Samsung HD reliability vs. WD, Seagate

dorkus · Post by **dorkus** » Sun Oct 11, 2009 9:09 pm

hi guys,

looking for your feedback on Samsung HD reliability... for those who have used a Samsung drive at least a year or so, how has the failure rate been? i haven't bought many hard drives in the last few years, but bought quite a few Seagates back in the 7200.1 - 7200.4 days with zero problems thus far, and I have one WD 250gb from a few years ago that's been just fine. i have no experience with Samsung, but my impression is that reliability has decreased across the board in recent years, so maybe it is kind of moot trying to select a "more reliable" make for cheap SATA drives at this point? in any case, i'm leaning towards the Samsung F2 500gb over the WD green... any thoughts appreciated.

cheers,
marc

BillyBuerger · Post by **BillyBuerger** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 7:24 am

I've been using Samsung drives primarily for the last 3 years now. Only going with others when Samsung hasn't been available. I haven't had one of them die on me yet. When I got my first 80GB SpinPoint, it actually dropped out of the back seat of the car and onto the concrete garage floor in only the cheap plastic container from newegg. Even that one is still working although I count myself lucky that it survived that.

I haven't used many Seagates but I do have some really old ones that still work just fine. WD seems to be the only drives I've used that I've had some failures on. That is for desktop drives. I've seen a handful of IBM/Hitatchi laptop drives die.

frenchie · Post by **frenchie** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 7:45 am

Same here.
I'm currently running a samsung drives (2 years old). I also have a seagate drive (8 years old). They both work perfectly well. (The seagate is now only used to backup the yearly image of my main disk. It was my only system drive for 6 years without a single problem.)

I killed a 3 years old samsung drive by plugging it the wrong way (long story). But it was working like a charm until then.

sNNooPY · Post by **sNNooPY** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 8:12 am

Two Samsungs in my home server, running 24/7. no problems.

Shamgar · Post by **Shamgar** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 8:51 am

I was going through the same head wrangling recently deciding which brand to buy. I don't know why it is, but buying hard drives can often be an emotional decision. Perhaps it's because if a particular brand (should be thought of as a particular model or sample -- because most hard drives are made from sourced parts from several companies) has served us well with few or no problems, we like to continue with that brand as some kind of peculiar loyalty on our part. On the other hand, if a brand/drive/model/sample has served us badly and we lost valuable data from it,--whether it was the drive's fault or our mishandling of it, or a combination of several factors,--we vow never to use that brand again. (Of course, we often do end up buying from them again since there are only a handful of hard drive companies anyway. Not to mention that many retailers only stock one or a couple of those brands at the most. Even if we do buy another brand, they may contain parts sourced from another company(s).) This kind of thinking pretty much destroyed the IBM name in hard drives due to the notorious and mysterious failures of their "Deathstar" 75GXP. Ironically, their technology and patenting continues to this day in the form of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. If it wasn't for that mishap, IBM may have still been the #1 for reliability in the eyes of consumers till this day. Seagate probably holds that spot now, whether they deserve it or not, or whether it is based on emotion rather than quantifiable data.

I was never enthusiastic about Western Digital drives. Don't know exactly why. My personal perception of WD was also made negative by a lot of their older PATA drives which sounded like miniature chainsaws. I've used Quantums and Maxtors too which I weren't fond of either. I've had most success and good service from Seagate drives, particularly the Barracuda ATA IV and earlier. Even some of their ancient 80MB and less drives were relatively quiet for their time. I haven't owned any of their drives since the ATA IV. Samsung has a reputation as the new kid on the block and that's perhaps why many are still wary of them. I think this is an unfair way of thinking. Sometimes a new and upcoming company has more enthusiasm for their industry and wants to impress with good, reliable and affordable products. They may not be perfect (what company is?) but they are desperate to improve and win market share. I think this describes Samsung HDD. Yes, they may have had some hiccups and stumbles over the years, but they have made some excellent products as well. When most other hard drives still sounded like rattling chainsaws and Seagate dropped the ball, Samsung started making quiet drives at a low cost in the form of their P series. This forced the hands of others and now we have more choice (and quieter drives at higher capacities at ridiculously affordable prices).

