Just using them. They were in systems where they were always on but most
of the time they weren't doing anything. If they were in boxes, they
always had fans on them to keep them cool since I know heat kills
drives. I had one in an enclosure with a fan that failed on me, but I
still need to figure out if the drive failed or the enclosure failed.
Everything I've had that failed on me has been a 500GB drive. I had 4
160Gb drives in a raid array that ran for like 2 years and I still use
them now in USB enclosures, some of which I keep on all the time. I've
only had 1 of them fail on me, and I think it may have been a corruption
failure instead of a physical failure, I just didn't care enough to look
in to it.

I've only had one drive that was in constant use as a torrent target
fail on me, and I was able to restore all of the data on it with some
xfs tools and dd magic and a new drive to clone it to..... just had to
work around some unreadable sectors. That drive, of course, was a 500GB
drive. The drive that it was cloned to, another 500GB drive, is also now
starting to make clicking noises from time to time and I'm just waiting
for it to fail completely. At least I have that one on active backup
now. I've also had 500GB drives show up DOA without even turning them on.

If you read the reviews on Newegg on older drives (320GB and below) they
all seem really solid. Read the reviews on newer drives (500B and up)
and you see a lot of mixed reviews cause by DOA problems and drives that
have failed after only weeks of use. It's at least a little comforting
to know I'm not alone here. I will admit I buy most of my drives OEM but
I've also had really bad luck with a lot or retail drives too, so I
don't think it matters as much as some people will tell you.

I've had terrible experiences with WD drives in the past (specifically
models ending in JB) and I've spoken to people in recovery centers
who've seen tons of those drives come in for recovery. I wrote WD off
for years because of those problems, but it seems Seagate is also a
problem now too. Hitachi I've tried to stay away from since the whole
"Deathstar" fiasco several years back. Yes that was IBM, but Hitachi
took over their production. But I digress.

Anyway, that's my story, since you asked. Sorry it's so long winded.

-Joe

Eric Cope wrote:
> This is more in regards to your last paragraph. Where are you storing
> your hard drives? What type of environment are they subjected to?
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