Originally posted by sammorris:

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It's surprisingly difficult to overload a 350W PSU with your average system, even with a high-end CPU. In a high load situation (100% load but not a burn test), even an overclocked and overvolted Q9550 and an HD4870X2 (286W TDP) was only able to pull 390-400W from the wall. Back in those days, that sort of power draw was unheard of too.

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Originally posted by Russ:

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Harvardguy says:"So, again, why do you guys think that Russ bought Enterprise drives?" Simple, because that's what WD calls them!

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410273,00.asp

Best Regards,
Russ

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Quote:

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Desktop / Consumer RAID Environments - WD Caviar Black Hard Drives are tested and
recommended for use in consumer-type RAID applications. (RAID-0 / RAID-1)*

* Business Critical RAID Environments ? WD Caviar Black Hard Drives are not recommended for and are not warranted for use in RAID environments utilizing Enterprise HBAs and/or expanders and in multi-bay chassis, as they are not designed for, nor tested in, these specific types of RAID applications. For all Business Critical RAID applications, please consider WD's Enterprise Hard Drives that are specifically designed with RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER), are tested extensively in 24x7 RAID applications, and include features like enhanced RAFF technology and thermal extended burn-in testing.

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Originally posted by harvardguy:

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Well, I never heard the fire story, but per Sam and Steve it seems like it's shaping up to be more the fault of the PSU than the Asrock. I have heard lots of PSU fire stories - even Sam has one as I recall.

I don't think anybody is making anybody else look bad - nobody's memory is perfect - but I agree that this forum needs to give out accurate information. So in the spirit of upholding the integrity of the forum information, I am still not quite done with this Enterprise drive versus desktop drive discussion.

Originally posted by Russ:

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Harvardguy says:"So, again, why do you guys think that Russ bought Enterprise drives?" Simple, because that's what WD calls them!

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410273,00.asp

Best Regards,
Russ

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Well, Russ, I don't mean to quibble, but unless a drive specifically says it's an enterprise drive, I don't believe it IS an enterprise drive.

You presented the drive, and in fact you yourself did not mention that it was an enterprise. You didn't use that word. But everybody else did. And I am wondering why.

I am referring to your post on page 215, post 5358.

In that post, your original newegg link on page 215, pulled up this drive:

Western Digital WD Black WD5003AZEX 500GB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive, which is now priced at $94.99.

NOT enterprise. Not as far as I can tell. It's a caviar black, and it is NOT an enterprise drive. Right?

But, in searching newegg for enterprise drives, I did pull up this one

Western Digital WD RE4 WD2503ABYX 250GB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Enterprise Hard Drive -Bare Drive. which clearly is labelled as an enterprise drive, for $94, but it's not 500 GB, only 250GB.

The Western Digital link you quoted above confuses me even more, Russ, because the smallest drive in that list of enterprise drives, is 1TB, at $139, and newegg does not carry it, the WD1001FYYG, and it is certainly not the drive you bought. The drive you bought, the WD5003AZEX, is not on that list of WD drives that you linked to - so what was the purpose of that link? I don't get it. :P

I respect you immensely, and my question was not even directed to you - it was directed to everybody who commented on your drive, and who used the word enterprise, which you did not use.

Because I think we can all agree that we can't be putting out false information on this thread, telling people they are getting Enterprise drives, when the word Enterprise has a very specific meaning, and includes a set of standards that desktop drives do not adhere to. As Sam mentioned above, Enterprise drives indeed have 1/10 the non-recoverable error rate of desktop drives. That's pretty significant - 10 times more reliable in that regard. I would call that significant.

Is anybody aware that non-recoverable errors can come from cosmic rays, and used to be much more of a problem until substrate materials were changed? One of the reasons that the non-recoverable error rate is significant, is Raid array rebuild time with very large drives, Raid 5 in particular. That is why Raid 6 has become so popular, permitting the failure of two drives. If you have one non-recoverable error pop up during rebuild on Raid 5, which only permits one bad drive, you are screwed - you cannot rebuild the failed drive, so your entire Raid 5 array is junk. Raid 6 permits one non-recoverable error during Raid array rebuild. And you are 10 times less likely to have a non-recoverable error pop up if you are using enterprise drives in your Raid array.

