I had a recent spate of hard drive failures -- almost all of which happened to be 7200 rpm models -- that led me to investigate the issue of hard drive reliability. I found several websites discussing an allegedly high failure rate on all brands of 7200 rpm drives, leading them to wonder if the bearing technology used in recent hard drives was hitting some sort of technical limit?
This seemed to be confirmed recently when Maxtor followed Seagate and IBM's lead in developing a new series of hard drives with (again, allegedly) more reliable hydraulic bearings. Then, I talked to some of the major PC builders, distributors and wholesalers to find out whether they were seeing a lot of 7200 rpm returns. In short, the answer was 'no.' In fact, statistically, one could argue that 7200 rpm models are more reliable than the (usually) older 5400 rpm models.
However, there may be trouble afoot. In May 2003, DigiTimes reported that Seagate Technology, Maxtor and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies have started recalling some of their 40GB and 80GB products sold in Taiwan due to similar defects identified in the products. (Seagate subsequently denied that it is recalling any of its products.) According to the report, About 12,000-15,000 defective hard drives are estimated to have entered Taiwan. It is unclear whether the same groups of products, with an estimated defect rate of 10%, have also been marketed in other parts of the world, sources said. (Update: The big three -- Maxtor, Hitachi and Seagate -- have all denied any recall. -- Ed.)
Whether the manufacturers deny it or not, local distributors say they've begun to see soaring return rates on the hard drives since late April. One Vancouver-area retailer we spoke to in May 2003 says he's been returning "a stack" of Maxtors each week for a while now. Interestingly, Western Digital, the only major manufacturer apparently unaffected by these quality control issues, was widely considered to be the worst of the major vendors in terms of reliability a few years ago.
In addition, I can offer you a few pieces of anecdotal evidence -- which just so happen to coincide with the results of my own tests. I suffered 7200 rpm drive failures on drives from Fujitsu, Maxtor, Quantum and Western Digital. I've bought an awful lot of Maxtor and Quantum 7200 rpm drives that are still working fine, so this list certainly doesn't mean to suggest that all such drives have failed, but I've seen enough evidence to at least suggest that there may be a lot of other users having problems with the 30GB and 40GB 7200 rpm Maxtor models and various Fujitsu drives that failed on me.
Some brands and models are clearly worse than others. The worst model overall in recent history appears to be the IBM 75GXP. A Maximum PC article entitled IBM Deskstar Update notes the failure of 40 percent "and still counting" of the 100 75GXPs at one user's business. (IBM sold its (hard drive biz to Hitachi for US$2 billion in June 2002.). Slashdot recently posted a piece asking: Have Fujitsu Hard Drives Been Failing in Record Numbers? It cites a story in The Register, noting that Fujitsu has admitted to selling as many as 4.9 million (potentially) defective hard drives. Reports of Maxtor 40 and 60GB drive problems, particularly in the Mac world, are commonplace, as well.
In June 2003, the Fujitsu drive problem resulted in a class action lawsuit against the company. According to reports, the fault appears to impact MPG3102AT, MPG3204AT, MPG3307AT and MPG3409AT units manufactured in early 2001. If you have one of these, then it has probably failed already; if not, you should replace it ASAP. If you’re a customer of HP/Compaq, you can visit the HP Hard Disk Drive Replacement Program site.
One dealer I spoke to said the 30GB Maxtor drives on sale in the first half of 2003 are prone to problems, as well. He says he sends "a stack of them back to the manufacturer every month." One wonders why the store continues to sell them. (Answer: they're cheap.) He says the 40GB and larger models do not exhibit these reliability problems. This report corroborates information seen during the same period on Slashdot and other online forums. This particular dealer now recommends Samsung 40GB fluid-bearing drives to those seeking a low-cost, reliable drive. "It's a little slower," he told PCBuyersGuide, "but the return rate is practically zero."
In 5400 rpm drives, I've had recent failures in (relatively new) Fujitsu (9GB), Seagate and Western Digital drives and both old Quantum Fireball Plus and newer (Y2K era) Quantum Fireball lct drives.
Other issues
Other Quantum models, such as the Fireball KA, sometimes exhibit unusual problems, including an apparent incompatibility with all versions of Red Hat Linux and derivative distros such as Mandrake, ClarkConnect, SMEServer, etc.) newer than the RH 7.2 release. Interestingly, all Debian-based Linux distros we've tested seem to work just fine on this drive.
The average time-till-failure of the 7200 rpm drives seems to be about 30 months; the average time-till-failure of 5400 drives is a lot longer -- about 60 months. In all cases, the drives are run pretty much constantly, day in and day out. (Please note, however, that a hard drive could fail anytime, leading to catastrophic data loss. You cannot predict when or how a hard drive failure will occur. There is NO substitute for a current backup.)
Although it's too soon to definitively say, I'm betting that the new generation of hydraulic bearings will contribute to more reliable drives. In an effort to prove this theory, my latest batch of drive purchases is of this hydraulic bearing variety, such as the Seagate Barracuda IV or any of the new 7200 rpm, ATA133 drives coming out of the Maxtor factory. So far, so good....
I still suspect that, among new drives with non-hydraulic bearings, 5400 rpm models may last longer, due to their lower rotation speed and (generally) cooler operation.
All this evidence suggests that it is perhaps not coincidental that Western Digital in Sept. 2002 followed Maxtor’s decision to cut its warranty of future drives from three years to one, with an extended warranty being offered at an additional price. Ars Technica has details; Slashdot readers offer commentary.
Graeme Bennett (gra...@pcbuyersguide.com) is the editor of PC Buyer's Guide and the co-host of Online: The Computer Information Show on CFAX AM 1070.
For Further Reading
Thanks to Discovery Computers for the loan of some hard drives evaluated in our tests.
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