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astrogeek 07-01-2013 07:25 PM

Hard drive recomendations...
 
I have just had a HD failure on a recently installed Slackware current system, and am asking for comments about replacements.

The system is Intel Core2 1.8GHz, 2GB RAM, SATA, my daughter uses for graphic work.

The failed drive is Seagate Barracuda 7200 - 750GB. The failed drive is "new" (never before formatted, but has been on a shelf for a few years). It has been in used for <2 months, just long enough for her to get it into heavy use, lost some good work, bummer.

It has been a long time since I bought a HD but have seen several recent mentions in threads here about brands and colors... my own experience with failed drives, although limited, have all been Seagate.

I'll probably go for a 1TB or greater, considering a WD Caviar black at the moment.

Does anyone feel strongly pro or con about Seagate vs. WD vs... ? Same for WD colors?

All comments appreciated.

My purchase criteria in order of importance are:

1. Overall reliability
2. Cost/capacity
3. Absolute capacity in ~1T+ range

pressman57 07-01-2013 07:39 PM

I've had bad luck with Seagates as well. I think that's why they're so cheap. Two have failed.

TobiSGD 07-01-2013 07:56 PM

Having worked in the RMA for several OEMs I have never seen that a specific brand has a higher failure rate than others. Based on this experience I just buy my disks with regards to needed features and price, I don't prefer or reject any manufacturer.

Kallaste 07-01-2013 08:21 PM

My personal criteria for choosing a hard drive are precisely those you have stated. A couple of years ago my research led me to the WD Caviar Black, which I thought would be the best bet in terms of reliability. Stupid thing failed after a couple of months.

After reading many, many reviews on HDDs, I have begun to fear that manufacturers have concluded it is cheaper to allow customers to do their quality control for them by sending back flawed drives than to rigorously test their own in house to ensure reliability. So when you buy a top model drive from any decent manufacturer, you either get a drive that lasts a really long time or fails after a month or two. I think this is pretty consistent across brands.


That said, I would definitely stay away from the Western Digital Reds. I think they are marketed mostly for RAID, but even so, the failure rate of those belonging to people I know has been close to 20 percent. The reviews on Newegg are scary.

ReaperX7 07-01-2013 08:50 PM

I've had good luck with Western Digital drives. Other than Western Digital, I'd recommend Samsung, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and maybe Toshiba. I've used those brands with good successes in the past and still use some of them to this day.

I use Western Digital Green drives. Been using my 500GB Caviar Green drive for about a year and it works great.

STDOUBT 07-01-2013 08:51 PM

astrogeek,

If you haven't thrown the drive out, there may be hope yet.
I have seen several "dead" drives in my time, and have rarely given up on them. I've saved
a good bit of data for folks who would have otherwise "lost everything".

The method I use is dead simple. Replace the PCB (you'll need a TORX driver). The only thing you need to make sure of is
getting one from a known good drive (older models tend to be "cheap" on ebay) and to match
not only the model but the firmware revision as well.
As long as there's no grinding/clacking/screaming/thumping noise when you apply power to it,
the drive might just be salvageable!!!

As for recommendations, I have come to the conclusion that it's a crap shoot these days.
I tend to look at newegg reviews, and lean towards underdogs like Fujitsu and Samsung.

Gerard Lally 07-01-2013 08:55 PM

Over the years I've had to deal with quite a number of disk failures. Most of the disks which failed at a young age were Seagates. Western Digital were generally reliable, but the disks I trusted the most were Samsungs.

Until Seagate took over the Samsung HDD business.

:mad:

Now I would probably go for a Western Digital Black RE4, which is marketed as an enterprise-class disk. The 10,000 rpm WD Raptors are an excellent disk but pricey.

At the very least make sure you choose a disk which has a three- or five-year warranty. That is generally a reliable indicator of how much the manufacturer trusts the model.

astrogeek 07-01-2013 10:01 PM

Thanks to all, I'll add a few comments later.

At the moment I am down to the WD Caviar Black 1TB, or a Toshiba 2T.

I too have had good luck with Toshiba products and their price is right...

astrogeek 07-01-2013 10:56 PM

@pressman57 - I have only ever had 3 HD failures, but they were all Seagate. On the other hand, I have also had a lot of Seagate drives so my failures would be weighted that way. Thanks for your comment!

@TobiSGD - I tend to be that way myself, although I have a few strong preferences/prejudices. But I just never really thought much about brand with regard to hard drives. Thanks!

@BloomingNutria - I found some similar comments about WD Green - I did read a lot of reviews today! In the end, WD Caviar Black came out as the best WD choice IMHO. Thanks!

