VDJ Ron
Adion there are going to be at least two sets of different data for HDD reliability depending on there duty cycle. Most HDD failures will be due to spin up / down stresses.
Has SSD reliability got anything to do with the speed of sound?
Large SSD are still new, largely unproven and with respect to reliability based on a small sample group in comparison to HDD.
Don..I've just bought a Seagate drive and they have plenty of tools for checking a HDD. I don't really have to give you a link. Just go and look. It's the same with all the manufacturers.
Has SSD reliability got anything to do with the speed of sound?
Large SSD are still new, largely unproven and with respect to reliability based on a small sample group in comparison to HDD.
Don..I've just bought a Seagate drive and they have plenty of tools for checking a HDD. I don't really have to give you a link. Just go and look. It's the same with all the manufacturers.
Posted Sat 23 Feb 19 @ 4:31 am
Adion
Well that's only going to make the picture worse for classical HDD, since most of the reliability data comes from big data centers where the drives are not moved and are spinning constantly.
A DJ situation where the hard drive is carried around daily, sits in environments with lots of vibration and is prone to unexpected movements is only going to make the picture worse for disks with moving parts.
SSD's have been in use for quite some time now, and reliability only got better with better understanding of the wear, write cycles and fixes in early ssd controller bugs.
A DJ situation where the hard drive is carried around daily, sits in environments with lots of vibration and is prone to unexpected movements is only going to make the picture worse for disks with moving parts.
SSD's have been in use for quite some time now, and reliability only got better with better understanding of the wear, write cycles and fixes in early ssd controller bugs.
Posted Sat 23 Feb 19 @ 4:59 am
VDJ Ron
So your saying they have not done a proper statistical survey..but it's in your favour anyway. LOL
I don't think I believe you.
HDD are very reliable and that is all we need know.
The Toshiba 2TB HDD has a reliability MTBF 600,000 hours and a 3 year guarantee.
I was looking at an old 60Gb 2.5" HDD today and thinking of throwing it away. It has been badly mistreated but it is still working.
I don't think I believe you.
HDD are very reliable and that is all we need know.
The Toshiba 2TB HDD has a reliability MTBF 600,000 hours and a 3 year guarantee.
I was looking at an old 60Gb 2.5" HDD today and thinking of throwing it away. It has been badly mistreated but it is still working.
Posted Sat 23 Feb 19 @ 5:09 am
Adion
Data centers are the only ones that have enough drives in reliable conditions to do gather proper statistical data.
For consumer use it's a lot harder to collect this data, as usually there is no report when a drive breaks down.
Like I said, data centers are already in favor of hdd's because drives are not moving and hardly spinning up/down, and still ssd's are 10 times more reliable.
For consumer use it's a lot harder to collect this data, as usually there is no report when a drive breaks down.
Like I said, data centers are already in favor of hdd's because drives are not moving and hardly spinning up/down, and still ssd's are 10 times more reliable.
Posted Sat 23 Feb 19 @ 5:23 am
Adion
Also a bit of warning about MTBF. It can be a useful measure comparing similar drives, but you should remember that it is a statistical measure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_time_between_failures
600.000 hours MTBF does not mean that it is likely your specific drive will last for about 600.000 hours.
Practically there will be some drives that die much faster than this, and a majority of drives that will last much longer than that.
Because of the difficulty to understand what the MTBF actually means, it is getting more common to talk about the annual failure rate, the chance that a hard drive will break down each year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_time_between_failures
600.000 hours MTBF does not mean that it is likely your specific drive will last for about 600.000 hours.
Practically there will be some drives that die much faster than this, and a majority of drives that will last much longer than that.
Because of the difficulty to understand what the MTBF actually means, it is getting more common to talk about the annual failure rate, the chance that a hard drive will break down each year.
Posted Sat 23 Feb 19 @ 5:30 am
VDJ Ron
Like I said HDD are very reliable..how much reliability do we need?
HDD have worked very well for DJ's for a very long time, most computer problems have been related to software.
..but I don't like external USB drives. Internal drives are well protected. If enough to force is applied to a laptop to damage a HDD then their will also be further damage to the laptop.
HDD have worked very well for DJ's for a very long time, most computer problems have been related to software.
..but I don't like external USB drives. Internal drives are well protected. If enough to force is applied to a laptop to damage a HDD then their will also be further damage to the laptop.
Posted Sat 23 Feb 19 @ 5:33 am
Adion
Sure, HDD are not that bad, but at over 1% annual failure rate I wouldn't call them *very* reliable.
