[viator122]

So I'm thinking about ripping all my CDs to FLAC or AL and I have a couple of questions I hope you can help me out with:

1. Would I be better off getting one say 300 gig hard drive or two smaller ones? Does it matter?

2. What is the average lifespan of a hard drive? I am contemplating buying from the Seagate Barracuda line and I know they have a 5 year warranty, but how long can I expect these drives to last?

3. Do you get some kind of warning when a hard drive dies or does it just go *kaput* suddenly?

I am concerned that if I undertake this long process and get everything tagged, organized etc that one day my hard drive is just going to go and I'll be out all that work. Any thoughts on this? The computer is a Sony Vaio PCV-RZ20CD2 that I bought in November 2003. Currently it has a 60 gig Seagate Barracude (came installed in the computer) and a 120 gig Samsung (this one i installed myself as the slave in the second spot on the HD mount, but I'm not wild about it because it is loud). I use the Samsung for storage but would like to move up to something bigger and quieter. I'm open to replacing both drives, if necessary and feasible.

 

[Magsy]

I've had 3x120gbs running 24/7 for nearly 3 years now and they are all still fine....

However at work I have seen over 15 out of 40 Western Digitals fail in a less than 3 year old batch of dells. I have also seen 10 Seagates die after 2 years, thing is we only bought 10, so they all failed

These were lightly used desktop pc's and kindly treated.

I've only lost everything once, to one of the seagates above. That refused to even spin up and I was pretty upset

I've had a handful of other problems, drives basically clicking loudly and spinning down while you work away. A swift bang on the desk usually makes these come back to life long enough to get the data off, sometimes several bangs on the desk are needed

Personally I'm starting to get twitchy about now, approaching the 3 year mark. With all likely hood they will cary on for another 3, but these days drives are so big theres a lot on the line.

Logic would say get two smaller drives, you stand to loose less that way. However you could re-rip if the **** hit the fan, you always need a backup and you would have one. Given constraints inside the pc, heat and noise perhaps you are best served by a single large drive?

 

[JohnnyLightOn]

If you have enough CDs to fill a 300GB hard disk, definitely get a single drive. You can get one 300GB now for less than $200. Then, after you've converted your library to hard disk, get another. It should be $150 in just a few months. That way, you can make a backup and store it offsite. It takes a long time to rip CDs to hard disk, and if you have enough of them, you won't want to do it again. At that point you can made the decision whether a backup will be worth it, and my guess is that you will say "yes."

You may also want to buy an external USB or Firewire or SATA case (depending on your drive and interface) to help with making the backup. That's another $30-40, but you won't need it until it's time to buy your backup drive.

 

[aWanderlust]

I have had good reults with Maxtor and I have had bad results with Western Digital. Both WD's I owned died in under 2 years, mechanical failure. They do give of a warning known to many as the "Click of Death." Easily said, If your hard drive starts making a clicking noise and freezing making you push your restart button or flip your power strip to restart the computer, and especially if this increases in frequency your drive is about to fail. Back everything up ASAP since the drive will fail in a few days to a few months. I as well would go with two smaller drives, they tend to produce less noise and despite what the box says have faster access times. Plus, if one starts clicking you have the other to help backup files on. One final note, go with a SATA drive if your motherboard supports it, they have faster read times than IDE HD's.

 

[viator122]

Ok so then it's not an issue of larger drives being more/less reliable than smaller ones?

 

[stevesurf]

Disk redundancy and mirroring can really help out if one of your hard drives fails in between backups. There are some good articles on how to use WinXP to set up a RAID 5 configuration, but this requires the use of at least 3 smaller drives to make it worthwhile. The additional storage required in a RAID 5 config is the total sum of the drives less the size of one drive.

Disk mirroring will require twice the storage (copying the same info to both drives).

If you're really good about backups, then rely on this to recover your data. If you have a large library and you don't like backing up, a RAID array of smaller drives might be good for you.

 

[Helter Skelter]

Here's the thing about hard drives. No one of the major brands (Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor, Samsung) is any better or worse than the others. There are differences in warranty coverage (Seagate generally being the best in this respect with a 5 year warranty across the board), but overall reliability/performance/heat/noise output is going to be about the same these days no matter which you pick.

Speaking of noise, again, no one brand is better than the other. I've had silent and noisy drives from all of them. These days it's mostly been silent in almost every case, with a couple Maxtor 200gb drives I installed for a friend being the exception.

 

[AdamWill]

helter skelter: you're almost right, but you're certainly not right about noise. In an average case you might not be able to tell the difference, but in a quiet one you sure can. WDs are noisiest, Maxtor in the middle, Seagate very quiet, Samsung inaudible. Even WDs put out only about 33dB max, though, so they may well not be the noisiest component of an averagely- or badly-put together system.

On everything else I agree, though. Reliability is simply a crap shoot. I've been extraordinarily lucky with hard drives, I've *never* had one die. Sometimes they die in a year, sometimes they truck on for decades, it's simply impossible to know. Sometimes you can resurrect them long enough to get the data off, sometimes you can't.

The simplest way to be safe is to buy a tape backup drive and back the whole thing up to two different tapes once you're finished. Then lock the tapes away somewhere safe. That's the only 100% (or close to it) reliable method. Anything else leaves you trusting to luck just a little bit.

