Enterprise Drives

[mcp6453]

Someone mentioned in a prior post that there is such a thing as an
enterprise ATA drive, which I assume means a higher quality drive than a
consumer drive. What is the highest quality IDE drive available? Maxtors
have not been reliable for me. A friend just lost his entire drive. No
warning, no nothing. I guess a head must have fallen off of an arm or
something similarly drastic.

 

[Mr. Grinch]

Someone mentioned in a prior post that there is such a thing as an
enterprise ATA drive, which I assume means a higher quality drive than a
consumer drive. What is the highest quality IDE drive available? Maxtors
have not been reliable for me. A friend just lost his entire drive. No
warning, no nothing. I guess a head must have fallen off of an arm or
something similarly drastic.

The "enterprise" class of ATA drives for the most part fall into the title
of "near line storage" by most of the drive makers. If the drive maker has
an ATA drive they classify as "near line storage" then those are the ones
intended for enterprise use. Specifically, they are intended to provide
huge amounts of cheap storage, not for main disk usage, but as an
intermediate backup that is faster than tape. Some of these drives, like
the Maxtor 300GB, operate at about 5400 rpm so they are lower heat and
cooler running than your typical 7200 rpm ATA drive. This would help them
last longer too.

Drives of just about every make and model die, so it's not too wise to
write off an entire brand just because of a single drive failure. It's
more important if you are building an entire system, say a multi-terrabyte
storage unit, to know how good the service and support is going to be if
and when you need to replace drives. You would build such a system with
some redundancy (RAID 5 plus hotspares or better) into it to accomodate for
hardware failures.

If drive failure isn't acceptable, then you build for it. In the simplest
example, if your friend can't afford to loose a drive, then he either backs
up to a second drive OR builds a raid-1 array so that he can loose a drive
and keep working.

I've had all sorts of IDE and SCSI drives fail on me. Seagate, IBM,
Micropolis, Western Digital, Quantum, etc. In this PC I've got two Maxtor
160GB and one 40GB as well as two IBM 22GB, and I push them hard and no
problems so far. But then I've got them in a case with 2 incomming and 3
exhaust fans, so they run much cooler than your average case.

 

[Rita Ä Berkowitz]

Someone mentioned in a prior post that there is such a thing as an
enterprise ATA drive, which I assume means a higher quality drive than a
consumer drive. What is the highest quality IDE drive available? Maxtors
have not been reliable for me. A friend just lost his entire drive. No
warning, no nothing. I guess a head must have fallen off of an arm or
something similarly drastic.

Seagate Cheetah, either U160 or U320 SCSI.

Rita

 

[Eric Gisin]

There are no enterprise ATA drives. The Raptor is, but is sATA.

Enterprise drives are built operate 7*24 for years with constant activity, IDE
is not. They also have 5 years warranties, IDE is 1/3.

 

[Mr. Grinch]

There are no enterprise ATA drives. The Raptor is, but is sATA.

http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/ata/enterprise_applications/index.htm

 

[Dorothy Bradbury]

There are no enterprise ATA drives. The Raptor is, but is sATA.

http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/ata/enterprise_applications/index.htm

Digging thro the specs, they are citing proven in NAS.

 

[Eric Gisin]

http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/ata/enterprise_applications/index.htm

They say "For near-line and other low-I/O secondary storage applications, they
’re rated at better than 1 million hours MTTF.", but don't define what low I/O
means. It is also 3 year warranty.

 

[Tom Scales]

What does it matter how they attach? That's all NAS is.

Tom

 

[Ron Reaugh]

There are no enterprise ATA drives. The Raptor is, but is sATA.

Enterprise drives are built operate 7*24 for years with constant activity, IDE
is not.

No, the SATA Raptor is 5 years warranty and is for 24*7. The length of the
warranty is based on the target market and price point and nothing about
drive reliability may be inferred from it.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

They say "For near-line and other low-I/O secondary storage applications, they
’re rated at better than 1 million hours MTTF.", but don't define what low I/O
means. It is also 3 year warranty.

Warranty means little here.

 

[Bob Willard]

The "enterprise" class of ATA drives for the most part fall into the title
of "near line storage" by most of the drive makers. If the drive maker has
an ATA drive they classify as "near line storage" then those are the ones
intended for enterprise use.

Uh, that may be the definition in your mind, but HD vendor's don't agree.
Western Digital, for example, labels their 10K RPM SATA HDs as ESATA
(for Enterprise SATA), and their 7200 RPM SATA HDs as just plain SATA.

It is not clear that the "enterprise" adjective means anything at all
in terms of quality. While WDC may use "enterprise" to denote faster,
it may be that, for other vendors, "enterprise" only means more expensive.

