A hard drive is not only a place to store your files, but also an important component of a PC, on which its reliability and performance depend. But, of course, in many ways, volume comes first. The once unattainable frontier in terabytes is already conquered and accessible to everyone. This is what we checked.
test bench
- Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E4700, 3500 MHz
- Motherboard: ASUS P5QC
- RAM: 2×1024 MB, Kingston DDR2, 800 MHz
- Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
- Power supply: 430 W, Thermaltake
- Operating system: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x32
Technologies
When collecting or choosing a computer, 99% of users first of all pay attention to the processor, then to the memory and video card. Of course, these are all important components too, but it’s impossible not to think about a hard drive (especially since it also affects PC performance), just like acquiring it on a residual basis.
Most system units have one hard drive, which means that it must be not only capacious and fast, but also reliable, because all your data will be stored on it! Therefore, such a parameter as MTBF, that is, time between failures, is very important. It's about reliability. Speaking of performance, you need to remember that the SATA interface has been updated again and is now represented by version 3.0, which is very fast, but must be supported not only by the hard drive, but also by the motherboard.
It must be said here that so far not a single HDD from this segment (for home PCs) can fully use the capabilities of SATA III, but soon the situation will change. Another important parameter is the spindle speed. Usually it is 7200 rpm, but now many manufacturers reduce it to 5400 in order to reduce power consumption, noise and vibration. By the way, despite the fact that usually the main noise is produced by heaps of fans located in the system unit, the hard drive can also be very noisy, especially under load. So the last parameters are also important.
Do not forget that each hard drive has a cache memory, which also affects performance. The average volume today is 32 MB (16 MB is very small), but you can also find models with a 64 MB cache. And don't forget that today every motherboard has a RAID controller, which means that you may soon get a second hard drive and create a RAID array that is fast and reliable.
Test Methodology
Each manufacturer praises their product, citing sheets of marketing texts and beautiful diagrams as evidence. Salespeople have their preferences, computer friends have theirs… But, as they say, it's better to test once than to listen many times. Which is what we did. To begin with, using the test built into the AIDA64 package (former Lavalys Everest), data were obtained on the speeds of linear and random read and write. As a result, we got very visual graphs. In addition, we used the well-known and popular HD Tune Pro to obtain average access times, as well as read and write speeds.
Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 HDS722020ALA330
- 4000 rub.
- 8 /10
Specifications
- Volume: 2 TB
- Interface: SATA II
- Buffer size: 32 MB
- Noise level: 29 dB
- Weight: 0.74 kg
+ The Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 hard drive is an all-rounder that can perform well in any field of activity. Its 2 TB of capacity is enough to store any content, while the user will not have to think about what to remove to free up space for a long time. The results of our tests showed that the device has good indicators of both random reading and linear reading, and if so, you can play games on it and boot the system from it, everything will work smartly. In many ways, by the way, due to the large amount of cache memory. Another plus is the fact that the Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 runs almost silently in idle mode.
— Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the operating mode of the device: since the launch of our test programs, it began to make a lot of noise. So, if you are going to put it under high loads (which is very likely), then you should think about some kind of noise suppression in the case in advance.
Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 HUA722010CLA330
- 3400 rub.
- 8 /10
Specifications
- Volume: 1 TB
- Interface: SATA II
- Buffer size: 32 MB
- Spindle speed: 7,200 rpm
- Noise level: 24 dB
- Weight: 0.68 kg
+ Unlike its brother, the Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 hard drive is not designed for ordinary home use, but for heavy-duty high-performance system or NAS. One of its main advantages is the time between failures, so the 1 TB capacity that is quite common today should be taken lightly, especially since, compared to the Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000, the Ultrastar A7K2000 is ten percent faster on average. In addition, the 32 MB cache memory should also be attributed to the pluses.
— Despite the fact that for a high-performance PC with a heavy load on the storage system, the noise figure is not the most important, you need to consider that the Ultrastar A7K2000 is no quieter than its brother. In addition, the downside is the access time, which is very average. For the work that the disk is designed for, this is a significant drawback.
SAMSUNG HD204UI
- 3200 rub.
- 9 /10
- Best Buy
Specifications
- Volume: 2 TB
- Interface: SATA II
- Buffer size: 32 MB
- Spindle speed: 5,400 rpm
- Noise level: 29 dB
- Weight: 0.65 kg
+ Despite the fact that the Samsung hard drive spins its spindle at just 5,400 revolutions per minute, its speed performance, according to our tests, is at a very good level. It excelled especially in such disciplines as linear read speeds and random read/write speeds. Also, we can't help noticing such things as the 32 MB buffer, as well as the very low noise level during operation. Considering that all of the above is offered to users at a very affordable price, no one will be surprised that this particular model received the Best Buy award.
— Of course, you have to pay for the low temperature during operation and noise reduction. In our case, the high access time became the price. This means that if you write an OS to this disk and run several programs from it, then you are unlikely to get a decent speed for their work.
Seagate Barracuda Green ST31500541AS
- 3000 rub.
- 8 /10
Specifications
- Volume: 1.5 TB
- Interface: SATA II
- Buffer size: 32 MB
- Spindle speed: 5,900 rpm
- Noise level: 26 dB
- Weight: 0.655 kg
+ Another manufacturer in our test that lowered the spindle speed of their device to keep the temperature and noise levels down while the hard drive is running. This Seagate Barracuda Green ST31500541AS is similar to the Samsung HD204UI. In addition, they have a similar price. It should be noted that in both cases, the engineers succeeded in their ideas. It turns out that a drive with such parameters (low noise and heat) is best used in small cases and media centers. So if you want to create just such a computer for yourself, then you should look at this type of hard drives.
