The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

I am overdue for some new drives. Some of mine are very long in the tooth indeed. Many approaching 50,000 hours or over 5 years of constant uptime. My uptime would make some of the server maintenance nerds at my old job salivate. Even at its most temperamental, this PC has always been uncompromisingly reliable.*knock on wood* All different components from when it was built back in '06 but the original spirit is still there keeping her going

 

My oldest drives are as follows.

WD20EARS - 27,000hrs (almost always running) Main archive drive. Pictures, music, .PSD files, etc. (days may be numbered).
WD1001FALS - 38,000hrs (almost always running, and the highest taxed) Probably has seen the most data. EXCELLENT drives

The WD1001FALS SMART report is excellent in every regard. The WD20EARS may be questionable though. May be time for a complete reformat. Opinions?

 

Nothing wrong with that - besides, why would you expect a format to improve SMART data?

 

It would be my hopes, that it also acknowledges bad sectors, and marks them as unusable As well as just having the advantages of a wiped drive. They're just plain smoother.

 

I always do a full format on a new drive, but after that, never bother unless necessary. My WD1001FALS hasn't had a format since it was new and shows up error free.

I know to get Windows 8 off a drive you have to do a killdisk, and by the time you've done that, a quick format is just part of installing Windows so... a lot of customer machines end up with one whether they need it or not.

Never really noticed a performance difference after an OS refresh for quite a while. Also, this current install has been on both brands of video cards, two different motherboards, and three different CPUs. Still squeaky clean and issue-free. Windows 7 is just fantastic for that. I only need to reformat if I get a virus. Otherwise, what's to bog down or go wrong? I clean my OS and registry manually.

 

I use to but I don't any longer as it truly is a waste of time these days.

 

I've read reviews a few times, where people ran the long format, and had it fail. If you have a lemon, that's one way to find out Certainly doesn't guarantee a flawless drive. But it sure makes me more comfortable

The only reason I'd run it at this point, would be to acknowledge unknown bad sectors. I suppose Killdisk would also suffice. since it's a read/write operation. 0's and 1's.

 

Bad sectors should be marked on the initial low level format they do at the factory. So the only thing that might fail after that will have nothing to do with formatting the internal discs, but if it makes you feel good then knock yourself out, it truly isn't necessary.

I also don't stress test things for the most part as quality is typically excellent on most things, one exception might be OCZ SSD's of course, so why would I want to beat up my gear to prove it is actually OK but adding more wear in the process. Failure rates just don't warrant that nonsense on most stuff you buy these days. Also just because something passes a stress test or low level format that doesn't mean it won't fail in a month or 6.

No offense meant Kev but I must disagree with you, however if it makes you feel good I guess that is what is important, truly....

Stevo

 

I will stress test my OC and cooling for stability and performance, but not just to test a component's long-term reliability.

 

OC'n is totally a different beast, of course you would verify your questionable settings to see if they are stable, I don't see that as a viable argument really, not for the subject we were on.

 

That makes sense to me. I've done that on old drives just to reset the sector tables and see if it fails in any way or shows warnings. In fact I had an old drive I retired just recently, it wasn't failing yet but showed warnings in the Smart tables, better to be safe then sorry.

 

No no... I'm not talking about acknowledging sectors of new drives. I want to see if it can handle the length of time RUNNING non stop So, it is necessary in that regard to me.

 

Almost any new drive I buy supplants/replaces an existing one, so as soon as it goes in it runs continuously, usually for several hours, while data from the old drive is copied to it, either for replacement, or to split the data between the two disks. This process is in my opinion, enough to tell me that the drive will work. Full formatting only adds several hours to the install process during which you can do nothing with the disk, and it doesn't do much to prevent infant mortality, so I don't bother.

 

I know what you are talking about and NO it isn't necessary! ddp and I were talking about old drives, different subject then new drives were old drive surface quality can be an issue and lose of data can be too.

Your reasoning of pounding a new drive is exactly what I'm against, there is no need to do that, #1, and with that why would you add undue wear on a new drive if it isn't necessary? If failure rates were high I could see the point of making sure it is a good drive, that isn't the case these days. I also will keep data on the original drive until I feel it is safe to use or get rid of the old drive. If I needed to use the old drive right away I would back the drive up with True Image and if the new drive failed in a short time I would be covered with minimal lose.

 

Ok. I'll say one more thing. We clearly all have our own way of doing things.

Undue wear? A full format takes 8 - 10 hrs for a large drive. and since my WD1001FALS has accumulated 38,000hrs, 8 - 10hrs isn't even a tenth of a percentage. A trivial amount of "pounding"

I see where you're coming from. But I cannot trust a drive with data (unless I raid 1), or long format. Imagine if you were to get a drive, and copy over 100Gb of data. That 100Gb came from a drive that is either being sold, given to a family member, or on it's last leg. A few days later, the new drive quits, after only copying 120Gb worth of data. A long format might have revealed a problem. THIS is the type of drive I'm watching out for.

There's really no need to reply to this. I respect your way, and my way will not change

I do suppose it adds an unnecessary write operation to the platters. Perhaps a full linear read operation would suffice.

 

Nothing I have is backed up. I can and have lost large chunks of data due to a drive failure. Only truly important stuff gets a copy made, like homework, financial papers, etc. Caution to the wind I always say.

What is the average failure rate for new HDDs nowadays?

 

The green drives, seem to get the worst reviews. At least they used to.

 

I believe the industry standard average is 1/30. My score is the same. Newegg reviews would have you believe it's much higher. My belief is that they're probably dropping them in the warehouse sometimes.

 

What ever you do stay away from the WD Blue's they a are pure garbage 6/6 have failed within a year.