My laptop also still has a regular hdd next to the ssd for storage, and with regular backups the risk is acceptable, but if I had the choice I'd go for all SSD (probably when I'm looking for a new laptop ssd's will be big enough for my use to replace hdd's entirely)
My laptop also still has a regular hdd next to the ssd for storage, and with regular backups the risk is acceptable, but if I had the choice I'd go for all SSD (probably when I'm looking for a new laptop ssd's will be big enough for my use to replace hdd's entirely)
Posted Sat 23 Feb 19 @ 5:38 am
VDJ Ron
It's not 1% per year..no way. That is the same as saying Toshiba are lying. Mind you is 600000hrs approx 68 years LOL! (I know it's an average)
I'll go by my personal experience which relates, I think, to around 1000 HDD.
I'll go by my personal experience which relates, I think, to around 1000 HDD.
Posted Sat 23 Feb 19 @ 5:51 am
Don Moir
VDJ Ron wrote :
Adion there are going to be at least two sets of different data for HDD reliability depending on there duty cycle. Most HDD failures will be due to spin up / down stresses.
Which I guess you just learned about and now you think of yourself as an expert on it.
VDJ Ron wrote :
Don..I've just bought a Seagate drive and they have plenty of tools for checking a HDD. I don't really have to give you a link. Just go and look. It's the same with all the manufacturers.
And how often do you run such tools and how long does it take? It appears that since it is built into SSD then it is easily detected but I will have to find out more about that. It's not like someone is going to run tools on a drive if it takes too long. So automated if it works would be great.
I don't think you have ever provided any useful information when I have asked you for it So I did not expect you provide any source that favors your opinion this time either.
Posted Sat 23 Feb 19 @ 5:54 am
VDJ Ron
It depends on the quality you require. You can do a quick check or wait for the end of the world !
There is a SMART system built into a HDD for failure detection. If I have a problem with a computer I may well do quick memory and HDD checks.
There is a SMART system built into a HDD for failure detection. If I have a problem with a computer I may well do quick memory and HDD checks.
Posted Sat 23 Feb 19 @ 5:58 am
Adion
VDJ Ron wrote :
It's not 1% per year..no way. That is the same as saying Toshiba are lying. Mind you is 600000hrs approx 68 years LOL! (I know it's an average)
I'll go by my personal experience which relates I think to around 1000 HDD.
I'll go by my personal experience which relates I think to around 1000 HDD.
The distribution of this 600.000 hours is not very evenly close to the 600.000.
You also get this number if 1 fails after 100 hours, and 99 fail after a little more than 600.000 hours, which is what more typically happens.
The 1% minimum failure rate that I posted that Blackblaze found is in line with what Google published a long time ago:
https://storagemojo.com/2007/02/19/googles-disk-failure-experience/
There are some interesting graphs that also show how the failure rate changes based on hard drive utilization and hard drive age, but still 1% is the lowest you can expect.
Regarding SMART for monitoring drive health, they found this:
Quote :
The Google team found that 36% of the failed drives did not exhibit a single SMART-monitored failure. They concluded that SMART data is almost useless for predicting the failure of a single drive.
So it helps, but still 1 out of 3 drives will fail without any sign shown by SMART.
Posted Sat 23 Feb 19 @ 6:05 am
Don Moir
VDJ Ron wrote :
It depends on the quality you require. You can do a quick check or wait for the end of the world !
A quick check that would probably be useless. I guess that means you never run the tools... Me either unless it is obvious I need to do something. When my hdd was going bad, I had no idea what it was... It was so intermittent and so slight at first it could have been anything.
What if you could be alerted automatically when there are potential problems.... That would be great don't you think?
Posted Sat 23 Feb 19 @ 6:10 am
VDJ Ron
There are loads of different types of test. I normally run a quick check to rule out crude HDD failures. My new drives are all quick checked. Just because there new does not mean they are working properly.
Adion those Google data center HDD are going to be running continuously. Those figures won't be applicable to a DJ's laptop.
Adion those Google data center HDD are going to be running continuously. Those figures won't be applicable to a DJ's laptop.
Posted Sat 23 Feb 19 @ 6:31 am
Adion
Read the article first perhaps?
Quote :
After the first year, the AFR of high utilization drives is at most moderately higher than that of low utilization drives. The three-year group in fact appears to have the opposite of the expected behavior, with low utilization drives having slightly higher failure rates than high ulization ones.
Posted Sat 23 Feb 19 @ 6:37 am
VDJ Ron
Yes but there are different types of utilisation. My secondary laptop HDD was at first spinning down after about 10 secs of inactivity. That would result in a very large number of cycles. Whereas now my laptop does roughly 4 X 7hr sessions. The later would offer the easiest duty cycle, the first is an HDD killer. I would argue my current usage pattern is quite gentle. Continuous usage would also create lots of wear.