 

[Dorothy Bradbury]

What does it matter how they attach? That's all NAS is.

That's not what I meant:
o They cite proven in NAS - in terms of application
o NAS being a storage device which has reliability as key criterion

However, since NAS tends to use RAID-1 at the minimum it's moot.

So it comes back to whether the distinction is marketing or engineering:
o If the difference in engineering - it's likely to be tiny
---- a QC process change, minor assembly or part change
---- insignificant in cost yet a statistically quantifiable benefit
o That statistically quantifiable benefit excites marketing
---- be it in headline MTBF or in failures over 1,000 drive installed base

Reality is the gain may be insignificant compared to other system factors,
such as PSU quality, power quality, temperature - re system reliability.

"Low I/O" is an interesting statement - since they say proven in NAS.
Basically sounds like d2d backup to disk, with subsequent backup to tape.

Which is where the cost/capacity of those drives does well.

 

[Eric Gisin]

Sure Ron, whatever you say. Everyone believed you re the 75GXP, didn't they?

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

No, the SATA Raptor is 5 years warranty and is for 24*7.

So that is a YES then.

Oh well, what else can you expect from someone who can't even setup his
newsclient properly.

 

[Mr. Grinch]

Uh, that may be the definition in your mind, but HD vendor's don't
agree. Western Digital, for example, labels their 10K RPM SATA HDs as
ESATA (for Enterprise SATA), and their 7200 RPM SATA HDs as just plain
SATA.

It is not clear that the "enterprise" adjective means anything at all
in terms of quality. While WDC may use "enterprise" to denote faster,
it may be that, for other vendors, "enterprise" only means more
expensive.

No arguments here. Not like we've never seen a marketing department
stretch the boundaries of definitions before!

But the original poster wanted to know if there were higher quality ATA
drives for "enterprise" use. Some of the responses were "there are no such
thing". In fact there are. These drives have higher reliability ratings
than the desktop ATA drive specs, as well as different warranties which
come into effect when the drive fails.

But everyone's idea of "enterprise" is different. Who knows what the
original poster wants. He could just want a more reliable ATA drive in his
PC. Or he might want a near-line storage unit that seens 7x24 production
usage in a corporate environment. In that case, building the array
properly for cooling, redundancy, and keeping spares handy, is more
important than all the marketing flak and figures posted.

But still, ATA drives are being used in the enterprise, they have higher
ratings, and it's up to the buyer to decide if they can meet his/her
definition of "enterprise" or not. Saying ATA enterprise drives don't
exist just because they don't meet some one else's idea of what a SCSI MTBF
number should be on a given date doesn't make any sense to me.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

Uh, that may be the definition in your mind, but HD vendor's don't agree.
Western Digital, for example, labels their 10K RPM SATA HDs as ESATA
(for Enterprise SATA), and their 7200 RPM SATA HDs as just plain SATA.

It is not clear that the "enterprise" adjective means anything at all
in terms of quality. While WDC may use "enterprise" to denote faster,
it may be that, for other vendors, "enterprise" only means more expensive.

Exactly.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

So that is a YES then.
Huh?

Oh well, what else can you expect from someone who can't even setup his
newsclient properly.

The usual troll technique of attacking the poster when you run out in
relevant content.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

No arguments here. Not like we've never seen a marketing department
stretch the boundaries of definitions before!

But the original poster wanted to know if there were higher quality ATA
drives for "enterprise" use. Some of the responses were "there are no such
thing". In fact there are. These drives have higher reliability ratings
than the desktop ATA drive specs, as well as different warranties which
come into effect when the drive fails.

But everyone's idea of "enterprise" is different. Who knows what the
original poster wants. He could just want a more reliable ATA drive in his
PC. Or he might want a near-line storage unit that seens 7x24 production
usage in a corporate environment. In that case, building the array
properly for cooling, redundancy, and keeping spares handy, is more
important than all the marketing flak and figures posted.
Exactly.

But still, ATA drives are being used in the enterprise, they have higher
ratings, and it's up to the buyer to decide if they can meet his/her
definition of "enterprise" or not. Saying ATA enterprise drives don't
exist just because they don't meet some one else's idea of what a SCSI MTBF
number should be on a given date doesn't make any sense to me.

Exactly and MTBF is near meaningless for most these purposes.

 

[Mr. Grinch]

Exactly and MTBF is near meaningless for most these purposes.

I agree. We can't know what the original poster wants, but I think there's
consensus here that reliability here is more a function of how the system
as a whole is built, not some marketing term or number off a chart.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Exactly.

And the corporate buyer would vote with his foot if it was only that.