With all this in mind, I recently went out and bought a Samsung F2 EcoGreen HD103SI. It's the two platter variant of the HD502HI reviewed by SPCR. I don't need anywhere near that capacity, but at only $20 more than the 500GB model, it seemed like a safe choice and good value. I also own a Western Digital WD6400AAKS which is a pretty good performer but not as quiet as I would like. The Samsung typically runs 10 degrees C cooler than the WD, even within an external enclosure where you'd think it would start resembling a toaster after a while, yet it doesn't. For some reason, Samsung knows how to make cool running drives. Some people favour this while others couldn't care less as long as they remain under 50 C. I personally prefer cooler running drives.

I found an interesting hardware guide during my research which has some good background and information on the history of hard drives and the main manufacturers. A recommended read. Ad free site as well. Can't beat that.

judge56988 · Post by **judge56988** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 9:47 am

Samsung Spinpoint P80 and P160 since 2004 and still going strong, in a desktop used for 4 - 5 hours a day. I've also got a Samsung HD501 in there for video editing that is 2 or 3 years old.
They are all pretty quiet and have so far been reliable.

I'm thinking about replacing the computer this year and will probably ditch the old drives in favour of bigger capacity sata drives but will most likely stick with Samsung.

cmthomson · Post by **cmthomson** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 10:57 am

The relative reliability of brands is ever shifting. Current Samsung HDDs (Spinpoints) are very solid. I'm especially happy with the 500GB F2.

Several years ago there were many complaints about various models, including some Samsung drives. Unfortunately models have such short lifetimes that by the time believable data emerges, the drive is either obsolete or nearly so.

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 11:20 am

My personal take is that reliability issues aren't really brand-specific, they're model specific. Most/all of the few remaining big-name brands (or their subsumed subsidiaries) have had major issues with specific product lines over the past decade or so; at the same time their other products have been fine.

For what it's worth at my workplace I buy quite a lot of storage from numerous tier 1/2 vendors. All ship with Hitachi drives by default, and WD as a second choice. Read into this what you will (these are companies who sell lots of drives and don't want to have to deal with returns of course).

dorkus · Post by **dorkus** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 6:41 pm

thanks everyone for their input, very helpful and much appreciated.

my friend/colleague who is director of ops where we work (an online photo archival/distribution service) actually mentioned Hitachis as being rock solid as well, though he may have been referring to the higher-end enterprise grade drives, not the more common Deskstars. my main issue with the Hitachis is they seem to be a bit hotter and more power-hungry than others, and not as good acoustically.

we run large RAID sets, and our experience has been that most drives will fail after 2-3 years of continuous duty, but we did have a rash of early failures with some WD RE2 drives - he said RE3's are better. Seagates have been about average, i think a certain batch (maybe 7200.6, not sure) had more failures, but the older ones were rock solid. i'm not sure how much of this is applicable to my application anyway, as RAID has rather different performance and durability requirements.

i think i will probably give the Samsung F2 a try - i can't imagine it being significantly less reliable than WD which has always been somewhat of a crapshoot.

thanks!

Shamgar · Post by **Shamgar** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 8:54 pm

nutball wrote:For what it's worth at my workplace I buy quite a lot of storage from numerous tier 1/2 vendors. All ship with Hitachi drives by default, and WD as a second choice. Read into this what you will (these are companies who sell lots of drives and don't want to have to deal with returns of course).

