Which Hard Drive

Computer Hardware SSDs, Hard Drives and NAS
#1

Hello,

One of my hard drive in my RAID is dying so which drive should I get. I use my RAID for backing up movies and I will now go standard normal AHCI, no more RAID.

I was either looking at a large space and some speed

Or not a much space but more speed

I will use the drive for backing up movies and it will be my DVDFAB working drive for both DVD and BD-R. The Seagate in the thing works well on backing up DVD’s It takes about 1 minutte 30 seconds to compress a DVD (7 gigs to 4.5 gigs) on my PC with the RAID 0 setup the thing takes about a minute longer, so I was leaning towards the Seagate. I do hear a lot of good things about the WD Black drives.

Thank you,

#2

I have 2 of the Caviar Black 2TB SATA-3 drives with 64MB cache. They are extremely fast. Not cheap though, they never came back down again after the floods, although they were always at least $140-150. Look for them on sale. Highly recommended. I routinely see transfer speeds from 140-150 MB/sec from them. They may slow down on very large (BD) file sizes, perhaps down to 100-110 MB/sec. Reasonably quiet too.

#3

Wish I had the cash for a 2tb black drive. I have spent way to much on computer stuff in the last few months, I am suprised I am not sleeping outside right now.

Its either the 2tb Seagate or the 1tb black drive and I still might wind up outside for a night.

#4

I don’t have a lot of money to spend on computer gear, so I really cannot afford to buy anything twice…

But ALL of the internal drives in my personal desktop are WD black drives.
They are frankly the only drives I seriously considered.

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#5

Best to make a choice between speed and size. The Samsung F4 is still available.
I have 3 and they seem pretty reliable.

But for an internal drive where speed is required, the Black 2TB is worth it. For BD rips, a 1TB gets used up pretty quick. Anyhow, the speed differences in most uses is pretty small, so I’d go for size over speed if you want the space.

#6

I’m still not sold on any brand being better than another. Every product is a crap-shoot, every product can have failures, no product line is perfect.

But I do like WD’s “marketing claims” that some of their lines are designed for one use or another (NAS, etc). Of course, in our shop, the only drives that have failed have all been WDs.

I still think “everything’s a crap-shoot” but I also think most equipment fails sooner, not later, if it’s suffering from poor assembly/materials.

I usually consider a two-drive system - a Work Drive and a Storage Drive, getting speed out of one, cool-temps out of the other.

#7

All of my second drives are Western Digital Caviar Blacks.

I figure that the manufacturers know their products best and when they offer a [B]FIVE[/B] year warranty vs. everyone elses [B]Three[/B] year warranty - I believe they are telling us something-eh!!

#8

I have 12 TBs of space in my Windows Home Server using Hitachi 2TB 7200 rpm drives that I bought at Frys. I have not had any problems with those drives since I built that system 3 years ago. I just added a Hitachi 3TB drive last year that I ripped out of a External setup because the floods in Thailand cause all the internal drives to sky rocket in price. No problems so far. I have to agree with Christine about the crap shoot because every pc environment is different. I thinks Frys has a Hitachi 2 TB on sale for $99

#9

[QUOTE=bigmike7;2647534]All of my second drives are Western Digital Caviar Blacks.

I figure that the manufacturers know their products best and when they offer a [B]FIVE[/B] year warranty vs. everyone elses [B]Three[/B] year warranty - I believe they are telling us something-eh!![/QUOTE]

Yeah warranties cost companies money if they get things wrong and if they’re happy enough to extend the warranty for nothing then at the very least that has to imply some degree of confidence by the manufacturer in their product. :iagree:

[B]Wombler[/B]

#10

“Crap shoot with HDDs”… yes, but I think the reliability factor is pretty great for these drives.

Our experiences - with tens of thousands of drives - has been “If they don’t die in the first few days, they’ll last for years.”

This is something I’d love to see MFR’s display: “When does your drive typically fail? First 10 hours? First 100? From Year 1-to-2? 2-to-3? Year 5 and beyond?”

The warranty-period should be a great indicator but this is almost a “reserve maintained on-hand” issue - a willingness to hold unsold units for replacement vs. a willingness to recycle unsold units and use warehouse shelf-space for newer products only.

I’ll have to find out if we can return a 4-yr old WD to WD, or if it’s simply accepted by our distributor and a product is returned from them, not WD. I think that’s the case - that WD ‘pays’ distributors to maintain some reserve (this is a “rebate” as in “we’ll cut your next purchase price by X% if you order More within A Shorter Time Frame”). Pushing inventory ‘downstream’ is how everyone makes money - not maintaining a ‘replacement reserve’ which can mean, “We didn’t sell as many as we produced.”

#11

I am leaning to the 2tb Seagate. I have had 3 Seagate drives and no problems

For WD I have owned well over 40 and only 1 bad one. I was a 500gb with the black plastic looking case. It had over 3 years of DVD backups made on it.

Hitachi/IBM = Deathstar for a reason everyone I have installed has gone to crap in two years. Everyone I know has had them go bad on them too.

I think I will roll the dice and get the Seagate 2tb. Best buy has them boxed for $109usd and if I am lucky I can get pre June 1st model with the 5 year warranty. All boxed after June 1 2012 have only a 1 year warranty.

#12

People have already mentioned what I was going to say
2Tb WD Caviar Black

or more budget friendly…2Tb F4EG HD204UI Samsungs. I’ve had three and all of them were rock solid. They were on sale at Newegg last weekend for $100. And I occasionally see the Verbatim USb 3.0 external with them in it on sale too. HHGregg carries those as do some other places.

#13

So I got the WD 1TB Black drive for $100usd. I did a little test with a movie that the RAID setup did.
RAID 0 = 1:18

WD Black - 1:31

WD Blue = 2:51

Not bad. This was DVD 6.4gb movie to 4.5gb DVD.

My final decision was when I went to ask our hardware brake/fix techs. These guys support over 14 thousand PC in the field. All three said to go with the black drives for speed and green for long term storage. Then they said to have a look in the dead box, it was full of Seagate and Hitachi drives with just a few WD drives.

#14

[QUOTE=mrloren;2648536]So I got the WD 1TB Black drive for $100usd. [/QUOTE]

Yo mrloren-

Good/wise choice-eh!