— But the Seagate Barracuda Green ST31500541AS also has its drawbacks. It doesn't do very well in linear write tests. He reads quickly, but writes worse. In addition, the volume is still 1.5 TB, not 2, like Samsung.
Western Digital Caviar Green WD30EZRS
- 8400 rub.
- 7 /10
Specifications
- Volume: 3 TB
- Interface: SATA 3.0
- Buffer size: 64 MB
- Spindle speed: 5400-7200 rpm
- Noise level: 25 dB
- Weight: 0.73 kg
+ This "triple" can be proud of its triples: it has a capacity of 3 TB and a SATA 3.0 interface. The manufacturer thoughtfully included a RAID controller with the same interface in the package, since today not every motherboard can work with such a disk by default. The WD Green series is renowned for its low noise and power consumption, as our tester confirmed in all tests. In addition, it has good linear reading performance, as well as a large cache - 64 MB.
— Despite all the objective advantages, the price of the device is very high: for such an amount you can buy a couple of disks, and in total they are large in volume. And two disks are not one: you can, for example, create a RAID array on them. In addition, we were not at all pleased with the access time - this means that such a hard drive is well suited only for data storage.
Western Digital Caviar Black WD2001FASS
- 5400 rub.
- 9 /10
- Editor's Choice
Specifications
- Volume: 2 TB
- Interface: SATA II
- Buffer size: 64 MB
- Spindle speed: 7,200 rpm
- Noise level: 30 dB
- Weight: 0.75 kg
+ The devices that win our Editors' Choice award are truly top notch. Therefore, it is difficult to write about them - what can I say if everything is fine? This is what happened with this hard drive. All test results of Western Digital Caviar Black are excellent: high speeds in all tests and short access times. In addition, it has a solid capacity and a large cache, which makes it an ideal device for those who do not want to compromise.
— Despite the above, the device also has disadvantages (which, however, do not relate to its performance, but rather follow from it): these are high noise from operation and a high price.
Conclusion
Any testing ends sooner or later, it's time to sum up. We liked modern capacious hard drives, they all showed decent results. And the best models are Samsung HD204UI, award-winning "Best Buy", and Western Digital Caviar Black WD2001FASS, which became "Editor's Choice". So today the problem is not that there is not enough space on the disk, but in choosing the right HDD.
Hello readers of the ComService company blog (Naberezhnye Chelny). In this article, we will understand the topic - Hard Disk Diagnostics. The reason for writing this article was the message of relatives - our operating system costs a maximum of two months, after which glitches begin and you have to reinstall. Even after he installed Windows 7 himself, complaints began. I had no doubts about the operating system. She already stood more than on 10 computers. I tested the RAM, replaced the thermal paste on the processor, cleaned the system of dust - nothing. Then I tested the entire system using the system stability test (functions of the AIDA64 program). Everything is okay.
After repeated successful testing, enlightenment came. Checking the hard disk completely flew out of my head. I ran HDD diagnostics first with a third-party HDD Regenerator program. Having found errors (8 unreadable sectors), I re-performed the check with the program from the manufacturer Western Digital. The latter confirmed the malfunction and the hard drive went to a service center under warranty. How to diagnose a hard drive, read on...
Article structure
- Windows Hard Drive Diagnostics
- HDD Diagnostics with WD Data Lifeguard Tools
- Hard drive test with Seagate SeaTools
- Seagate HDD Recovery
- Toshiba Hard Drive Testing
- Conclusion
1. Diagnostics of the hard drive using Windows
Diagnostics by means of the operating system is what can and should be applied first of all. To do this, open the main Start menu and select Computer. Right-click on the section to bring up the context menu and select Properties
open Disk properties. Go to the Tools tab and in the Error Checking section, click the Check button
In Windows 8, the following window appears (most likely due to checking the partition on the SSD drive). Let's trust Microsoft and cancel the disk check
In Windows 7, a window opens where, for a more thorough check, you must select both checkboxes (as shown in the figure) and click the Run button
If the operating system is using the volume you want to check, you will see a message
If you click Disable, it will check the disk
If you click Cancel, another window will appear asking you to check the disk the next time you boot your computer. This is the preferred option. In this case, the disk being checked will be free from any tasks and processes, which will allow you to perform the check without problems.
Click the disk check schedule.
We repeat all the above steps with all partitions (volumes) of your hard drive and reboot. When the computer boots up, the operating system will diagnose the hard drive. If there is something interesting, then when the computer boots up, an information window will appear with the results.
Usually, Windows does not want (or rather cannot) immediately perform a system disk check. Asks to assign it at the next boot. All other sections can be checked without rebooting.
If you have chosen to check the system disk and assign it to the next boot, you will see approximately the following picture
You must wait for the diagnostics to complete and the operating system to load. If errors are found, diagnose using programs from the manufacturer.
Diagnostics of HDD by programs from the manufacturer
There were several manufacturers of hard drives. These are Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung and Hitachi. Each of the manufacturers produced disks and, of course, utilities for diagnosing them. After that, Seagate bought Samsung and Western Digital bought Hitachi. That is, there are actually two manufacturers. I will give their diagnostic utilities
- Western Digital - Data Lifeguard Tools
- Seagate-SeaTools
For Hitachi hard drives, there is a special utility - Drive Fitness Test. I tried it on two hard drives of the same model - nothing happened. The program does not see the hard drive. Therefore, we will check with the Data Lifeguard Tools utility from Western Digital. Let's start with her.
2. Data Lifeguard Tools - WD and Hitachi hard drive diagnostic software
You need to download it. To do this, go to link— Data Lifeguard Tools. A page opens where you need to select your product
Since it was necessary for me to check the internal 3.5″ hard drive with SATA interface, I choose it. You choose yours.
