System Builder Tip: Hard Drives and Reliability?

Here are two important reads for those of us who build, manage, and provide warranty services for our servers:

At the Computer World Blog: Everything you know about disks is wrong

And at Storage Mojo: Google's Disk Failure Experience

I am sure that we all have hard drive manufacturers that we tend to purchase over others.

For us and our systems, both our servers and workstations, we stick with the Seagate branded drives. We have seen a lot of success with them, and overall, our failure rate has been minimal.

We avoid Hitachi at all costs. They are supplied in Toshiba laptops, and we have seen an extremely high failure rate. Especially in laptops aged between 18 and 24 months. Toshiba warrants their Tecra line for three years, but it makes for a significant impact on productivity for our clients.

Fujitsu and Western Digital had their bad moments with us over the years. So, we tend to avoid them unless necessary. That may have changed recently in the last year or two, but once bitten, twice shy! ;)

All in all, our real world experience is somewhat reflected in Google's experiences.

And for that matter, Google should grow some cohones and publish the manufacturer names for the good and the bad. Everyone should have to face the music for building crap, and those that build the good stuff should get the extra business!

Both articles are a really good read, and quite informative!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists