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Rich Castagna, Editorial Director
All you need to do is go to any disk manufacturers Web site and pull down the spec sheets for the individual drives. You can try HGST if you like which will give you information on IBM and Hitachi drives.
One of the important factors you will notice within the spec sheets are the MTB
(mean time between failure) ratings for each type of drive. You will find that the ATA type drives, which are built to be placed in PC type environments and therefore priced cheaply, will be rated lower than those built for very high duty cycle environments like RAID arrays. If you look closely at the spec sheets, you will notice different components being used within the drives built for different environments.
The high-end, 2.5 million hour MTBF drives used in high duty cycle environments will cave more exotic components, like "fluid dynamic bearing spindle motors", "acoustic and shock dampers" and AFC media (AntiFerromagnetically Coupled) based on "glass substrate."
The lower cost drives like IDE, ATA, etc. will most likely use less exotic (and less expensive) components and have lower ratings for vibration, temperature, shock and acoustics. You will see MTBF ratings in the 300,000 to 500,000 hour ranges, and lower duty cycles (say 20% rather than 100%). Also look for variations in POH (power on hours) and start/stop cycles. It all comes down to the old adage "you get what you pay for."
Hope this helps.
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This was first published in January 2004