Neil Bothwick wrote: > On Wed, 25 Jun 2014 22:54:35 -0500, Dale wrote: > >> Curious. I hope I don't start a flame war here. I have had WD, Seagate >> and I think there is a Samsung here somewhere, may be the one that is >> rolling over on its back now. The one drive that failed a few years ago >> was a WD drive. That said, all the other WD drives I have had just got >> to small to really use, and slow when SATA came out. I'm partial to WD >> and Seagate still since I got good long term use out of those. Based on >> your experience, you tend to be of the same opinion? >> >> Allan, your situation should involve a lot of hard drives. Any >> thoughts? Neil, you have a nice big opinion on this? > Yes, mix drives from different manufacturers. Or buy them at different > times. All manufacturers can have bad batches (remember the IBM > Deathstar?). I bought two Seagate drives a couple of years ago, for use > in a RAID. The only time I have ignored my own advice on this matter > (other matters are way off topic!). After a year they both started > showing SMART errors and one of them failed soon after, the other was > replaced before it had a chance to fail. > > Yes, it's anecdotal, but it makes sense - true redundancy means using > different sources. > >
Yep, it makes good sense. Each batch can have one oddball failure but if a batch has a firmware/hardware fault, the whole batch can die at the same time. One could certainly see the point that having say a WD and a Seagate mirroring each other would be good advice. Having two drives that are only one digit apart on the serial number could very well be a recipe for problems, unless one is really lucky and got two well made drives. Given how things are manufactured nowadays and the compact data on the media, it doesn't take much to make a dud for sure. This sort of reminds me of a old saying. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. It doesn't take much to make a hard drive either really good or really bad. I don't think they aim for really good, just good enough to stay out of the really bad area. ;-) I may have to keep a eye out on a WD drive for the next one. Dale :-) :-)