That is VERY SIGNIFICANT in business applications.

So again, this question is directed to everybody else besides Russ,

............why did you guys comment on Russ' drives, calling them Enterprise drives? If you didn't really mean to use the term, then I think it would be prudent to refrain from using that term, as it has a very specific and important meaning, and those drives are more expensive than desktop drives.

To summarize, since Russ linked above to Western Digital, here's some more WD information from this forum:

Quote:

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Desktop / Consumer RAID Environments - WD Caviar Black Hard Drives are tested and
recommended for use in consumer-type RAID applications. (RAID-0 / RAID-1)*

* Business Critical RAID Environments ? WD Caviar Black Hard Drives are not recommended for and are not warranted for use in RAID environments utilizing Enterprise HBAs and/or expanders and in multi-bay chassis, as they are not designed for, nor tested in, these specific types of RAID applications. For all Business Critical RAID applications, please consider WD's Enterprise Hard Drives that are specifically designed with RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER), are tested extensively in 24x7 RAID applications, and include features like enhanced RAFF technology and thermal extended burn-in testing.

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I do not pretend to understand that whole discussion, but to me that clearly says that Caviar Black, and Enterprise, are two different things.

LOL

Rich

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Originally posted by omegaman7:

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I don't know if Rich mentioned the Red drive, but I did. I'm rather curious about it. Just haven't had time to check it out. What exactly justifies the premium price?!

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Originally posted by Omega:

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I don't know if Rich mentioned the Red drive, but I did. I'm rather curious about it. Just haven't had time to check it out. What exactly justifies the premium price?!

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Originally posted by Movies:

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Better quality higher performance for Enterprise drives or other specialty drives. Also they are designed for 24/7 use in RAID or VIDEO systems which is supposed to void the warranty on other drives if they fail and they have been used for constant use. I'm not sure the manufacturers enforce that these days though but they can.

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Originally posted by harvardguy:

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Originally posted by Omega:

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I don't know if Rich mentioned the Red drive, but I did. I'm rather curious about it. Just haven't had time to check it out. What exactly justifies the premium price?!

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Kevin, here's an interesting link, with a Western Digital demonstration of some of the engineering features that distinguish enterprise drives from desktop drives, and might answer your question on "why the premium price."

The key is in the engineering, not in the warranty.

As Steve said:

Originally posted by Movies:

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Better quality higher performance for Enterprise drives or other specialty drives. Also they are designed for 24/7 use in RAID or VIDEO systems which is supposed to void the warranty on other drives if they fail and they have been used for constant use. I'm not sure the manufacturers enforce that these days though but they can.

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That is an accurate, powerful description, in a short sentence. Thanks for the clarification Steve.

And notice what Steve said about warranties. Warranties can be voided.

I can get a 5 year warranty on a desktop drive, perhaps. Maybe I can get a 10 year warranty. Does that mean I should throw it into my Raid 6 on-line-store 24/7 server? Probably not. It isn't an enterprise drive, no matter what length of warranty it has.

I wonder who picked up the phone over there late yesterday at WD? Was it the head of engineering, or was it a call center in India?

If I throw the desktop drive, with the 5 or 10 year warranty, into my on-line store server, what do I do if I lose all my critical data and about $50,000 worth of orders, causing my business to face bankruptcy? Ask WD to replace the drives? Okay, they send me $1000 for the drives. Great. That gives me a little extra money to pay the bankruptcy attorney.

Read the fine print on those warranties - does anybody have a blind faith in warranties, and makes their buying decisions based on them? I wouldn't recommend that approach.

I bought two enterprise drives last year. Price wasn't bad, $120 each for 1TB. I have no idea what the warranty was. I never looked. I still don't know. I had to return the original two using newegg's 30 day return. I had ruined them through a faulty Power over Esata card that I also bought from newegg, which didn't properly regulate 5 volt power from the floppy power connector to the add-on card. You could run one drive, in power over esata mode (bare drive sitting on case, with a connector that supplies sata logic and sata power) without a problem. When you tried to run two drives you got intermittent problems - the 5 volt current was limited passing through the add-on card, and therefore the logic board of the hard drives, including the imbedded processors, was starved for 5 volt power. What a mess!

