Large SSD or HDD and small SDD?

[Marcvs]

Their data tallies pretty closely to the data I have from my "home" use and our use of HDDs at work. Is it perfect.. No..

Is it a good indicator.. Yes.

I bought WD Blacks instead of HGSTs due to the longer warranty. But I literally have seagates dying every 2months.... I have only 3/25 left working at home from my purchase of 25 drives 3 years ago (Home PC and NAS use).

[Agrippa]

The data may well tally with yours, but sadly your data are of no statistical significance and as such of no interest at all. If yours was a viable argument I could counter it with the 12 2TB Seagate drives I recently pensioned off after just under 3 years of flawless service. However, that too would be entirely anecdotal and statistically insignificant.

To further illustrate the pointlessness of anecdotal "evidence" like yours there's the IBM "Deathstar" debacle, which caused IBM, until then the most lauded hard drive manufacturer of all, to eventually withdraw from the hard drive market. Just before the scandal broke I had bought 16 "Deathstars" (specifically the DTLA 307-060 model). All of them went on performing flawlessly for more than 3 years in two RAID 5 arrays and a further two after I handed them over to a friend. If it wasn't for the scandal I could certainly have entered discussions like this and argued that those were some excellent drives - except I wouldn't have because I knew what statistical significance meant.

So no, the Backblaze data is not a good indicator, except of the cheapest Seagate drives being less than suitable for use in huge rack mount installations where they'll experience workloads, temperatures and vibrations they're not designed for.

[Spreadie]

The data isn't the least bit skewed, it's just not the least bit applicable to regular users. Backblaze also made no quality judgements on the background of their data; they simply released it in raw form along with auxiliary data on numbers of drives and such. Whether or not that was a good thing is up for debate, given that most people just look at the pretty graphs and can't be bothered to read and understand the background conditions which resulted in said graphs.

I wasn't suggesting that Backblaze skewed the data, more that how the raw data has been presented is skewed.

It doesn't take into account the use of consumer grade drives in an enterprise environment (if you can call it that). There is also no data relating to which drives are running in which racks. For all we know, the bulk of their Hitachi drives might be in their newer racks - apparently much kinder to drives than their older racks, nor are all of their racks subject to similar loads, from what little I understand of their setup.

Either way, as you alluded, that graph is of little to no use to anyone looking to buy a new HDD.

[outwar6010]

So I'm planning my build for october and checking out the prices of SSDS - they have come down a lot recently. The decision is:

Do i buy a 1TB SSD (samsung 850 EVO) £250

OR

Do I buy a 500GB SSD (samsung 850 EVO) £130 and a 2TB HDD at around £70

I don't have more than 500GB of data currently. is it worth just going for the biggest SSD i can afford - and get the OS and key games and prgrams on it and buy a HDD later on for non essential files?

You'll be more than fine with the second option.

[Lee H]

Go for the third option - it's what I did in the end

Get 1 x 500 GB SSD now and a HDD and then over the course of time, add more SSD drives to the system and fill all your SATA ports with drives

[Marcvs]

The data may well tally with yours, but sadly your data are of no statistical significance and as such of no interest at all. If yours was a viable argument I could counter it with the 12 2TB Seagate drives I recently pensioned off after just under 3 years of flawless service. However, that too would be entirely anecdotal and statistically insignificant.

To further illustrate the pointlessness of anecdotal "evidence" like yours there's the IBM "Deathstar" debacle, which caused IBM, until then the most lauded hard drive manufacturer of all, to eventually withdraw from the hard drive market. Just before the scandal broke I had bought 16 "Deathstars" (specifically the DTLA 307-060 model). All of them went on performing flawlessly for more than 3 years in two RAID 5 arrays and a further two after I handed them over to a friend. If it wasn't for the scandal I could certainly have entered discussions like this and argued that those were some excellent drives - except I wouldn't have because I knew what statistical significance meant.

So no, the Backblaze data is not a good indicator, except of the cheapest Seagate drives being less than suitable for use in huge rack mount installations where they'll experience workloads, temperatures and vibrations they're not designed for.

Oh I agree its statistically insignificant [especially as they were all divided between 2 batches]; however when you have such a large number of failures at home, I doubt you would buy seagate drives again.

[Agrippa]

Sure, but that has nothing at all to do with the drives and their overall reliability or lack of such. Instead it has everything to do with the fact that we human beings are still incredibly intellectually primitive and unable to accept that our own extremely limited experiences have no special value or significance when considering the big picture.

[Millennium]

Sure, but that has nothing at all to do with the drives and their overall reliability or lack of such. Instead it has everything to do with the fact that we human beings are still incredibly intellectually primitive and unable to accept that our own extremely limited experiences have no special value or significance when considering the big picture.

That was a bit 'dark'!

[Agrippa]

Just realism mate, just realism. For anyone who's a bit versed in history it's pretty obvious that we've not come very far either intellectually or sociologically since we abandoned the trees for the savannah and started scampering towards civilisation and modernity.

Pardon the OT.

[EvZ_2]

Hi all, just thought I'd update you on my choice.

I bought a:
- 1TB WD Blue HDD -£30
- 500GB Samsung EVO SSD -£120

Total - £150

Check out my entire build found below - I've called it House Targaryen:
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/b/MrjcCJ

Hopefully come next year when SSDs have dropped some more i'll buy a 1TB SSDfor £150

[Marcvs]

Solid choice .

[Stormsys]

In my opinion unless you really need the extra storage a 500gb ssd should do plenty for you without a second drive. the only thing i use my HDD for is to store my raw GoPro files where they would just take up space on the ssd for no good reason.

[Mr_Chris]

I'd always go with a large SSD if you have the cash. Most SSD have come down a fair bit in price over the years. If not mix it up with both

[realc]

Has anyone used one of the SSHD hybrid drives? Thoughts?