Interesting. I suppose I should manually examine smart stats across my various drives.

I've a few comments to make about mechanical hard drives and avoiding things which would be detrimental:

Despite smart stats a drive can break at any time, so it is always worth holding your important data on more than one device. (As a Linux user, I like to use rsync to synchronise the data files stored across two separate drives. This is a very rapid way of maintaining a backup of a file-system, when you just shift the daily changes between the current and the sync'ed drive.)

Mechanical drives are subject to damage if they are moved / hit / banged around while running. I have lost data on two mechanical drives from knocking them over while they were running (and these knocks weren't especially harsh ones, quite gentle in fact).

Solid State Drives aren't affected by (minor) knocks and hits, but you could run into issues with them if you keep running them close to full of data. Let's say you have a SSD which is 500GB and it only has 1GB of free space: All the subsequent file writes and rewrites will concentrate on that 1 GB portion of the drive, degrading it much quicker because they aren't able to do their smart wear-levelling with such a small amount of free space.

It is good to avoid running mechanical hard drives at high temperature. They are more prone to degrading if running hot. A case with adequate cooling fans is one solution to this. I've had mechanical drives break from running too hot.

I just bought a Western Digital Green SATA M.2 SSD 240GB. This is only my second WD Drive. I've been a hardcore Seagate fan my whole life because I've had excellent luck with them.

My first WD was a 40GB HDD that came with a Dell that failed, but only after 7 years of hard use. I haven't had a Seagate fail yet, knock on wood. I couldn't find a Seagate M.2 for less than $70 or I would have bought one.

We will see how the new drive does. I also chose this one because it has SLC NAND Flash which is supposedly the most reliable form of flash memory. Reliability is more important to me than speed.

I was a pretty hardcore WD user for many many years.... I've only ever had 2 that failed on me....one a week after purchase so i was able to RMA it without issue....the other was after a few years...still within the warranty period but a would be a pain to warranty if i wanted to go that route(contact WD, show proof of purchase, long since discarded, pay shipping etc). Lately however, with solid state craze goin on, and mfrs warrant periods are pretty much 3 yrs, i'll purchase whatever brand offers the most storage space and the highest read/write speeds....although right now, I'm kinda holding back right now on m.2 nvme purchases as it seems like almost every other week someone releases a new model with even faster read/write rates.

Here is a post I made a few years ago on this site that might interest those of you with green WD drives https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/western-digital-green-hdd-how-to-stop-them-dying-on-you.4814

What are you using to look at the SMART stats?

Also, [BorgBackup](https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/) for the win.

Quoting: 14What are you using to look at the SMART stats?

Also, [BorgBackup](https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/) for the win.

You mean the tables in OP's post, or in general? I think the standard tool is 'smartmontools' that comes in the base repos of all distros. There's quite a bit of info here: https://www.smartmontools.org/

Quoting: 14What are you using to look at the SMART stats?

Also, [BorgBackup](https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/) for the win.

That was gnomes disk utility.

Those drives are still going btw.

WD reds are great too aye?
ive always stayed away from Greens because of the headparking issues and its just slow.
preferring to pickup whatever Black was the fastest at the time.

but i opted to invest in 2tbReds the last time i bought any HDD.

PSA reminder to check your smart status occasionally..
and for $80-100 keep a physical HDD backup of your most valuable data...

ALSO, SSD have a cell voltage life of ~1year to 18months.
meaning... offline storage for over that length results in cell degradation and data loss
just power on the SSD once a year to keep voltage charged up!

I have a WD Green that came in an external case and developed some bad sectors, so I replaced it with another one and use this one as a random drive for various computers to test OSs and stuff. No more bad sectors since some years ago and it works fine, but is very slow.

I have a bunch of WD Reds that have been going on forever in a server and I’m more than happy with them, just the kind of storage you want in a 24/7 solution.

I’m not fond of Seagate drives because all the ones I’ve had were very noisy. No complaints about reliability though.

Not servers, just a computer that's powered on 24/7.

Sadly, the time has come to retire those drives :sad:

Just performed a full shred with 6 passes on the oldest of the two and it's now powered off never to be in this computer again :cry:

It feels like a child is moving out :cry:



The other drive is still shredding.. albeit much slower than the one above, which is strange.

(I needed more storage.. these are old SATA 2.5 1TB drives)

WD Greens never were physically worse than any other drive brand. Only issue they had was that head parking interval someone decided to lower to ridiculous levels what wore out head assembly too fast.