Hitachi has the association with IBM -- which before the "Deathstar" was associated with rock solid reliability. They (Hitachi) also has the image of a company who knows what they're talking about along with the fact that they have inherited patents and technologies from IBM which places them in a good position, despite not being a leader saleswise. Western Digital has been around for a long time and has a reputation for having good overall performance. They also has wide distribution channels which helps them sell a lot of products. People who have had few problems with these (or other brands) are unlikely to change. This goes not only for hard drives but almost any consumer appliance (including your car) as well. Although with economic rationalisation and competition, more people are opting for cheaper so called "no-name" Chinese imports over the "big brands". They would be surprised to find out though that many of these so called "no names" actually manufacturer the parts and products for the so called "big names". This is another topic altogether, so I digress.

dorkus wrote:my main issue with the Hitachis is they seem to be a bit hotter and more power-hungry than others, and not as good acoustically.

I think you're right there. I've been wanting to try Hitachis myself. But they haven't come up with a good enough (consumer grade) product in my opinion to sway me from the other choices. There seem to have been a lot of drastic price cutting on Hitachis, at least where I live. Contrary to the past, where they tended to be the most expensive.

dorkus wrote:we run large RAID sets, and our experience has been that most drives will fail after 2-3 years of continuous duty, but we did have a rash of early failures with some WD RE2 drives - he said RE3's are better. Seagates have been about average, i think a certain batch (maybe 7200.6, not sure) had more failures, but the older ones were rock solid. i'm not sure how much of this is applicable to my application anyway, as RAID has rather different performance and durability requirements.

I don't have any experience with RAID, sorry. So called RAID ready drives tend to be quite expensive. Perhaps the standard models are just as good? Looking into drives with longer warranties (not that it ensures longer durability) may give you some peace of mind, as well as planning ahead for any failures with some other forms of backup.

dorkus wrote:i think i will probably give the Samsung F2 a try - i can't imagine it being significantly less reliable than WD which has always been somewhat of a crapshoot.

thanks!

The F2 EcoGreen series are good drives if you can get them. I have a 1TB (actually wanted the 500GB... but for $20 more, it seemed like a good deal). Haven't put it through its paces yet. Just using it as an emergency backup. You might also want to consider the F3 series at 7200RPM. A discussion about it here.

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 10:45 pm

Shamgar wrote: People who have had few problems with these (or other brands) are unlikely to change

Sure, but I'm talking about companies with three and letter names, who buy hard-drives by the million and ship them in large RAID arrays to very irritable customers who don't like failures, much less down-time. These RAID array vendors don't make decisions about who to source their drives from based on sentiment about brand names.

HFat · Post by **HFat** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 11:11 pm

I've got a bunch of 7200RPM 40G Samsungs in workstations that are still going strong.
In non-mobile applications, I think I've only had Seagates/Maxtors die on me recently.

HFat · Post by **HFat** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 11:16 pm

dorkus wrote:we run large RAID sets, and our experience has been that most drives will fail after 2-3 years of continuous duty

What are you doing to your drives?

dorkus · Post by **dorkus** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 5:37 am

HFat wrote:
dorkus wrote:we run large RAID sets, and our experience has been that most drives will fail after 2-3 years of continuous duty
What are you doing to your drives?

the ones at work are used in large RAID arrays that are constantly slammed with read/writes (image files ranging from small JPEGs to larger RAWs). for me personally, i only need JBOD drives for light home duty - boot drive for an iMac or PC, maybe some NAS use. the majority of its life will probably be spent in sleep mode.

Shamgar · Post by **Shamgar** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 5:54 am

nutball wrote:
Shamgar wrote: People who have had few problems with these (or other brands) are unlikely to change
Sure, but I'm talking about companies with three and letter names, who buy hard-drives by the million and ship them in large RAID arrays to very irritable customers who don't like failures, much less down-time. These RAID array vendors don't make decisions about who to source their drives from based on sentiment about brand names.

So they have data that the average user has no idea about? Information on failures, who to trust, who to avoid etc.? I suppose if you're dealing with millions of drives, you're not going to take known risks, whether actual or perceived.

HFat · Post by **HFat** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 9:13 am

dorkus wrote:the ones at work are used in large RAID arrays that are constantly slammed with read/writes (image files ranging from small JPEGs to larger RAWs).

