Are drives from different vendors a good idea?

[u6f6o]

Hi,

A recommendation I read quite regularly is to choose drives from different vendors (e.g. WD, Seagate, HGST etc.) for your NAS/server in order to be safe from getting all hard drives from the same bad "batch".

If I have a look on most builds here in the forum though, people normally tend to buy all hard drives from the same vendor and model (mostly WD Red).

So what do you think about choosing drives from different vendors, is it a good idea or not?

Thx,
u6f6o

 

[danb35]

I don't believe there's anything wrong with the idea, but I also don't think it's been shown that it buys you anything. My pool is rather heterogeneous, because it was built over time, with the drives being acquired over the course of five years or so. Hopefully I don't need to expand it again any time soon, but if/when I do, I won't be deliberately mixing up the new drives.

 

[BigDave]

Hi,

A recommendation I read quite regularly is to choose drives from different vendors (e.g. WD, Seagate, HGST etc.) for your NAS/server in order to be safe from getting all hard drives from the same bad "batch".

If I have a look on most builds here in the forum though, people normally tend to buy all hard drives from the same vendor and model (mostly WD Red).

So what do you think about choosing drives from different vendors, is it a good idea or not?

Thx,
u6f6o

I agree with danb35! IMHO it's not worth the effort, I sure as hell didn't do it. I purchased
all my drives from the same local vendor (microcenter)
Besides, what's to prevent you from buying "bad" drives from two different manufactures?
It's a crap shoot;)

 

[u6f6o]

Okay, thx for quick replies! Think I gonna stick with same drives and vendor as well.

 

[joeschmuck]

Yea, it generally doesn't matter these days with drives actually being more reliable.

 

[Jurgen Segaert]

The manufacturing process is very reliable & repeatable indeed. That is one of the reasons behind the theory of "avoiding the same batch". If a HDD fails before its warranty period, it's probably because either the endproduct was mishandled during transport, or a bad batch of components was used. In either of these cases, all of the HDDs from that box/pallet will likely fail around the same time for the same reason if they are used in the same computer.
Albeit an unlikely scenario, spreading out your purchases over time may avoid this.

 

[joeschmuck]

But on the other hand, say the electronics card dies (you scraped your drive across the case when pulling it out for whatever reason), well you can take a drive from the same batch and transplant the card and get your data back. Transplanting drive electronics from other batches are likely to fail due to minor component differences. So there are pros and cons, it just depends on how you think about the problem.

 

[pschatz100]

Personally, I just buy the drives I want when they are on sale. Right now, I have a mix of WD greens and reds - although lately, I've been buying reds. However, for my purposes I stay with 5400 rpm drives as they tend to run cooler.

Whatever you decide to do, be certain to burn them in properly before trusting any data to the system. Check the guides posted in the stickies.