactic is particularly hard
> on the drive.  It's not.

(in reference to Spinrite)

Um, reading every sector of the drive and evaluating is intense use,
or at least, more intensive than your indicated usual drive activity
(you said light).

Are you able to use the computer for anything else. or is the computer
now solely dedicated to the use of the product?

It's intense.  Maybe not "hot to the touch" intense, but you are
accessing the drive in a different manner than its normal use.  That's
a usage change.  See above commentary about usage change.


> Spinrite does ...


...blah blah blah.  Every time there's a hard drive thread, you begin
the bloody advertisement for Spinrite.  We don't need to hear it every
time.  It's in the archives, we can read it, stop posting this noise.

I've used Spinrite in the past.  When 20Mb of storage cost $200-300 and
I had computers that needed to last several years, it made perfect sense
to spend the time using it.

Nowadays, I consider it a complete waste of time because drives are
cheap, and I can plan to have replacements around, and I expect to
replace my computers in three years.

Drive starts throwing ANY error, I begin the process of replacing it.
Extra rounds of backups, cables on hand to begin cloning to a new drive.


> Are yo saying you expect refurbs to be inferior to new just
> because they frequently are?  Or are you saying they should be that
> way? If I were going to refurb my product and resell it and put a 
> warranty on it just like it was new, I'd prefer that it was as
> good as new when it left the refurb shop.


But you missed a very important point: they aren't selling refurbs as
new with the same warranty, they are replacing failed units with refurbs
to complete the CURRENT warranty.  That means THEY believe that the
drive is less reliable.  If they believe that, I had better believe it
too.

But more importantly, it's mechanical.  It will eventually fail, so I
might as well plan on, from day one, for the drive to fail after the
first day of use, because then I am ready for the time it fails
inconveniently (which is almost always the case according to Murphy).


> If you contracted with me to buy product X and you required a 5 
> year warranty as part of the contract, then you'd get a 5 year 
> warranty. I have two choices to accommodate you.  A) I can build 
> the quality into the design such that I don't anticipate a
> warranty claim but I am prepared to fill one from a minimal number
> of customers.  B) I can build mediocre quality and essentially buy
> an insurance policy on your product to cover the cost of
> replacement if you do make a claim. I personally would chose option
> A if i can. I want the product to be quality.  I want you to be
> happy.  And, I don't want you to have the hassle of making a
> warranty claim and I don't want the hassle of servicing one.

> If I had to build your product a million at a time, and I couldn't 
> justify building the higher quality product, then I would have no 
> choice but to give you the increased warranty using insurance 
> rather than intrinsic quality.
> 
> Either way, I'm going to charge you extra.


Exactly, thus, you go out of the hard drive business because the
majority of people want cheap drives.  You've basically described how
Seagate and Western Digital survived by dividing the drive market into
segments.


> You might say, just buy 2 of the WD green and be done with it. That
> is a potential option, but the math doesn't work.
> 
> A glance at NewEgg shows:
> 
> WD 1 TB Black, 5 year warranty, $ 88 WD 1 TB Green, 2 year 
> warranty, $ 68.
> 
> So, two Green's would cost $ 136 for 4 cumulative years of
> promised service.
> 
> So, I'm still better off going with 1 Black for $ 88 for 5 years
> of promised service.  Even if I have to pay $ 20 for servicing two
>  warranty claims on the Black, I'm still better off with the 5
> year drive.


Forgive me, but this isn't how I purchase drives.  To take your example...

I'd buy 2 drives at the start - 1 for use, 1 for the spare.
Black: $88 x 2 = $176
Green: $68 x 2 = $136

Say I lose a drive just after 2 years is up.  Okay, time to burn my
spare, but that means I have no spare in my pocket.  If I am comfortable
with waiting for warranty replacement for the Black:
Black: $88 x 2 = $176 + $20 service = $196

On the Green side, I have no warranty coverage, so I have to buy another
drive for at least a spare.  Let's assume it is the same cost as the
first two:
Green: $68 x 3 = $204.

Let's also assume the Green drive I use is the warranty drive (I
wouldn't do this, but I'm trying to paint a picture here).  That means
from this point I have another 2 years.  That's 4 years of warranty
coverage from my start point, and I've spent $8 more going with the
Greens.

Okay, now, I have another failure just after 2 years again (but not
before the Black's 5 year):
Black: $88 x 2 = $176 + $20 + $20 in service charges = $216
Green: $68 x 4 = $272

This is pretty much the worst case scenario for the Greens. But now
I'm going to year 6 on the Greens, whereas I'm about to be done with
the Blacks, with a $56 cost differential.  At minimum wage, that's
less than 8 hours work, over at least 4 years, so averaging 2 hours /yr.

If you spend less than 2 hours a year using Spinrite on your drives,
then you're coming out ahead.  If not, well, like I said, this is the
worst case scenario for the Greens, anything else means warranty
coverage at a lower cost.  Oh, and let's not forget that the
likelihood of those drives costing me the same in 2, and later, 4
years from this start point is unlikely; they will cost less.

And, most important of all: I control my fate, not the hard drive
company, not UPS/Fedex, because I always have a spare on hand.  If I
were to do that in the equivalent Black scenario, the costs go up.

But the reality is: I wouldn't do this because I'd at least buy Red
(the powering on/off for power savings is wear and tear on the Green
drives), and I'd be buying more than 1 drive for use anyway.  I
centralize my storage (NAS, and they don't like Green drives), and use
Linux so that I don't need a drive in any single machine anyway
(netbooting is a wonderful thing).

And with NAS, I don't need 1 for 1 in stock replacements; I can have 4
in use with a single spare in queue.  That actually sees more benefits
for buying Black than Green, but I wanted to bring this home to you,
with the way you purchase drives, and your current burn rate, that you
leave yourself up to a lot of external forces dictating how your
experience goes.  I've been trying to tell you you're going through a
lot of headaches and time doing things this way, and your adherence to
your method MAYBE saves money, but for a lot more work, and with
windows where you have no spare to fall back on.

If you're fine with that, okay.

But I really want to make sure any other beginners out there get to
hear that this isn't the only safe way, and I would argue, it's an
expensive way (time) to deal with something that is pretty much
guaranteed to happen.  Hard drives can, do, and will fail eventually.
 If you plan on the certainty of that, you're prepared.

bnm


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