On the next page, you select your Windows or Mac system and the Data Lifeguard Diagnostic hard drive diagnostic utility
Below is more information about the program. Click on the Download button
The WinDlg_124.zip archive will be downloaded, which can be opened with the 7-zip or WinRar program as well as a file with the rar extension. Unpack and run the Setup.exe file highlighted in the figure below to install the diagnostic utility
Under Windows 8 run with administrator rights. Otherwise, nothing will work. Installation is simple. The installed program starts immediately. Check the box to accept the license agreement and click Next
The main program window looks like this. You must select the drive to be tested and click on the highlighted area to select a test
A window opens in which you can select a quick test, an extended test, burn the entire disk with zeros, or view the test result. Selecting this option will show the results of the last test. To diagnose a hard drive, you must select either a quick test - QUICK TEST, or an extended test - EXTENDED TEST
Wait for it to finish and see the results.
Here are the results of the extended hard drive test that I mentioned at the beginning of the article.
Errors were found when clicking on the Repair button - Restore
It remains only to click OK
Then close - Close and see the result. As you can see, the short test succeeded, but the extended one failed.
Hence the conclusion. It needs to be checked with an extended test. It takes several hours (in this case, about five), but it is reliable.
After the drive failed the test was successfully replaced under warranty.
3. SeaTools - diagnostics of hard drives from Seagate and possibly Samsung
You also need to download the utility. Follow the link - SeaTools. We get to the Seagate company page. To download, go to the DOWNLOADS tab. We are offered a choice of downloading a utility for Windows and for DOS. If your operating system does not boot at all, then you must select for DOS. The disk image is downloaded. It must be written to disk. If you are at a loss, I recommend reading the article How to burn an image to disk ?. Then it will boot from the disk and carry out HDD diagnostics in the same way as in the Windows version. Read on to find out how to do it.
Select SeaTools for Windows by clicking Download in the appropriate field
On the next page, you must accept the license agreement by clicking ACCEPT
Then, to directly download the diagnostic utility, click Download
The file SeaToolsforWindowsSetup-1208.exe is downloaded ~ 20 MB in size. Run and install the utility. On the site, support for Windows 8 is declared, but the program was not immediately installed. On Windows 7 the installation went smoothly.
Run the hard drive diagnostic utility. If you do not have NET Framework version 4.0 installed, you will see the following window. Click Yes and go to the download page
The page below opens. You need to wait until you are redirected to the package download page
Choose your language and click the Download button
The following pop-up window may appear. Click Cancel and Continue
The dotNetFx40_Full_setup.exe file will be downloaded and must be run. Then accept the license agreement by checking the appropriate box and click the Install button
Installation is not fast, as distributed computing is running in parallel.
When finished, click Done
Launch the SeaTools program again
It searches for supported drives. Need to wait a bit
Then, once again accept the license agreement
To diagnose a hard drive, the Short and Long Universal Tests are sufficient.
For reliability, choose Long-term universal and wait for it to end. If the test does not pass, follow the instructions and if the program does not fix the disk, carry it under warranty.
In the Basic tests menu there is an item Repair all. I have not tried this function. As will be a suitable hard drive I'll try.
4. Recovery HDD Seagate
21_10_2013 A few months ago to bring a Seagate 160 GB hard drive without warranty. The long universal test gave an error. When connected to another computer, all important information was copied from this disk without any problems.
To restore performance, we used Additional tests
A warning window popped up saying that you can activate Additional Tests using the F8 key
By clicking on F8, the window closed and the Additional tests section appeared. Since the data was saved with us, I chose Complete Erase (SATA)
Another warning popped up
Scrolling the screen with the slider in this message, it was found that to start a full erasure, you must press F8. After clicking, erasing started.
When the process was completed, ran the Long Universal Test again. The test has passed. After that, we reinstalled the working system image using Norton Ghost. And so far no one has complained.
5. Testing Toshiba hard drives
31_10_2013. It was necessary to check two Toshiba hard drives. Of course, I wanted to find and use the utility from the manufacturer.
Download the diagnostic utility from
Downloaded the test for Windows. Notes do not state support for Windows 7
Launched the downloaded file fjdtwin.exe. Accept the license by clicking Agree
The diagnostic utility from Fujitsu is launched in which you must select and click the Short Test or Extended Test button
The problem is that it is not possible to select a hard drive for the test. And the mouse and keyboard chose - nothing.
Download the DOS utility from the official Toshiba website. and copy to a flash drive.
We restart the computer and using the Boot menu, called using the F8 or F11 keys, or look at the instructions, select the USB flash drive
On the command line, write the name of the diagnostic utility and press Enter
Press Space to continue
We agree by pressing Agree
We are waiting for the utility to identify
Then comes a test utility warning asking you to press any key to exit. That is, the utility did not find the hard drive
I tried to connect to another SATA connector - nothing. Tried using a different SATA cable - same result.
Here is such a harsh HDD diagnostic test from Toshiba. If someone managed to test their drives, please tell us in the comments. Everyone will be interested.
If another Toshiba HDD comes across, I'll try again. If I succeed, I'll write. If it doesn't work out, I'll test it with SeaTools or WD utilities.
Conclusion
In the article hard drive diagnostics, you learned how you can check your (HDD) for errors. Here we have considered two way: check by built-in Windows tools and check by special utilities from manufacturers. In a combat situation, I like to use diagnostic utilities. Since this is, for me, a 100% option. If the disk passes the test, all is well. Otherwise, we carry it in for repair under warranty. That's why in the article about such importance I give guarantees. It needs to be 3 years old. It's been 3 years without a headache. Naturally, it is necessary to treat the hard drive well for the entire warranty period, since the service center looks closely at scratches.