It's not so much usage were bothered about..it's the number of spin up / downs with the exception of continuos usage.
It's just like a car engine.
It's not so much usage were bothered about..it's the number of spin up / downs with the exception of continuos usage.
It's just like a car engine.
Posted Sat 23 Feb 19 @ 6:47 am
PhantomDeejay
the SOUND INSURGENT wrote :
And just so I’m clear, there’s nothing wrong with mechanical drives but the fact that they have “moving” parts makes them pron to failure....... We as djs don’t need those failures.
And just so I’m clear, there’s nothing wrong with mechanical drives but the fact that they have “moving” parts makes them pron to failure....... We as djs don’t need those failures.
That's the reason I'm using 2 SSD's...
Let me explain:
A few years ago I had a powerful Toshiba Qosmio laptop with 2 mechanical HDD's that I used to gig with.
At some point (for various reasons) I decided to change it and I got my ASUS ROG (1 SDD for OS and 1 mechanical HDD for storage).
When I set up everything on my new ROG, I "retired" the 2 years old Qosmio and used it for Office work.
Three months later, it's second HDD failed. I replaced the failed drive and checked the remaining drive through deep scan analysis. The remaining drive was not in better shape either (according to S.M.A.A.R.T. it should have failed already)
Then it occurred to me:
I was spinning in a place where the DJ booth was prone to loads of sub - bass wave frequencies and had a lot of vibrations.
Within 2 years, 2 mechanical drives on a laptop failed because of vibrations.
1 month later I switched the mechanical drive of my ROG with an SSD.
Not for performance/speed, but for safety.
Now my laptop is 99.9999999% vibration-proof !!! The only moving part is the CPU fun.
I can take my laptop on my arms, and dance the "Jump Around" with it without worrying that the music will stop, or that the hard drive may get corrupted...
So, SSD is good for laptops not only for speed/performance, but for the fact that there are NO moving parts too!
Finally, I don't think that comparison charts takes DJ-ing into account. I don't think that they do tests by putting a laptop on top of a sub-woofer for instance and measure how long it takes to make the drive corrupted.
Tests usually take the "average user" / "average usage" into account.
The average user won't have it's laptop suffer from low frequency vibrations.
The average user won't expose it's laptop on those low frequency vibrations for several hours in a row, week after week.
HDD manufacturers are now releasing HDD's based on their usage, just for this very reason. They produce series for RAID/NAS systems, series for Surveillance Appliances, series for Servers, Desktops, e.t.c. Because their needs are different.
So is DJ laptop. It has different needs from the average user.
But the market is small (compared to other cases) and the most needed feature (vibration protection) cannot be made good enough to release a mechanical drive for such a case.
PS: Just to complete the story of my first laptop:
When I got the Qosmio I had purchased 2 identical laptops. One of them was used for Office work(MS Office, AutoCad e.t.c.) and the other one was my DJ-ing laptop as mentioned above.
The laptop that was used for Office work still has it's 2 mechanical drives working perfectly. So, I can exclude a "batch failure" as the cause of the 2 drives dying on the first laptop.
Posted Mon 25 Feb 19 @ 1:09 pm
VDJ Ron
Hm ..that might turn out to be a very good comment. I have not had that much experience with powerful club systems..just over the last 6 months. Accidentally my laptop stand has rubber feet as does my laptop and they dampen vibration. I can't feel any touching my laptop. I would guess the HDD also has some shock/vibration protection
Like for like SSD are @ 4 times the cost of HDD and are still relatively unproven with respect to large capacities.
The small flash drives (32gb, 64gb, 128gb) in my experience have looked unreliable. However that proves nothing.
I will still buy HDD for the time being.
I always have two laptops anyway.
I cannot afford to say.."my laptops broke".
I must be able to produce both video and karaoke.
With respect to hardware, cost and reliability I prefer business grade to consumer. Gaming Rog?
The consumer is nearly always poorly served in comparison to business.
Like for like SSD are @ 4 times the cost of HDD and are still relatively unproven with respect to large capacities.
The small flash drives (32gb, 64gb, 128gb) in my experience have looked unreliable. However that proves nothing.
I will still buy HDD for the time being.
I always have two laptops anyway.
I cannot afford to say.."my laptops broke".
I must be able to produce both video and karaoke.
With respect to hardware, cost and reliability I prefer business grade to consumer. Gaming Rog?
The consumer is nearly always poorly served in comparison to business.
