SPCR

Bought HGST 3TB last year -- which has been used for storage in my old desktop. Was assuming I'd buy a 2nd 3TB to pair in raid after I built the new desktop. But got delayed w/ other things and am only now ready to set up the raid. But I waited too long... the 3TB version is no longer available.

Should I raid a 3TB and a 4TB -- or is that just stupid? Know I'll only get 6TB. Seems also like bad hard drive fung shui... don't want my sweet new rig to offend the spirit world.

BTW, looks like HGST was absorbed into WD and the brand may be disappearing. Anyone know if they still make these HGST drives? Is a new 4TB HGST likely to be old stock?

Thanks for any info or advice.


New rig: i7-8700K, MSI Z370M w/ 32gb Ram, 500gb Samsung EVO M.2 in Define Mini C case

What kind of RAID do you want? RAID 0?

Yes, Raid 0 for editing video when I have larger projects that won't fit on an SSD.

Since my post, I've noticed that the 4TB is also discontinued... but still available at Newegg.

mschubb wrote:Bought HGST 3TB last year... the 3TB version is no longer available.

You're going with HGST drives because of the Backblaze reliability report? Note that the HGST models used by Backblaze haven't been produced for a few years and the majority of those were enterprise drives. While the Backblaze reports are interesting data points, I don't think they bear much relevance to today's consumer drive in a home environment. I do buy HGST drives, 5 so far this year, because they're usually the cheapest per TB.

Should I raid a 3TB and a 4TB -- or is that just stupid?[/b] Know I'll only get 6TB. Seems also like bad hard drive fung shui... don't want my sweet new rig to offend the spirit world.

You have a couple of options for your drives. You can run RAID 0. Or you can run a Dynamic disk array under Windows and span the drives. You can Google the pros and cons of each and decide which is more appropriate for you.

As for drives, if you decide to go with RAID 0 then find a 3 TB WD/Seagate/Tosh with similar rotational speed as your HGST. If you go with disk spanning then you can go with something with the lowest $/TB (nowadays that's usually 4-8TB depending on what's on sale).

BTW, looks like HGST was absorbed into WD and the brand may be disappearing. Anyone know if they still make these HGST drives? Is a new 4TB HGST likely to be old stock?

I believe HGST still make its own drive in the Shenzhen fab but it is also reported that it shares one of WD's Thailand fabs, so maybe "made in Thailand" HGST are rebranded WD?

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Thanks for this. Will look into drive spanning.

I did buy the original 3tb HGST after seeing the numbers in Backblaze and have been happy with it. Understand that server use is different, but was still impressed by the significant difference in reliability. Am kind of dumbfounded at the dearth of any other good data or reporting about hard drive failures and brand differences.

mschubb wrote:Understand that server use is different, but was still impressed by the significant difference in reliability.

Not only usage is different but those HGST models have not been in production for a few years. For all we know with the change of ownership and WD selling off parts of HGST to Tosh, current HGST drives have no connections to those drives at all and are of WD design lineage.

Note that Backblaze doesn't seem to take into account of those HGST data either when they're buying drives - they buy a lot more from Seagate.

Am kind of dumbfounded at the dearth of any other good data or reporting about hard drive failures and brand differences.

It's hard to get useful brand/models specific drive failure data because by the time (3-5 year) the data has been collected the drives are usually no longer in production.

If lowering the chance of a HDD failure is important to you get a 6-8TB drive and forget about the stripe/span-ing array. That's because having more drives increases the chance of failure and drives get increasingly less reliable with age so the Achilles heel of your planned array will be you current HGST drive which in time will be significantly more prone to failure than the newer drive.

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