# Is the Toshiba 3TB drive failing for everyone? What drive is best for Bolt?



## asn (Sep 28, 2017)

I've got a bolt on the way, and was going to swap out the hard drive for a 2TB+ drive, but am amazed at the issues people apparently having. 

It looked like everyone was using the Toshiba drives, but now looks like they are causing issues and/or not lasting very long. The Seagate's appear to have the wrong formatting (SMR vs PMR), and the WD drives don't appear to be a popular choice either.

Is there a good replacement drive for the Bolts, without going to an external 3.5"?


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

The Toshiba drives have been the most reliable so far, and the people with them failing may be having actual HD failures as opposed to the Seagate issues where the drives test fine outside a Tivo.


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## asn (Sep 28, 2017)

But why so many Toshiba drive failures? A hard drive should last for years, not months. I'm half tempted to bump my order up to a Bolt+, but that's an extra $150 out of my pocket, vs the Bolt + $130 hard drive


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## sfhub (Jan 6, 2007)

asn said:


> But why so many Toshiba drive failures? A hard drive should last for years, not months. I'm half tempted to bump my order up to a Bolt+, but that's an extra $150 out of my pocket, vs the Bolt + $130 hard drive


If you have 1000 people using a drive at 3% failure and they all report on TCF, that is 30 fails.
If you have 30 people using a drive at 3% failure, you might only see 1 complaint.

These are just made up numbers to illustrate a point. The most popular drive is going to see the most raw # of failures. The percentage failure is what you care about. All drives will have some noticeable failure rate when the number of units is large enough.


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## sfhub (Jan 6, 2007)

These are stats on 3.5" drives. They don't necessarily translate to different technologies or 2.5" drives.

For 3.5" drives
Hitachi seems to be noticeably more reliable, often under 1% failure
Seagate seems to be reasonable, around 1.2-1.5% failure
WD reds at 3TB and 6TB seem to be less reliable at around 5% failure
WD reds at 4TB seem to be more along the lines of seagates at around 2% failure.

Those are probably 7200rpm WD reds, so may not apply to the 5400rpm WD reds that are recommended here. These are cumulative stats in datacenter use over 4 years.

So if I were buying a drive I would expect 1%-5% failure over time. Then it just becomes a matter of how many drives are in use. The Toshiba's are the most recommended drive here so have the most #s. Again the Toshiba's are 2.5" drives so the stats below don't necessarily carry over, but IMO the industry average is around 1%-5% failure in constant use applications, so if I had to guess, I would expect the Toshiba 2.5" drives to fall somewhere in that range.

2017 Hard Drive Reliability By Manufacturer and Model


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## asn (Sep 28, 2017)

sfhub - thanks for the data, but it appears the 2.5's are a different beast. I don't know if it's due to cooling in the bolts or what, but from what I've read it seems as if people are seeing more failures with the upgrade drives vs the older 3.5" drives.

Perhaps its because there are not many large 2.5's on the market, or because they are smaller. Or maybe it's because the bolts are newer, and more people issues with the older systems are in older posts?

I would be fine with a 2TB drive. I have a 2TB in my old Tivo and have never gone above 50% capacity. That is also with standard HD, not 4K which is on the way.


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