Just pulled a record-setting drive

[dood]

Western Digital Expert 100BA

10GB IDE, Manufactured 25 Sep 1999

According to SMART, 75,944POH (that's 3,164 days, or over 8.66 years of power-on time). Of course, also according to SMART, it has 7 reallocated and 14 pending sectors. Machine wouldn't boot any more and I couldn't Ghost it either. I was, however, able to hook it up as a slave and pull all the important files off.

It was pulled from the system it was originally installed in, a Compaq Deskpro with a PIII 500mhz. Up until last week, it was used in our QA lab during all 3 shifts, 6 days a week.

[mariushm]

The shared hosting company I first used (have moved since to dedicated servers) has servers running since 2002:

https://www2.suresupport.com/network.php

SERVER ON SINCE DAYS MINUTES DOWNTIME-MIN. UPTIME STATUS DESCRIPTION

Machine36 2002-09-09 3432 4942080 0 100.00% OK Operational
Thehosting123 2002-06-25 3508 5051520 0 100.00% OK Operational


That's 9+ years...

[dood]

That's quite impressive... but this is a desktop drive, that was installed in a computer that's been used in some of the hottest places in our manufacturing facility. The case of the computer itself is sticky with grease and oil buildup... Bit different than what you would hope is a climate-controlled datacenter. Not to mention all the supporting hardware is enterprise class.

However, this drive might've been quite advanced for 1999, since it's actually a 7200 RPM drive.

[RJARRRPCGP]

IIRC, the "Expert" is a DeskStar with a Western Digital badge slapped on it!

[toastygoodness]

Originally Posted by dood

That's quite impressive... but this is a desktop drive, that was installed in a computer that's been used in some of the hottest places in our manufacturing facility. The case of the computer itself is sticky with grease and oil buildup... Bit different than what you would hope is a climate-controlled datacenter. Not to mention all the supporting hardware is enterprise class.

However, this drive might've been quite advanced for 1999, since it's actually a 7200 RPM drive.

also machine uptime =/= hard disk uptime. we have hundreds of machines with 24/7 uptime of almost ten years now, but disks have always been failing. that's why there's raid and hot-swap. as long as less than two disks fail at a time, the system can keep running while the disks are replaced. but realistically, the mean hard disk time in a datacenter is near 4 years (since they're usually forced to be tossed by then).

[dood]

Originally Posted by Topcat

Retire that one with honors!

She deserves it... the spindle bearings are just about seized, I think. Whines like a mofo!

Originally Posted by toastygoodness

also machine uptime =/= hard disk uptime. we have hundreds of machines with 24/7 uptime of almost ten years now, but disks have always been failing. that's why there's raid and hot-swap. as long as less than two disks fail at a time, the system can keep running while the disks are replaced. but realistically, the mean hard disk time in a datacenter is near 4 years (since they're usually forced to be tossed by then).

Another good point!

[RJARRRPCGP]

Hungary-made DeskStars are known to whine like a mofo.

And that's even when not used a whole lot.

And the "Hungary" ones appear to be inferior to the "Philippines" ones.
(Because the SMART of a "Hungary" tends to report trouble with the "Spin Up Retry" attribute.)

[Topcat]

Retire that one with honors!

[dood]

This old WD100 was made in Malaysia

[RJARRRPCGP]

Originally Posted by dood

This old WD100 was made in Malaysia

Typical with most Western Digitals of that gen. Have you seen one of those where Western Digital slapped its name on a DeskStar?

[dood]

Originally Posted by Toasty

Remember when we thought going from a 10 MB drive to a 20 MB was the cat's meow?

Not me... my first computer had a 540mb seagate drive in it. I did run across a 30 mb drive in a Tandy 3000 later on, though. One of the big double height, 5.25" drives that took about a minute to get up to operational speed

Originally Posted by RJARRRPCGP

Typical with most Western Digitals of that gen. Have you seen one of those where Western Digital slapped its name on a DeskStar?

Not that I know of, but this could be one?

[Krankshaft]

My Windows 2003 server drives have been running 24/7 since 2003 two Seagate Barracudas SATA 150GB mirrored for redundancy they're about eight.

