bfreek said:
Because they test them under unrealistic circumstances, that is buy them and test them for a few days. This is nothing near a real use case...
Well, to newegg's credit most of the 3 star or less involve an RMA. So judging reliability by the sum of the percentage of 1-3 star reviews is not a terrible methodology in the scheme of things. If you have a better one, I'm all ears. Perhaps only use reviews in the last 6 months and do the same thing. If I do this to the drive I bought, it jumps from 26% to 40%. That's only 56 reviews to judge them on (down from 505), but I suppose as long as your sample size is 30+ it's reliable enough.
And by contrast, if you look at what I see as the shining example of reliability as far as a drive for the money (and it's an SSD of course, but at least it points to the utility of newegg as a review site), the Intel X-25 series. Scores like 7% 3 star or less reviews. That's awesome. And you browse to see why people actually gave them those ratings, it's stuff like "Never got the rebate", "cant use ssd toolbox with raid hp aloe motherboard", "Windows boot up wasn't all that impressive", and "Intel's Data Migration Utility software doesn't recognize the Intel SSD as made by Intel, so it won't even install!". Those are the 3 star reviews. And the 1 star? (There are no 2 star reviews). 3/5 are non-reliability related! (2 are rebates, 1 doesn't know how to format a HDD). To me, all those are actually really encouraging!
And when Intel publishes that with their new 320 series, that they had <1% return rates for their 2nd gen, it's believable to me. And it cross checks with what I see in newegg and other sites (e.g. Amazon). And it is why that when I go to buy another SSD, I will be buying Intel despite other drives being reputedly faster.
Still, using that same methodology, Hitachi which I think I'll try next does not seem to be much better - 39% initially and 36% last 6 months. That is for the 7K2000. The 7K3000 scores only 14%, but all reviews are 6 months or less. Too early to tell really. I don't think any drive gets less than about 35% in the last 6 months that has been out a while.
And if you look at the 2TB Samsungs, which must not have been out for much more than 6 months judging by the number of reviews, it starts out at 17% and climbs to 22% in the last 2 weeks (i.e. after 6 months approx). Again, if we go back to the Hitachi 2TB 7K3000, it appears to be better as the overall is 14% but it drops to 12% in the last two weeks but with only 16 reviews how reliable is that?
Meh. The only thing I can gather from this is that HDDs do not seem to be able to be reliably made in the 1.5TB+ era. It's like riding a motorcycle - it's not a matter of if you come off, but when you come off. With HDDs it's not a matter of if they should fail, but what percentage will fail in the first year of ownership.
Which is why running ZFS + redundancy + backups is a no-brainer for any data you care about these days.
I have very bad experience with Samsung drives on the long run - return rates of 60-70% within 1-2 years.
Well, I'm at 80% in 1 year. We'll see how I go.
Sidenote: The distinction between consumer and non-consumer drives is just bullshit as computers tend to run for hours each day even at home.
Exactly. I'm not sure what the solution is. At least Hitachi are honest enough to put 24x7 usage, though they qualify that and say that it's for low duty cycle.