The main thing I want to convey to you. Hard drives are consumables. Like printer cartridges. You must have at least two copies of your important data on two different drives. For example on internal and on . One fails, buy a new one, restore data from a backup and you are happy again. In order not to buy often, see the same warranty. To be longer. Also a great option is to use .
I have not come across Samsung hard drives. Utilities for these disks did not find. If anyone has information, please share in the comments. While I will check them with a utility from Seagate or WD.
Video in which I will briefly talk about the diagnosis of hard drives
Thanks for sharing the article on social media. All the best!
Hitachi GST, the hard drive division of the Japanese Hitachi Corporation, has a rich history and experience in developing mobile hard drives. Unlike other participants in this market, Hitachi GST, while still a division of IBM, has successfully released more than one generation of hard drives for laptops. Today the company offers buyers and manufacturers of laptops several lines of mobile hard drives of various classes, differing in key characteristics - spindle speed, maximum volume, interface. Of particular interest to mobile users is the Travelstar 7K100 series of 7200 RPM hard drives.
Among all competitors, only Seagate can offer a mobile hard drive with such speeds, other companies are limited to 5400 RPM. And Hitachi is already releasing the second generation of high-speed mobile hard drives, which, having compact dimensions (less than 1 cm thick), can compete with modern desktop drives in terms of performance.
Mobile hard drive: economy at the expense of speed
A feature of all mobile devices, including hard drives, is that during their development, care must be taken to reduce power consumption. A mobile computer is often powered by a built-in battery that has a limited capacity. In order for the user to get as much work done before the battery runs out, laptop components should consume as little power as possible. The hard drive, being a mechanical device, makes a significant contribution to the overall energy consumption. The electric motor that rotates the platters, as well as the voice coil drive (VCM) that moves the heads, consume the most energy. Obviously, reducing the speed of these nodes will reduce consumption, but then the overall speed of the laptop will also decrease. The emerging contradiction is the main subject of research and experiments of hard drive developers.
The problem of energy consumption is not the only one:
1. Due to the compact packaging of all laptop components, it is necessary to stabilize the temperature, but since the temperature depends on the power consumption, the problem is solved automatically.
2. Reducing the size, an important direction in the development of laptops, for a hard drive is fraught with limiting capacity limitations. It is physically impossible to install more than two platters in a thin case of a mobile hard drive, so increasing the capacity is only possible by increasing the density of each platter.
3. The laptop is often exposed to external influences, and this is very dangerous for devices that have moving parts.
All these problems are significantly complicated if the hard drive spindle has high speeds: the hard drive heats up more, consumes more, and is more sensitive to shocks and shocks. Therefore, manufacturers for a long time (and many still) could not master the production of high-speed hard drives for laptops.
At the same time, the spindle speed directly affects the performance of the hard drive. The faster the plate rotates, the more data "flies" under the heads per unit time. The access speed also increases, since less time is needed for the disk to "turn around" and the desired sector is under the head. Therefore, developers are working hard to increase speed without losing reliability and economy.
Travelstar 7K100: technology and features
Creating a mobile hard drive of a new generation, Hitachi GST developers have implemented a number of new technologies to reduce the negative impact of specific working conditions in a laptop:
- Performance Idle - the electronics are fully active, the heads are in the middle of the disc radius;
- Active Idle - the servo system and actuator control are disabled, the heads are above the disk, but are not controlled; consumption is reduced by 40-50%;
- Low Power Idle - the heads are parked, but the plates are rotating; consumption has been more than halved;
- Standby - the plates are stopped, but the hard drive is ready to return to work when a command is received; consumption is reduced by 8-10 times;
- Sleep - the hard drive is turned off.
There is a lower power consumption in all modes for models with both Parallel ATA and Serial ATA interfaces (the latter negatively affects power consumption due to its higher frequency). The positioning speed of the Hitachi hard drive is also higher, although due to a slight increase in noise, it is more resistant to external influences.
Comparing with desktop models of hard drives, for example, Hitachi Deskstar T7K250, we note a huge difference in power consumption - almost 5 times, although the difference in performance is not so great. So, a desktop hard drive performs positioning in an average of 8.5 ms, a mobile one - in 10 ms, and the recording density and read / write speed of a desktop drive are only a third higher. It turns out that the Travelstar 7K100 hard drive is suitable not only for a laptop, but also for a desktop PC. In particular, computers in compact Flex-ATX, micro-ITX, SFF, etc. cases. can be equipped with mobile hard drives, as this will save space in the case and reduce consumption. Mobile hard drives with high performance are appropriate even in workstations and servers with high density. Let's test and evaluate how productive the Travelstar 7K100 is compared to conventional desktop hard drives.
The copy received for testing is the youngest model in the family, a 60 GB hard drive with a Parallel ATA interface. It contains two platters with a capacity of 40 GB each, but since one of the surfaces is not used, the total capacity is less. Other hard drive parameters:
The test platform was not a laptop, but a regular PC in the following configuration:
It was not possible to organize a full-fledged comparative testing, hard drives of the same class are still being assembled. However, evaluation testing, which involves only comparison with desktop hard drives from leading manufacturers, is quite possible. Of course, the buyer will never choose between these hard drives due to the specifics of their use and a significant difference in price. However, such testing is not completely useless, since it allows you to determine how modern technologies allow you to "overclock" a miniature mobile hard drive.
So, we have three desktop hard drives from leading manufacturers: Seagate, Samsung, WD. All three have a capacity of 200 GB, implement a dual-platter design, support the Serial ATA interface:
Performance: Low
Synthetic tests allow you to evaluate the parameters of the hard drive under ideal conditions - with strictly sequential (the sector number increases) and random (the sector number is chosen randomly) access.
Access speed measured using IOMeter, HDTach (versions 2 and 3) and Winbench99. The average value (14.8 ms) confirms the figures declared by the manufacturer: 10 ms for positioning and 4.72 ms for rotation delay. According to this indicator, the Travelstar 7K100 is not inferior to the desktop Seagate, but it cannot compete with Samsung and even more so with WD due to the limited power of the actuator. The write access speed due to the lazy write algorithms turned out to be high - 8.3 ms - even compared to desktop drives.
These programs also measure linear reading speed. Here the Travelstar 7K100, of course, lost: its recording density is significantly lower than that of full-size desktop drives. The average result - about 35 Mb / s - is rather low compared to 50-60 Mb / s for large hard drives.
The IOMeter test shows that at various sizes of the requested data block, the Travelstar 7K100 hard drive is about twice as slow to read and write than current desktop drives.
It is interesting to look at the graph of the linear reading of the surface, built by the Winbench program. Instead of a clear stepped curve, which is typical for hard drives with zonal recording, we see an uneven and chaotic graph. However, it is worth increasing any area, and everything falls into place. Within each area there are three repeating zones, each with its own average reading speed. Such an effect is possible only when each of the three surfaces (and the test hard drive has just three of them) has its own density of information placement. There is an application of adaptive formatting technology, which was announced by the manufacturer.
Performance: real applications
Sample workstation The IOMeter test contains disk access statistics from the Winstone Content Creation test. This method allows you to evaluate the disk performance in operations per second when working with multimedia data. And also - to simulate the situation of parallel work with many applications by generating a load in several threads.
Actually, the Travelstar 7K100 hard drive is inferior only in read/write speed, so in the Workstation test it lagged behind only a quarter, which can be considered an excellent result for a mobile hard drive. Note that its backlog did not increase with the increase in load, and, therefore, its firmware algorithms work efficiently even with a large number of simultaneous requests.
The PCMark05 test showed a relatively low speed of the mobile hard drive both in terms of Windows boot time and application download speed. When it comes to opening and saving files, the Travelstar 7K100 is one and a half times slower, says PCMark05.
Only slightly reduced disk performance was recorded by the Winstone test, which is not very sensitive to the speed of disk operations.
Other aspects
Mobile hard drive could not be convicted of excessive noisiness– perhaps, compared to desktop drives, it works very quietly. But the positioning stands out clearly against the background of the hum of the fans. When installed in a thin laptop case, noise will not be a problem.
During testing, the hard drive heated up to a temperature of 27 degrees, which, of course, is much less than that of desktop drives.
Monitoring system SMART covers not only traditional indicators such as the number of bad sectors moved, total operating time, the number of turns on and head latch cycles, but also performance indicators. Winchester counts the error rate of reading, positioning and transmission over the interface, monitors the speed of sequential and random access, and also registers signals from the G-Sense gravity sensor, paying attention to careless handling of the laptop.
conclusions
Certainly, Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 is an extraordinary and high-tech product that combines compact size with improved performance. With it, the laptop owner can expect to get performance close to the desktop. However, Travelstar is still inferior to desktop drives, especially in terms of sequential read and write speeds. Sometimes it is twice as much, sometimes by a few percent. However, its size and power consumption are not comparable with the size and consumption of desktop models. Among all mobile models, this hard drive is the leader in speed.
When choosing a hard drive when buying a computer, people most often do not think about its reliability. Capacity, price and write speeds - these characteristics are given importance, and the life of the device is measured only by the duration of the warranty. As it turned out, in vain. The fault tolerance of hard drives varies greatly depending on the manufacturer. With a similar price and capacity, drives from one company can serve properly for more than 3.5 years, while another one is highly likely to fail in the first 1.5 years. And if it is not so painful for a home computer - the archive of photos from last year's tour will “burn out” at most, then a dead hard drive of a corporate server will paralyze the work of the entire company and “give” problems for several months in advance. Even if a firm defends itself by backing up its data, buying short-lived hard drives will still incur losses associated with their frequent replacement and downtime for repairs. The Storelab.ru information recovery laboratory decided to determine whose hard drives usually last the longest.
Measure of durability
Most hard drives come from 6 vendors: Fujitsu/Toshiba, Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate and Western Digital. To determine who produces the most reliable devices, we analyzed the statistics of the arrival of failed hard drives. More than 4,000 devices were considered: from personal computers (3.5”) to laptops (2.5”).
The data of the conducted analysis were compared with the market shares of the companies. Obviously, the more hard drives of a certain brand were sold, the greater the percentage of failed. Popular models come to the information recovery lab more often than rare ones. And only a significant difference in revenues and market share can indicate a relatively high or low level of reliability.
It turned out that the two groups of data correlated only partially. The main difference is that the percentage of failed devices at the market leader Seagate is almost 2 times higher than its share: 56.1% versus 31%. You can make an adjustment for Russian specifics: according to Seagate's own data, its share in the domestic market is more than 40%. But this fact does not fundamentally change the situation: the percentage of "dead" disks received is much higher than the market share. This indicates the lower reliability of Seagate hard drives compared to other manufacturers. All other vendors have revenue shares below market share, with Western Digital and Hitachi accounting for a nearly 11% difference. Thus, the devices of these companies are more fault-tolerant.
The second important indicator is the average age of hard drives at the time of failure. It, again, differs depending on the manufacturer of the disks and often depends on the "success" of the model. At the development stage, it is difficult to determine the durability of a hard drive. Having developed the device, the company can only conduct laboratory tests: for temperature, pressure, vibration, etc. But this study, as a rule, does not show all design defects. The real test of durability is time. Flaws become apparent within a year and a half. If most of the manufacturer's hard drives have survived this milestone, the products can be considered reliable.