They're in a cool basement, rarely powered down, and in a well ventilated case so that probably plays a factor.

I wish they made drives as good as these just got a replacement WD 1TB in the mail. I seem to average at least 2-3 drives a year with all of my PCs. These newer drives drop like flies.

I wish solid state storage would get out of its infancy already.

Originally Posted by Toasty

Remember when we thought going from a 10 MB drive to a 20 MB was the cat's meow?

I still have an 8088 with a double height 10MB drive. Man those things are bulky they've got a stepper motor to move the heads too. It's not a hard drive its a bigger floppy drive . Truly a coarse piece of machinery by today's standards.

I use the top platter cover of a double height MFM that crashed for storage to hold screws and stuff I can store a lot in it .

[Uranium-235]

Originally Posted by Krankshaft

I wish they made drives as good as these just got a replacement WD 1TB in the mail. I seem to average at least 2-3 drives a year with all of my PCs. These newer drives drop like flies.

blue? black? green? RE?

[Shocker]

Originally Posted by Krankshaft

I seem to average at least 2-3 drives a year with all of my PCs. These newer drives drop like flies.

WOW!!!!!!!! Remember when PCBONEZ said to perpendicular recording??? Thank god I still have my old ST380011A...

[larrymoencurly]

Originally Posted by RJARRRPCGP

Typical with most Western Digitals of that gen. Have you seen one of those where Western Digital slapped its name on a DeskStar?

Were those the WD Expert drives? I vaguely remember their motor connections being 90 degrees from the location IBM used.

[Toasty]

Remember when we thought going from a 10 MB drive to a 20 MB was the cat's meow?

[Scenic]

^ if you still have it, check the smart value for "load cycle count". I bet it's far beyond 200k

Regular greens park their heads after 3-5secs of inactivity, which ultimately kills the drives (out of head alignment).
No other WD series (blue, black, RE, AV, AV-GP) has this timer. Only the regular greens.

The head parking timer is fine for a storage/backup drive, but a lot of people use it as a system drive, which is about the worst thing you can do with one of those and gives them a bad reputation.. a bad reputation because the owner used it for something it was never designed for.. *facepalm*

My AV-GP (a 1TB WD10EVDS .. "AV Green" version of the WD10EADS) only has 706 load cycle counts after about 2 years of use (power on hours).

If it has to be a Green WD, it's AV-GP series or nothing.

[Krankshaft]

I had to send the drive out first so I don't have it anymore. Should have checked it I'm curious now.

I'll definitely take a closer look at the drive I'm buying next time. I figured the low power consumption was only the result of a lower RPM spindle motor not also a stupid head parking timer.

No need for a specific model drive I found this command line app from WD:

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1367904

With it you can disable the idle timer to prevent parking or increase the time till the heads park in the firmware.

I disabled it on mine. To do that type wdidle3 /d

If you type wdidle3 /r it will report the idle time in seconds. Use /s to change the value.

For example wdidle3 /s9.00 (no spaces) would change it to 9 seconds. Over 12.6 seconds enter the raw value in seconds the max is 300 seconds (5 minutes). Above 12.6 for example wdidle3 /s30 for 30 seconds.

Type wididle3 /? to display the program command line parameters. My first PC had Windows 3.1 so I'm right at home with Dos .

I'm not getting caught with my pants down again I don't need WDs intellicrash .

Unfortunately it only works under Dos here is an ISO boot CD the file already has been bundled so you can run it straight off the CD through Freedos.

[PCBONEZ]

Whether or not your drives last has a lot more to do with what quality level you buy than it does what brand it is.
.
Usually when I see someone talking up one brand and down another the drives they are comparing are not the quality level.
.
Seagate and WD both build excellent drives, they also both build mediocre drives.
If you go with the cheapest one this week guess what you'll usually get....
.

[Shocker]

Don't forget that they don't make 'em like they used to.

Today's consumer electronics stuff is getting lighter and lighter all the time, and drives are no exception.

ST380011A - 544g
ST1000DM003 - 400g

Sure, the ST1000DM003 is a thin (20mm height) drive and the ST380011A isn't, but that's only part of the difference. And an ST31500DM003 (2 platters) is still only 535g - notice something???