Can you quantify "constantly slammed"? I've never pushed drives to their limits with large operations for any length of time as the bottlenecks have always lied elsewhere (humans, network, seek times and so on).

So you'd say that the speculation in the famous Google paper (for instance) about heavy use not impacting failures rate significantly after the first few monthes is bunk? Maybe your drives' workload is unusally heavy.

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 9:32 am

Shamgar wrote:So they have data that the average user has no idea about? Information on failures, who to trust, who to avoid etc.?

Why not? They're doing tens to hundreds of millions of dollars of business.

When you're negotiating that sort of contract you can require the supplier to provide all sorts of information on known failure rates (not just the usual MTBF stuff you get on spec sheets). You can write into the contract penalty clauses to hammer the supplier if the failure rate is out of whack with what they promise.

The supplier will know that as a reseller of millions of drives you can get very good statistical info on the failure rates, as it's you the reseller who has to deal with the support cases with their customers. So they have to tell the truth otherwise they're going to get even more hammered when it comes to the next contract.

Arvo · Post by **Arvo** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 11:01 am

nutball wrote:My personal take is that reliability issues aren't really brand-specific, they're model specific.

I agree 101%.

I've got 3 Samsungs in my rig, HD321KJ, HD250HJ, SP1614N - all working flawless (and many friends and co-workers use same or similar Samsung HDDs with success).

But take for example F1 640GB model - co-worker got that, it was nowhere so fast than in tests and lasted about two days. In shop he was told that almost all HDDs from that batch were returned to shop. Reading newegg and other online shops comments, there were big problems with all bigger F1 drive models.

While looking for new HDD, it is always useful to read through newegg and other shops reviews and comments - problem models will emerge quickly.

Gundy · Post by **Gundy** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:57 pm

Running a Samsung F1 1TB for 18 months, no problems (multiple hours per day). Before that a Samsung HD501LJ for one year, no problems, now serves as external storage.

Wibla · Post by **Wibla** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 9:56 am

13 Samsung F1 1TB drives, 0 failures, 1 URE on one drive because of sudden power failure (loose cable)

1 Samsung F1 640GB in WS, nearing 1 year runtime, 0 problems

11 Samsung T166, 2 failures after 2.2 years, one drive with smart errors which 3ware didnt like, but that drive works fine in a different machine..

A couple of early 80/120 GB Samsung that have failed during years past, but things changed (for the better) with T166.

Overall not bad at all.

Im not gonna bother listing laptop drives, the treatment they get is so varied its hard to make a good call.

BTW, I heard from the people at backblaze that the F2 1.5TB was a bad choice for RAID, I havent gotten that verified from other sources tho. (firmware crashes, errors etc)

Michael Sandstrom · Post by **Michael Sandstrom** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 2:22 pm

Four T166 500GB drives no failures.

Four F1 1TB drives no failures.

One new F3 1TB drive is error free.

I will only buy Samsung as long as noise, price, reliability and performance remain strong.

jimmyzaas · Post by **jimmyzaas** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 1:11 pm

2 of 2 Samsungs failed for me. Well, both developed bad sectors. My hdds are always actively cooled and well spaced.

HD103LJ and HD753LJ

They seem to be fine for data storage but fails if you need to run an OS on it.

I only trust WD Blacks now even with their higher noise profile. Although no WD unit has failed on me thus far.. knock on wood.

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Thu Oct 29, 2009 5:30 am

Not a single Samsung failure so far, I've had
-two SP2504C's
-HD321KJ
-HM160HI
-four HD154UI's

Although to be completely honest, I haven't used these drives for long enough to make any conclusions. I've used one SP2504C for two years maybe, HD321KJ for maybe another two years. HM160HI is in laptop and is not used very often. Two of HD154UI's right now are working 24/7 but only for a couple of months.

Samsung HD reliability vs. WD, Seagate

How have your Samsung drives been reliability-wise?

Samsung HD reliability vs. WD, Seagate