As can be seen from the table, Hitachi has become the leader in terms of life expectancy of hard drives. Its devices lasted an average of 5 years, a year and a half more than the next most reliable Western Digital with a capacity of up to 500 GB.
Typical hard drive failures
"CC fly" bites Seagate
Seagate's performance is spoiled mainly by the 7200.11 series of Barracuda hard drives with high capacities - from 500 GB to 1.5 TB. It can hardly be called the most successful, since the 11th one accounts for 65% of all “dead” Seagate hard drives received by Storelab.ru. The design of the devices of the series was created as if in a big hurry, it is distinguished by weak nodes. In addition, the percentage of marriage has been increased in the series. Many of the hard drives stopped working in the first 1.5 years after purchase, that is, they did not even serve their warranty period.
This is surprising considering the quality of Seagate hard drives from other series. Old Seagate hard drives are much more reliable. Devices up to and including 7200.10 series (35% of the total number) received by the laboratory worked for 3 years or more.
The most common malfunction of the 11th series is a firmware failure. When executed via the terminal, it issues a hexadecimal error code, which is preceded by the message LED: 000000CC. Because of him, the glitch in the slang of engineers was called the "SS Fly". Typical symptoms of the appearance of "Flies": the computer starts to "slow down" or freeze, and after a reboot, the hard drive is no longer detected by the system. Its microcode self-destructs.
Motor spindle wedge
Another common problem is the motor spindle wedge. Hard drives from all manufacturers regularly fail for this reason. Jamming most often devices with increased capacity, which use 3 or more magnetic plates (or "pancakes"). Additional “pancakes” increase the load on the hard drive axle, and in order for it to bend slightly and then stop rotating, it is enough to drop the device from a height of 20 cm. The spindle wedge can be identified by increased vibration of the hard drive and a sharp noise similar to squealing.
In the 7200.12 series, Seagate uses new technology and new components, but it is not yet clear whether it will be more reliable than the previous one - breakdown statistics have not yet been accumulated.
Delicately covered by Western Digital
Among non-working Western Digital hard drives, 59% had a capacity of up to 500 GB and an average age of 3.5 years. The remaining 41% are drives with a capacity of more than 500 GB. Due to the additional "pancakes" they are less reliable and for the most part lasted less than 1.5 years.
For WD drives, the failure of the magnetic head unit (HMB) is typical. This happens due to overheating (WD heads are capricious at temperatures above 45 degrees Celsius), as well as due to physical impact. The design feature of WD makes these hard drives particularly sensitive to shock and pressure. Unlike other suppliers, WD does not fix the axis with the magnetic head block with a separate screw, but with a device cover. Therefore, if you press hard on the hard drive case, the cover can move and change the angle of inclination, then the magnetic heads will come out to the "pancakes" at the wrong angle. This is enough to disable the device. By the way, due to the fastening of the engine axis by the WD hard drive cover, it is almost impossible to disassemble and assemble such a device at home. The clamp of the cover bolts changes slightly - and the disk no longer rotates.
Except for this vulnerability, WD drives are quite reliable in terms of both mechanics and electronics.
Washed down "pancakes" at Toshiba/Fujitsu and Samsung
The non-working hard drives that came from Toshiba/Fujitsu were exclusively 2.5-inch, for laptops. The average service life of such a device was 2 years.
Toshiba specific disease - jamming of the engine axis due to a malfunction of the liquid bearing. The most common cause of breakdowns is the ravages of time. The cover that covers the axis in the Toshiba HDD is thin and often deformed. Through small gaps, the bearing grease evaporates in it. Gradually, friction increases, burrs appear in the bushing, and finally, one fine day, the axle stops rotating. Here you can wave goodbye to the hard drive. An engine wedge is one of the most serious malfunctions, even recovering data after a wedge is not always possible.
In addition, laptop hard drives often fail from falls; during an impact, the so-called sticking of the magnetic head block occurs. The fact is that the magnetic plates in the hard drive are very precisely polished, so precisely that if you connect them together, then you can’t disconnect them by pulling in different directions. The molecular attraction is strong enough that an adult can only stretch the disks along. The same attraction glues the plates and the magnetic heads that read information from them. During normal operation of the hard drive, the heads float above the surface of the "pancakes". They, like a wing, are lifted by the air flow from the rotation of the disks.
But with a strong blow, the force of the air is no longer enough to prevent contact. As soon as the BMG touches the “pancakes”, the hard drive engine will no longer be able to separate them and return them to their working position.
When the disks start spinning, the heads scratch them until they fail completely and information is lost. At the same time, the user hears only a quiet buzz, the hard drive is detected in the BIOS, but does not work.
In Samsung hard drives, the contact of the block of magnetic heads and "pancakes" happens without the "help" of the user. The head of the hard drive of this manufacturer is designed in such a way that sometimes it spontaneously strikes on the surface of the magnetic plate. Therefore, damage to the BMG is the most common cause of failure of Samsung drives.
Conclusion
The manufacturer of the most reliable hard drives is Hitachi Corporation. Of the more than 200 non-working devices of this company that arrived at the Storelab.ru laboratory, there was not a single one with factory defects or weak nodes. All malfunctions are caused by the physical effects of users. Together with the longest service life and the best ratio of market share and failure rate, Hitachi hard drives can rightly be considered a leader in fault tolerance.
The market leader in sales Seagate, on the contrary, is inferior to other manufacturers in terms of device durability, mainly because of the 7200.11 series hard drives. Data collection on the reliability of the new series of hard drives.12 is ongoing.