 

[Helter Skelter]

That is simply not the case with noise. Most drives these days are, if not silent, very, very quiet. I have here, in front of me right at this moment, 3 WD drives (a 40gb IDE and 2 SATA 250gb), 1 120gb Hitachi, 1 120gb Maxtor in my PS2, and 2 300GB IDE Maxtors (one currently in an external enclosure). I also have a 60gb Hitachi in my laptop. All 7200RPM (including the laptop).

I can only hear any of the WDs or the Hitachi when I put my ear right up against the case during a defrag or other heavy disk access. The Maxtors are all very quiet as well. The noisiest drive is the one in my laptop, and that isn't saying much, as it's still far from loud.

The 200gb Maxtors I mentioned earlier I could hear in the next room. As with reliability, YMMV.

 

[aWanderlust]

I disagree, some hard drive are total pieces of crap. Just like value ram is bad, a cheap hard drive is not the way to go. Thankfully, it will be the cheapest part of your setup.

 

[bundee1]

Get the biggest drive you can afford, wait 6 months and buy a backup. I just finished ripping 600 cds in ALAC to a 250GB MAXTOR SATA drive and I only have 15 GBs left free. I might have to delete some of the crappier discs to make room for better stuff.

 

[roadtonowhere08]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Helter Skelter That is simply not the case with noise. Most drives these days are, if not silent, very, very quiet. I have here, in front of me right at this moment, 3 WD drives (a 40gb IDE and 2 SATA 250gb), 1 120gb Hitachi, 1 120gb Maxtor in my PS2, and 2 300GB IDE Maxtors (one currently in an external enclosure). I also have a 60gb Hitachi in my laptop. All 7200RPM (including the laptop). I can only hear any of the WDs or the Hitachi when I put my ear right up against the case during a defrag or other heavy disk access. The Maxtors are all very quiet as well. The noisiest drive is the one in my laptop, and that isn't saying much, as it's still far from loud. The 200gb Maxtors I mentioned earlier I could hear in the next room. As with reliability, YMMV.

I have to disagree with you. I have had WD, Maxtor, Seagate, and now Samsung HD's, and they all sounded different and had different noise levels. My computer as it is now is about 22db. Once I put in my Nexus 80mm fans in, it will be about 20db. My Maxtor Diamond Max 9 160GB SATA churned away when it seeked. My WD, well forget about sleeping! My Seagate was quieter, but still churned slightly when seeking. Now my Samsungs... well they are completely quiet. I mean DEAD quiet. I hand picked them from MicroCenter because they had the high quality Nidec motors. No noise whatsoever. I can hear the high pitched whine from my CRT over my computer, and it is ever so faint.

Believe me, there is a difference between different HD makers. You want speed, get a Scuzzy. You want quiet, and I mean QUIET, get a Samsung with a Nidec motor.

Don't believe me? Check out the SilentPC Forums

 

[lini]

viator: ad 3) Sometimes hard drives indeed just go kaputt. But it depends on the type of malfunction. In other cases, the defects don't come as unexspected, if you monitor your hard drive constantly or at least from time to time. You just need a monitoring tool for the SMART capabilities of your hard drive for that purpose - personally, I like the SmartMonTools (originally developed for Linux, but also available for Windows; freeware!). You just type a command line like "smartctl -a /dev/hda", and it will show you quite a few SMART parameters which for example tell your drive temperature, sector reallocations et cetera.

ad 1) I'd take two 160 GByte drives for data security reasons.

ad 2) I've seen everything from dead on arrival over death within two months up to apparently eternal life. For myself, not one of all my hard drives in some 20 computers has yet died on me - I exspect the 40 GB IBM/Hitachi in my desktop replacement notebook to be the first one, though, 'cause it gets too hot during extended 3d gaming sessions, as the cooling system of the notebook is too weak. How would I know? Well, a) it feels too hot on touch and b) the SmartMonTools (see above!) say so.

No sector reallocations due to grown defects yet, though - so I don't exspect the drive to die all too soon.

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

 

[Nospam]

I've noticed definite noise and heat dissipation differences between the various brands.

I use an iBook, which is fanless, so every little bit of noise is very apparent to me. All drives are in fanless aluminum FW enclosures, so any noise I hear is the drive, and nothing else.

My 200GB Western Digital is by far the loudest, easily heard over anything else, including my Shuttle box. It also generates a LOT of heat, compared to the other drives. I got so tired of the noise, I stuck a fan on it and banished it to my ReplayTV. I now have 200 hours of recording capability that I'll never fully take advantage of, since I rarely watch TV

My old Quantum is almost as loud, but coupled with the fans of the Shuttle enclosure it's mounted in, the entire PC sounds like a jet engine

Next would be my almost new 80GB Western Digital, which also tends to run warmer than the rest (pattern here?).

Several dB below that is the 250GB Hitachi, which stays fairly cool.

The 10GB IBM-labeled drive in the iBook is a bit quieter and definitely cooler.

Finally, there's the virtually silent (and cool) 200GB Seagate.

 

[drminky]

Its pretty useless to compare different brands of drives without listing what their rotational speed is. Comparing a 10000rpm high performance drive against a 4500rpm drive is like comparing apples to oranges. Drives in general are getting much quieter these days, but you still do need to make the performance vs noise compromise if you care about noise levels. If a disk is simply for backups or music serving, the 4500rpms or the 5400rpms will do just fine. If you also want to edit uncompressed video, you're gonna have to suffer a bit of seek noise.

BTW Curse Quantum! That stupid drive of mine died 3 days after it's 12 month warranty expired!