I have had number of Greens on my machine over the years and only one of them failed. It was first model with that head parking issue and back then i had no idea it should be changed to keep drive alive for longer. It died with 300k head load/unload cycle count with only about 4-5k working hours. After that i have always changed the parking interval and the drives seem to hold up just fine. Right now i have 3 2TB Green drives in my machine with 37-40k working hours and they are still going strong.

One of those 3 drives has 250k load/unload cycles while others have about 50k. That first one was bought exactly the same time as the failed one and i changed the parking interval right after the first one died. Needless to say it seems to have worked to keep drive alive but that cycle count is starting to creep to dangerous levels now.

Last edited by woox2k on 3 Jan 2021 at 10:36 am UTC

yeah exactly the head parking interval thing..
one of my WD greens died because of that also. I didn't know about that thing at the time.
it failed at 290K load/unload cycles

Soo.. I replaced those drives with a couple of 8TB Seagate Ironwolfs.. figured since they're powered on 24/7 the Ironwolf (and drives of that class) are the best bet for being powered on 24/7 right?

Wrong.



:huh:

Now having fun discussing the drive with Seagate whom insist I put it in a windows computer to see if it "really has problems" since they "don't support linux" - I don't even have a windows computer..

So this warranty service is fun.... looks like I will have to find some way of obtaining a windows license key for free or some kind of trial or something on a test computer. I'm not paying for windows just to test a drive.. I haven't used windows in many years (I explained this to them).. so it's baby steps for me with it.

Although they did kindly ask if I had a backup (I do, on a seperate drive, which I've since also already restored to a replacement WD Red Pro I purchased the day that drive started throwing errors...)

/end rant

Sorry!

Last edited by BlackBloodRum on 17 Sep 2021 at 6:47 am UTC

Quoting: BlackBloodRumobtaining a windows license key

You don't need a license to install Windows 10 and make some screenshots.
That said, it's ridiculous they need a screenshot to prove a drive is bad. People can just download and edit those.

Quoting: omicron-b

Quoting: BlackBloodRumobtaining a windows license key

You don't need a license to install Windows 10 and make some screenshots.
That said, it's ridiculous they need a screenshot to prove a drive is bad. People can just download and edit those.

Oh? I thought Microsoft always requires windows to be licensed? Isn't that part of their whole ToS and such?

All my systems are custom build, so I don't have a working key sitting in the BIOS unfortunately.

Quoting: BlackBloodRum

Quoting: omicron-b

Quoting: BlackBloodRumobtaining a windows license key

You don't need a license to install Windows 10 and make some screenshots.
That said, it's ridiculous they need a screenshot to prove a drive is bad. People can just download and edit those.

Oh? I thought Microsoft always requires windows to be licensed? Isn't that part of their whole ToS and such?

All my systems are custom build, so I don't have a working key sitting in the BIOS unfortunately.

Maybe they do, the system would just work though, and remind you to activate it from time to time. Also, you won't be able to customize any looks.
This just confirms that they're after your data now, not just your money.

Quoting: omicron-bMaybe they do, the system would just work though, and remind you to activate it from time to time. Also, you won't be able to customize any looks.
This just confirms that they're after your data now, not just your money.

Oh I see. I'll have to go see how to download windows without a key, I can predict it being a confusing experience due to my lack of windows skills :dizzy:.

Btw: Never trust Microsoft.. just saying. They've been after your data since Win8, even back porting some stuff to Win7. That's why I'm glad I left back before Vista came out, never looked back. :grin:

Quoting: The_AquabatMy WD green didn't die but I decided to retire it, now I bought another one exactly the same just newer model. Guess what? it's was supposed to be brand new, but it had already like 10k power on hours, the seller scammed me (it was a hardware shop) and he insisted that the hdd was brand new. SCAMMER

Wow.. that really sucks. Some countries (such as UK) will allow you to return the drive under a consumer rights act (Online or offline purchase) due to mis-sold products.

Check your local laws, you may be able to force a refund from them due to false advertising and mis-selling.

Quoting: BlackBloodRumNow having fun discussing the drive with Seagate whom insist I put it in a windows computer to see if it "really has problems" since they "don't support linux" - I don't even have a windows computer..

All the more absurd, considering that they sell the IronWolf as the 'NAS Drive'.

The # of NASs that run on windoze isn't *that* big.