Today, all the fun in the field of storage devices is happening with solid state drives. SSDs are evolving as fast as the semiconductor components that make them up allow. The bandwidth of Flash memory, the performance of microcontrollers - all this has so far been able to scale at an accelerated pace. At the same time, there is no way to effectively increase the recording density of magnetic platters and the speed of movement of heads - the parameters that determine the data transfer rate in a mechanical drive. Nevertheless, HDDs retain an undeniable advantage over SSDs in terms of the unit cost of information volume, and the average disk capacity over the years of the existence of this technology (and this is no less than 60 years) has increased and continues to increase almost linearly, despite the increasingly difficult obstacles that arise. before the engineers.
Currently, the maximum capacity of a 3.5-inch hard drive is 12 TB. But only selected models for data centers can boast of such parameters, where the maximum data density in a server rack is valued. On the other hand, the previous bar - 10 TB - has already been taken by consumer HDDs for various purposes, and without the use of the so-called tiled recording (SMR), which was previously considered as a promising way to increase volumes, but as a result remained a niche technology due to the associated with it falling of speed of record. Today, we are faced with the task of choosing those models of modern 10-terabyte drives that are best suited for certain use cases - whether it is nearline class server storage, home NAS, or desktop PC disk.
⇡ Test participants
The competition was attended by seven drives manufactured under the brands Seagate, Western Digital and HGST. All competitors come in sealed helium-filled cases and contain seven platters with a usable capacity of 1492 GB each. This time, Toshiba products are not included in the list, which has proven itself well in previous comparative tests, but Toshiba does not use helium and therefore cannot produce an HDD with a capacity of more than 8 TB.
So the list of participants looks like this:
- HGST Ultrastar He10 10TB (HUH721010ALE604);
- Seagate BarraCuda Pro 10TB (ST10000DM0004);
- Seagate IronWolf 10TB (ST10000VN0004);
- Seagate IronWolf Pro 10TB (ST10000NE0004);
- WD Gold 10TB (WD101KRYZ);
- WD Red 10TB (WD100EFAX).
HGST and WD are part of a holding that is moving towards a final merger of the structures of the two previously separate companies, and antitrust organizations have already allowed the transfer of technology between them. As a result, the latest HGST and WD products are built on the same third-generation HelioSeal hardware platform, but differ in many other ways: spindle speed, supported interfaces, firmware settings, and support functions.
For Seagate, 10 TB is the first milestone that the company has conquered with helium, and it has already managed to extend this technology to its range of enterprise and consumer HDDs. We once got acquainted with the general properties of these drives by example and found that the Segate helium platform, in its design features, gives the impression of being more modern and reliable than the cases of the HGST company, which was a pioneer in the commercial use of sealed hard drives. But this does not mean that large-capacity HGST and WD drives are initially inferior to competitors in terms of consumer qualities and fault tolerance.
Unlike WD, Seagate hasn't released a 3.5-inch HDD with a spindle speed of less than 7200 rpm for a long time, so the technical differences between the test participants represented by this company come down to array functions and fault tolerance indicators.
| Manufacturer | HGST | Seagate | western digital | ||||
| Series | Ultrastar He10 | BarraCuda Pro | Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD (Helium) | iron wolf | IronWolf Pro | Gold | Red |
| Model Number | HUH721010ALE604 | ST10000DM0004 | ST10000NM0086 | ST10000VN0004 | ST10000NE0004 | WD101KRYZ | WD100EFAX |
| Form factor | 3.5 inches | 3.5 inches | 3.5 inches | 3.5 inches | 3.5 inches | 3.5 inches | 3.5 inches |
| Interface | SATA 6Gb/s | SATA 6Gb/s | SATA 6Gb/s | SATA 6Gb/s | SATA 6Gb/s | SATA 6Gb/s | SATA 6Gb/s |
| Capacity, GB | 10 000 | 10 000 | 10 000 | 10 000 | 10 000 | 10 000 | 10 000 |
| Configuration | |||||||
| Spindle speed, rpm | 7 200 | 7 200 | 7 200 | 7 200 | 7 200 | 7 200 | 5 400 |
| Usable data recording density, GB/platter | 1 429 | 1 429 | 1 429 | 1 429 | 1 429 | 1 429 | 1 429 |
| Number of plates/heads | 7/14 | 7/14 | 7/14 | 7/14 | 7/14 | 7/14 | 7/14 |
| Buffer size, MB | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 |
| Sector size, bytes | 4 096 | 4 096 | 4 096 | 4 096 | 4 096 | 4 096 | 4 096 |
| Performance | |||||||
| Max. sustained sequential read speed, MB/s | 249 | 220 | 254 | 210 | 214 | 249 | 210 |
| Max. sustained sequential write speed, MB/s | 249 | 220 | 254 | 210 | 214 | 249 | 210 |
| Burst rate, read/write, MB/s | ND | ND | ND | ND | ND | ND | ND |
| Internal data transfer rate, MB/s | ND | ND | ND | ND | ND | ND | ND |
| Average seek time: read/write, ms | 8 | ND | ND | ND | ND | ND | ND |
| Track-to-track seek time: read/write, ms | ND | ND | ND | ND | ND | ND | ND |
| Full stroke seek time: read/write, ms | ND | ND | ND | ND | ND | ND | ND |
| Reliability | |||||||
| MTBF (mean time between failures), h | 2 500 000 | ND | 2 500 000 | 1 000 000 | 1 200 000 | 2 500 000 | 1 000 000 |
| AFR (annualized failure rate), % | 0,35 | ND | 0,35 | ND | 0,73 | 0,35 | ND |
| Number of head parking cycles | 600 000 | 300 000 | ND | 600 000 | ND | 600 000 | 600 000 |
| physical characteristics | |||||||
| Power consumption: idle / read-write, W | 5,0/6,8 | 4,4/7,8 | 4,5/8,4 | 4,42/6,8 | 4,4/6,8 | 5,0/6,8 | 2,8/5,7 |
| Typical noise level: idle/searching, B | 2.0/ND | ND | ND | 2,8/3,2 | ND | ND | ND |
| Maximum temperature, °C: disk on / disk off | 60/70 | 60/70 | 60/ND | 70/70 | 60/70 | 60/70 | 65/70 |