Posted Mon 25 Feb 19 @ 10:14 pm
VDJ Ron
i would hate to foot the bill for replacement HDD for Atomix staff. Their HDD failure rate is enourmous !
Odd really..mine don't fail.
( Toshiba's HDD MTBF is 68 years !!!!..I don''t believe that but I also don't accept the validity of other old reliability studies..such as those by Google in 2007)
Odd really..mine don't fail.
( Toshiba's HDD MTBF is 68 years !!!!..I don''t believe that but I also don't accept the validity of other old reliability studies..such as those by Google in 2007)
Posted Tue 26 Feb 19 @ 1:35 am
the SOUND INSURGENT
Ive had HDD's die because they got to hot. We did a car show one year, we were under a tent but it was still between 85/90 degrees under it. I played the event and everything went smooth.
The next morning while unloading my backpack I hooked the drive up to my laptop and it never worked again. I lost about 5000 videos from loosing that drive, granted I had a backup but the drive was only a year old!!
As for what Phantom has said, I don't think Ive lost a drive but I know for a fact I've had a drive disconnect due to bass and heavy vibration.
As for the cost of a SSD, well if your pricing your gigs right. One or two events should pay for it, if not then your just under cutting yourself..........
The next morning while unloading my backpack I hooked the drive up to my laptop and it never worked again. I lost about 5000 videos from loosing that drive, granted I had a backup but the drive was only a year old!!
As for what Phantom has said, I don't think Ive lost a drive but I know for a fact I've had a drive disconnect due to bass and heavy vibration.
As for the cost of a SSD, well if your pricing your gigs right. One or two events should pay for it, if not then your just under cutting yourself..........
Posted Tue 26 Feb 19 @ 2:43 am
PhantomDeejay
I don't have the need to argue with you Ron,
but the last 15 years I also do IT support for a company that today uses 80 PC's, 20 laptops, 5 Servers, and 10 NAS devices.
I have seen 12 year old HDD's keep working fine until today, and I have seen 2 years old HDD's failing. I have seen the opposite too.
HDD failure is not something that happens every day. But it's not "once in a lifetime" case either.
Working hours and working conditions act against a drive's health. And unfortunately you'll never know if a drive is going to fail or not before it actually happens.
Statistically speaking laptops have bigger HDD failure ratio. It's the working conditions of the drive that makes it more easy to fail.
Vibrations, movements, drops, higher temperature, poor ventilation, e.t.c. All these things contribute to make the drive fail more easy than if it was installed on a desktop PC. Most of those conditions are not valid for SSDs.
I don't know how many years you expect to be using a drive, but if a drive makes it clean for 10 years, I'm perfectly fine with it. The oldest SSD I'm using now is 5 years old, and is used on a desktop that runs 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. I already plan to change that drive at some point, to get a bigger one. So if it cuts through it until the summer, it will have serve me well. I might use it on another PC afterwards that does not have such a demanding use... And if it makes it for another 5 years I will be more than happy.
You've made up your mind (as you always do) and you're not actively seeking for facts and data. That's fine with me. I respect your choice. But I also expect you to respect other people's choices (including mine) as well.
Thank you!
but the last 15 years I also do IT support for a company that today uses 80 PC's, 20 laptops, 5 Servers, and 10 NAS devices.
I have seen 12 year old HDD's keep working fine until today, and I have seen 2 years old HDD's failing. I have seen the opposite too.
HDD failure is not something that happens every day. But it's not "once in a lifetime" case either.
Working hours and working conditions act against a drive's health. And unfortunately you'll never know if a drive is going to fail or not before it actually happens.
Statistically speaking laptops have bigger HDD failure ratio. It's the working conditions of the drive that makes it more easy to fail.
Vibrations, movements, drops, higher temperature, poor ventilation, e.t.c. All these things contribute to make the drive fail more easy than if it was installed on a desktop PC. Most of those conditions are not valid for SSDs.
I don't know how many years you expect to be using a drive, but if a drive makes it clean for 10 years, I'm perfectly fine with it. The oldest SSD I'm using now is 5 years old, and is used on a desktop that runs 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. I already plan to change that drive at some point, to get a bigger one. So if it cuts through it until the summer, it will have serve me well. I might use it on another PC afterwards that does not have such a demanding use... And if it makes it for another 5 years I will be more than happy.
You've made up your mind (as you always do) and you're not actively seeking for facts and data. That's fine with me. I respect your choice. But I also expect you to respect other people's choices (including mine) as well.
Thank you!
Posted Tue 26 Feb 19 @ 8:21 am