The bad drives developed a non-zero pending sector count, per the SMART data, (self monitoring and reporting technology) which is a major red flag. Eventually in more testing, that pending sector count eventually reduced to zero, but my suspicions had been raised. In further testing, while the drives appeared to be functioning correctly, both original drives eventually failed the WD Lifeguard thorough testing and recovery program.

So I rma'd them, and figured out the source of the problem before I ruined the replacement drives.

I did more reading and research of hard drives and SMART data than at any time in my life. I even rewrote one section of the wikipedia article on SMART when I noticed a seemingly self-contradicting sentence regarding pending sector count, and realized that the source notation from the company that makes Acronis clone software, correctly stated the situation, whereas the author hadn't quite gotten it right. (They didn't rewrite my edit - that's how the article now reads, lol.)

Anyway, the 5 volt problem disappeared when I attached the optional usb power connector to the mating motherboard port - THAT 5 volts was steady, and passing through the Power over Esata card, it was a sure source of 5 volts that was able to properly service two hard drives, in a Raid 0 or Raid 1 array. (The 3.5" drives pull 5 volts for logic, and 12 volts for the spindle motor, whereas 2.5" drives need only 5 volts for the spindle motor.) In my newegg review of the add-on card, which I bought two more of later for other machines, I detailed the situation for any further unsuspecting buyers, while still giving the board 5 eggs. I put the card into a computer that did not have the usb port on the motherboard, and so the floppy power is the only source of 5 volts. Needless to say, I will never attempt to run two hard drives in "power over esata" mode at the same time - but one is fine - I use that power over esata adapter cable to test new hard drives without opening the computer case, one at a time.

As per Steve, warranties can be voided. What good is a warranty anyway if my irreplaceable family video and photo collection has been lost? I get my $120 back? Thanks a lot.

Enterprise drives not only have 1/10 the non-recoverable error rate, but they also have a longer MTBF than desktop drives. If you follow the WD link above, which is fascinating, you will learn a lot of information about platter wobble, vibration-correcting sensors, in an interactive 3d model demonstration. The key to whether a drive is enterprise, or not, has nothing to do with the warranty, but everything to do with the engineering.

Rich

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Quote:

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My guess is we'll see 100 TB in a 2.5" laptop drive by the end of this decade. Miniaturization is phenomenally interesting.

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Originally posted by harvardguy:

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Oh, Kevin, you're so cavalier, lol.

(Go visit the game thread - I have a lot of good CS:GO for you.)

Do you know that they have 2 cpus embedded in every disk drive logic board, each of which is much more powerful than the earlier PCs? There is so much computation going on - which is why they say that the firmware is so important for maximum data throughput.

On your earlier question about capacity - look how blase we are all getting - "oh, 2 TB, oh 4 TB, that's nothing - when they get to 100 TB I'll be impressed" Lol.

My guess is we'll see 100 TB in a 2.5" laptop drive by the end of this decade. Miniaturization is phenomenally interesting.

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Originally posted by ddp:

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try having a cd explode in a cd burner while spinning, i darn near had a heart attack. my disk in a customer's drive in her computer. had to take the drive apart to get all the fragments out & drive still worked.

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Originally posted by Mr-Movies:

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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Originally posted by theonejrs:

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Originally posted by shaffaaf:

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the windows 7/vista delay i never had on my DFI mobo, but all the ASUS boards i have had have had it.

interesting list sam, esp with ASrock being top for failure rates considering asus are their parent company.

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shaff,

My first experience with Asrock was in early 2004. My landlord's computer caught fire, and luckily I was home. I walked in the room, just as the drapes lit up! It was an exciting few minutes! LOL!! Anyway, the motherboard he bought was from Asrock, and was a cut above the basic 2 memory slots, socket AM II, DDR2, $39 boards, many are known for selling. Turned it on one morning, and it went "PoP!" I took it over to Asrock (about 45 minutes away), and they exchanged it for a new board. In short, 3 new boards and none lasted the 1 year warranty. The 3 combined didn't last 14 months! I've never had much interest in Asrock since!

Best Regards,
Russ

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Russ, I'm certain that the drapes on fire instant you told me was an AOpen PSU, not an ASRock motherboard.

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That's how I recall it too I just wasn't going to point it out.

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