| Shock resistance: drive enabled (read) / drive disabled | 70 g (2 ms) / 300 g (2 ms) | ND | 40 g (2 ms) / 250 g (2 ms) | ||||
| Overall dimensions: L × H × D, mm | 147×101.6×26.1 | 147×101.9×26.1 | 147×101.9×26.1 | 147×101.9×26.1 | 147×101.9×26.1 | 147×101.6×26.1 | 147×101.6×26.1 |
| Weight, g | 660 | 705 | 650 | 650 | 650 | 660 | 650 |
| Warranty period, years | 5 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 3 |
| Retail price (USA, without tax), $ | from 349 (newegg.com) | 399 (newegg.com) | 474 (newegg.com) | ||||
| Retail price (Russia), rub. | 25 410 (market. yandex.ru) |
24 890 (market. yandex.ru) |
ND | 23 902 (market. yandex.ru) |
30 118 (market. yandex.ru) |
37 126 (market. yandex.ru) |
31,290 (market. yandex.ru) |
⇡ HGST and Western Digital
HGST Ultrastar He10 and WD Gold are almost identical devices from a constructive point of view. Both models deliver extremely high sequential read/write speeds in their class (249 MB/s), previously only available with a 15,000 rpm spindle speed. Note that in the specifications of all test participants, the “search time” column is empty and other parameters related to the speed of random access are not filled in: manufacturers have stopped disclosing such information for several years now. In addition to high performance, the twin drives are highly fault-tolerant (twice as good as consumer-grade drives) and ready to run in a rack filled with hard drives thanks to a rotational vibration compensation mechanism.
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HGST Ultrastar He10 10TB (HUH721010ALE604)
Despite the similarities with WD Gold, the HGST Ultrastar He10 drive offers system administrators more options. Among the technologies specified in the WD Gold specifications, we can only highlight the dynamic control of the flight height of each head above the spindle surface and TLER (Time-Limited Error Recovery) - delayed recovery of defective data in case of access errors, which in other cases leads to the flight of the drive from the array, as it happens with standard desktop HDDs included in RAID. But the HGST drive certainly does both. In addition, the HGST Ultrastar He10, in addition to the basic version with a SATA 6 Gb / s port, comes in a 12 Gb / s SAS configuration and optionally - native access to 4 KB partitioning and a configurable sector size that can be expanded from 4096 to 4224 (or from 512 to 528 bytes in the case of emulating the "old" markup) for storing metadata and error correction codes. We also note that selected modifications of the HGST Ultrastar He10 support full disk encryption and instant data cleaning (Secure Erase).
In server drives, HGST uses the so-called media cache. Groups of sectors distributed over the surface of the plates are used as temporary storage areas. Instead of always writing to the sectors requested by the host controller, media cache allows data to be flushed to the cache zone that is currently closest to the head - similar to how dynamic addressing of logical blocks works in an SSD. Finally, the He10 has a Rebuild Assist feature that speeds up array rebuilding by reading the saved data portions from the drive to be replaced. As a result, it is possible to avoid a lengthy procedure for restoring the entire HDD capacity using parity records.
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WD Gold 10TB (WD101KRYZ)
The testing involves the base models HGST Ultrastar He10 and WD Gold, which have a SATA interface and emulate a standard 512-byte markup. The HGST product is noticeably (one and a half times in ruble terms) cheaper than WD Gold.
Another Western Digital drive, WD Red, is also based on the HGST Ultrastar He10, but is in the consumer category, which means a lot of simplification. In WD Red (unlike the Red Pro series), the spindle speed is reduced from 7200 to 5400 rpm and there are no vibration sensors, so the manufacturer guarantees normal operation only in a compact NAS with 1-8 bays (and not in a server room packed to the limit). rack). In addition, the drive has a shorter MTBF and a reduced 3-year warranty, while the rest of the WD and HGST products selected for this test are free of charge for 5 years.
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WD Red 10TB (WD100EFAX)
However, WD Red differs from desktop HDDs in its ability to work in 24 × 7 mode and is configured in such a way that during idle time, by default, the spindle never stops and the heads park. There is also the aforementioned TLER function. Despite all the savings, the 10TB WD Red is a fairly expensive drive, costing less than the WD Gold but more than the HGST Ultrastar He10. In WD Red's defense, lower rotation means less heat, but helium drives don't need as much cooling as their ventilated counterparts anyway.
⇡ Seagate
The Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD with a capacity of 10 TB is similar in performance and fault tolerance to the HGST Ultrastar He10 and WD Gold. However, from a formal point of view, this device can be classified as a hybrid drive due to the small Flash memory buffer, which speeds up data write operations and prevents data loss during a sudden power outage.
Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD is equipped with active rotational vibration compensation, RAID Rebuild technology (similar to HGST's Rebuild Assist), as well as PowerChoice (changing power-saving timeouts or manually controlling the corresponding functions) and PowerBalance. The meaning of the last option is that Seagate provides disks with an increased ratio of performance and power consumption on request, which is achieved at the cost of lowering the actual performance.
There are disk modifications with SATA 6 Gb / s or SAS 12 Gb / s interface, with hardware access to 4K sectors or emulation of 512-byte sectors, with or without built-in encryption. Among the test participants, even in the basic modification of Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD (Helium), retail is more expensive than the rest.
