Backblaze has been amazing, publishing their HDD reliability statistics. It's amazing exactly because they mostly focus on consumer-grade HDDs. Hitachi has been a clear winner if reliability alone is to be considered. I've also been reading around, and seeing that the "NAS" designation generally means more robust parts (for example bearings) which translates to higher MTBF ratings... Now the one-million dollar question:
I am looking for a maximum-reliability HDD to work in a home environment (that translates to "I'll be switching it on and off at least 2 times a day"). I've been eyeing a Hitachi NAS drive. Will a NAS drive be more reliable in such an environment (ie frequent on-off cycles) than say, a more "consumer-oriented" drive ?
All opinions welcome, but please back the up with some facts or good reasoning.
Any HDD can cope with that for many years. If it doesnt RMA it. No brand/model is immune to the odd failure of course - some are worse than others as you would have no doubt read in the backblaze results, so imho grab a drive with a long warranty ~ 5yrs on the WD Blacks - it a pretty good indication that the drives are built to last, but for the most part most drives live for many years.
Consumer disks are made to be turned on and off and not left running all the time. So really any desktop disk is going to be fine. It's probably not worth spending money on a NAS disk to use in a desktop as they're made for use in raid, multi-disk systems and for being run 24/7. So there really isn't much if an advantage to using them in a desktop. Also they're usually not as fast as say a WD black or something like that.
If you really want a disk with high reliability for your desktop then maybe look at the WD RE drives or even the velociraptor as they are high performance and high reliability disks.
I have a good deal on a Hitachi NAS drive. I wouldn't buy a NAS (besides, it's NOT used in the Backblaze study, I'll have to trust the brand name), but it just so happens that it's cheap right now.
Given that the NAS drive expects 24/7 operation, would lots of power on/off cycles be detrimental, more so than a desktop drive?
BTW I don't really care about performance, only about size, so that rules out the velociraptors.
I've never personally ever worried about spin up / head loading cycles. In my NAS I actually use WD Green's because I prefer that they shut-the-hell-up when they're not in use, so these units are unloading/loading the heads and spinning up/down all the time - still haven't had one fail.
If I bought something like a WD Red (which I use in my desktop for storage), and it failed because I turned my computer on/off too many times - I would shit bricks.
I'm after finding some independent data on whether start/stop cycles affect HDD lifetime. It seems to have bothered other users as well
Also this Hitachi NAS drive [H3IKNAS40003272SE] was not used in Backblaze's study (they don't own such drives). I'm wondering if I'm moving away from tried and tested reliability with this purchase.
The reason it's not part of it is because they're only using desktop drives in their boxes. The point is that they can use a ton of cheap disks and make up the reliability in software. So they're not using any enterprise SAS disks or nearline disks or anything similar like NAS disks.
The HGST NAS drives are similar to the WD red Pros which are still essentially consumer drives but with some enterprise features and firmware which works better for RAID and 24/7 use. The MTBF on the NAS drives is higher than the desktop drives so the expectation is that they will be more reliable but the big feature (other than the firmware) is that they have some vibration compensation technology which helps when you have lots of disks in a chassis. For a desktop computer you're paying for all these extra features that you won't ever need, but if you feel it's worth it for the extra potential reliability then go for it.
If anything they're going to handle on/off cycles better than regular desktop drives as they are binned better but they certainly won't be worse.
I think also that the backblaze statistics should be taken with a grain of salt. Like I said, they're using regular desktop drives in a situation which you would normally use expensive enterprise drives. They have 40+ disks to a chassis and a bunch of chassis in a rack so these things are not only dealing with 24/7 running and an enterprise load but with heat and vibrations which is way out of their spec. Desktop disks are going to fail under those conditions and while it's interesting to see which brands seem to last longer it doesn't necessarily translate to how they perform under normal use.
I havent read all the comments, but I would say if it hasn't already if you want a drive that is rated to work on and off all day.... then surely thats just a good quality consumer drive.. WD black and so on..
You could go all out pro grade NAS drives but the expense probably wouldn't be worth it
Also why do you think that you will be switching a hard drive on and off twice a day = more than just casual use? I may be missing something here though? but my HHDs are running all day and have frequent writing on them and I personally wouldn't consider needing enterprise grade drives... just good quality WD black.