Drive diagnostics are useless

[kitekrazy]

 I got a drive I'm sure that's ready to give out.  Odd one day my newer system didn't power up.  I unplugged it an plugged it back in and it startup. I started to hear the heads making noise.  When you check SMART, run the long generic tests everything is OK.   So I guess which ever drive dies that's the one.

I'm too lazy right now to open the case and listen closer.  I need to take screenshots of all of the folders.

There are 3 2TB HDDs

WD Gold - 5yrs are up in Oct

WD Black 10 years old

Seagate - RMA replacment just recently

I'm thinking replacing with a 4tb and 1tb SSD and only put stuff I "use".   Gotta go with a 5yr on a 4tb and they aren't in my idea price range.

 

[Tim Smith]

On 7/6/2022 at 12:43 AM, Paul Young said:

 I got a drive I'm sure that's ready to give out.  Odd one day my newer system didn't power up.  I unplugged it an plugged it back in and it startup. I started to hear the heads making noise.  When you check SMART, run the long generic tests everything is OK.   So I guess which ever drive dies that's the one.

I'm too lazy right now to open the case and listen closer.  I need to take screenshots of all of the folders.

There are 3 2TB HDDs

WD Gold - 5yrs are up in Oct

WD Black 10 years old

Seagate - RMA replacment just recently

I'm thinking replacing with a 4tb and 1tb SSD and only put stuff I "use".   Gotta go with a 5yr on a 4tb and they aren't in my idea price range.

 

My motherboard has plugs for 10 SATA III drives, and while it can get confusing sometimes unless everything is organized as to what is where I have tended towards smaller drives for cost considerations. All of my drives are SSD so the cost goes up with capacity. Presently it is somewhere around 100.00 for a TB.  I suppose if one uses HDDs instead, cost isn't nearly as high. A 7200 rpm drive is just fine in many cases. Cons- Noise, wear and more of a hit on the power supply.

Awhile back I was able to get 500gb SSD drives very reasonably so I ended up with 4 of those. Then I bought 2 1TB SSDs.  I just cloned my C drive from a 500 to a 1tb drive because it was filling up. 4 or 5 DAWS tons of plugins and a few synths have their files on my C, I'm sure you get the picture. I will probably use the 500gb as an additional sample drive after I wipe it.

I am making backups on a 5TB outboard drive and I keep a few more separate backup drives, one from NI with Komplete on it and one I keep as a spare with my Sampletank sounds since you have to pay to replace those if they ever get lost. I only use those for storage.

As you might be able to tell, I have leaned more towards multiple drives instead of one or two larger drives.

 I'm sure someone like Jim could get better into the pros and cons (if there are any) from a technical perspective in using all the available SATA connections on a motherboard vs. only using one or two with a larger drive. While cpu lanes are probably a factor, I can see maybe the possibility of a bottle neck if you were running all of your samples off of one large drive instead of pulling them from multiple sources. Each drive has a set data capacity, and cpu/motherboard setup determines the speed you can pull lots of samples. I can only use 28 lanes as opposed to some motherboards and cpus that have 40 lanes.

You might not notice any of this with a smaller project and only using a few libraries. I had thought about adding a few 7200rpm drives for those 'emergency' purchases over on the deals forum  I have had a very good record with using SSDs though, as in never a failure on over 5 years with constant use.

[Tim Smith]

Small update-

I did some more investigation into this and from what I hear the SATA chip might not be as tied to cpu lanes as I thought, although the more you add, the less throughput you have.

Explanations seem to go in two directions so far as advantage to multiple drives .vs a larger drive. A few use some kind of an outboard SATA rack.

[azslow3]

We are in year 2022...

HDDs are used mostly for backups or really huge RAID storage, size per disk toward 16TB.

SATA SSDs make sense if (a) you have them (b) the computer is so old it has no PCIe M2 slots (c) you need more then 1-2  disks.

Modern USB (3+) can easily handle any HDD and in most cases SATA SSD without significant performance degradation.  "Network" solutions (NAS) are (usually) way slower.

For internal storage it make sense move toward M2 disks. Most systems support at least 2. But it is better check specification... some M2 PCIe can have effective speed of HDDs (it seems like producers of cheap notebooks love them).

[Tim Smith]

From what I can find out , it is the writing to SSD that more diminishes life span than reading SSD. Yes there will always occasionally be a dud regardless.

Most computer musicians I would guess are reading large libraries from SSD with very little writing to them. Maybe this is why I have never had a  failure. I have stayed with Samsung drives because I believe they are better made and so far I have not been disappointed. 

[azslow3]

6 hours ago, Tim Smith said:

From what I can find out , it is the writing to SSD that more diminishes life span than reading SSD. Yes there will always occasionally be a dud regardless.

SSDs have limit for the number of writes (per cell). The number depends from used cell type. The number of reads is unlimited.

In practice that was a huge problem with early "flash" cards/USB drives. They was not "smart", so particular cells used by the file system was always overwritten and so the life of such drives was extremely short.

Modern SSDs always (over)write new cells. And they always have "extra" space used for the purpose (also can be configured, obviously available capacity is reduced then). In specification the number of overwrites is not mentioned directly. But a "tip" is normally there, just presented a bit cryptic way.

F.e. Samsung 970 Pro 1TB mention "1200 TBW" (500GB has "600 TBW"). Which indicate the number of rewrites is at least 1000.

Since they are "smart", you really need to write 1PB to such disk to approach the limit.
Sure, the life time of the disk will be less then 2 years if it is completely overwritten every day.
But recording music produce ~20TB for 2 channels 24bit/96kHz if continuously recording one year long... So, it will take 50 years to hit the limit

The information about my current disk in desktop at home:
Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB, installed around 10.2019, the time PC/disk was on: 183 days, written so far: 7.4TB, specified write limit: 600TB.
It is obvious I will replace the disk and PC long before I hit that limit.

Edited July 14, 2022 by azslow3

[Tim Smith]

On 7/14/2022 at 10:51 AM, azslow3 said:

SSDs have limit for the number of writes (per cell). The number depends from used cell type. The number of reads is unlimited.

In practice that was a huge problem with early "flash" cards/USB drives. They was not "smart", so particular cells used by the file system was always overwritten and so the life of such drives was extremely short.

Modern SSDs always (over)write new cells. And they always have "extra" space used for the purpose (also can be configured, obviously available capacity is reduced then). In specification the number of overwrites is not mentioned directly. But a "tip" is normally there, just presented a bit cryptic way.

F.e. Samsung 970 Pro 1TB mention "1200 TBW" (500GB has "600 TBW"). Which indicate the number of rewrites is at least 1000.

Since they are "smart", you really need to write 1PB to such disk to approach the limit.
Sure, the life time of the disk will be less then 2 years if it is completely overwritten every day.
But recording music produce ~20TB for 2 channels 24bit/96kHz if continuously recording one year long... So, it will take 50 years to hit the limit

The information about my current disk in desktop at home:
Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB, installed around 10.2019, the time PC/disk was on: 183 days, written so far: 7.4TB, specified write limit: 600TB.
It is obvious I will replace the disk and PC long before I hit that limit.

Interesting and useful bunch of info there aslow. Thanks. Those Germans aren't so bad after all