@ReaperX7 - WD again, but thanks for including Toshiba in the list. Your comments on WD Green were among the few good ones I found on the Green drives, but I give them better weight considering the source. ;)

@STDOUBT - Thanks, yes I intend to try to recover it. I will have a look on eBay for the same drive as the best option for that. Thanks.

@gezley - WD Black again, top of my list for most of the day! I looked at the VelociRaptors, I could buy that just for the name, nice specs too - but too pricey I am afraid! I agree on the weighting due to warranty, mostly (although BloomingNutria's comments have a ring of truth too).

In the end it came down to WD Caviar Black 1TB ~$88, or the surprise Toshiba HDKPC09 2TB ~$96.

I looked at too many reviews for each on Newegg, Tigerdirect and others and found that The WD had really good reviews, a few negatives, but overall very good and had all but decided on that.

But the more I looked at the Toshiba, I found no bad reviews at all, and plenty of good reviews. I also considered that the Toshiba laptop I am typing from is 8 years old with the original Toshiba drive still going strong... another plus. And I have had good luck with Toshiba products...

So I decided on the Toshiba based on lack of negative reviews, 3 yr warranty and 1TB more for $8. The Toshiba is now on the way.

Thanks for all comments.

dugan 07-01-2013 11:04 PM

I bought a Caviar Red a few days ago. So far I've been happy with its speed, quietness, and minimizing of heat.

* touch wood

Kallaste 07-02-2013 12:20 AM

Hmm. You have just convinced me to buy the Toshiba. I too need a 2 TB drive, and since it has been almost a year since I bought my last internal, I was gearing up for another bout of research in the next few weeks. But why do that, when you have done it for me?

Thanks for the thread. :)

propofol 07-02-2013 12:34 AM

My 2 cents:

I have had a two failed Seagate drives, one Hitachi and one WD green.
WD Green have a power saving feature where the drive would go into a sleep state (park head idle timeout) after a few seconds but at the cost of increased wear. There is a program available to fix this 'wdidle'. I am not sure if this is still an issue.
WD Black have working well for me & they have a 5 year warranty. The power usage is a bit high & they tend to get hot.

Regards,
Stefan

PS to my surprise I have also had a failed SSD drive - they seem to not be that reliable either.

astrogeek 07-02-2013 12:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BloomingNutria (Post 4982194)
Hmm. You have just convinced me to buy the Toshiba. I too need a 2 TB drive, and since it has been almost a year since I bought my last internal, I was gearing up for another bout of research in the next few weeks. But why do that, when you have done it for me?

Thanks for the thread. :)

Good luck to both of us then!

Looks like a good product, definitely a good deal if holds up well!

Let's meet back here in a couple of years and compare notes... ;)

Kallaste 07-02-2013 01:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by astrogeek (Post 4982213)

Let's meet back here in a couple of years and compare notes... ;)

Ha, sounds like a plan. I'll be here!

bassplayer69 07-02-2013 06:30 AM

I've had the opposite - Have a Seagate 1TB drive that has performed beautifully for the past three years, but a Western Digital Blue 250GB that crashed 1 month after installing it.

I believe its just a crap shoot as to if you get a dependable drive or not no matter the brand.

cascade9 07-02-2013 07:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by astrogeek (Post 4982157)
So I decided on the Toshiba based on lack of negative reviews, 3 yr warranty and 1TB more for $8. The Toshiba is now on the way.

2 year warranty-
http://storage.toshiba.com/storageso...dt01aca-series

You generally get what you pay for in markets as competitive as HDDs. 2TB 2 year warranty or 1TB 5 year warranty for a very similar price....

Quote:

Originally Posted by gezley (Post 4982112)
That is generally a reliable indicator of how much the manufacturer trusts the model.

;)

Quote:

Originally Posted by gezley (Post 4982112)
The 10,000 rpm WD Raptors are an excellent disk but pricey.

and very noisy. I could see the point of them a few years ago, but these days SSDs are superiour IMO (faster, quiter, lower power consunmption).

Quote:

Originally Posted by BloomingNutria (Post 4982086)
That said, I would definitely stay away from the Western Digital Reds. I think they are marketed mostly for RAID, but even so, the failure rate of those belonging to people I know has been close to 20 percent. The reviews on Newegg are scary.

Reds are more for NAS than RAID (yes, there is a major crossover). They are pretty much WD Green drives with a few tweaks.

It does make sense in some ways, you dont really need 2 or more 'fast' drives on a NAS with a speed limit of 1 gigabit.

I dont really trust newegg 'reviews' for various reasons, but I do think there has been some teething troubles with the Reds. Not really unexpected, they are slower and cheaper drives than the 'RE' (RAID Edition) enterprise drives.

tronayne 07-02-2013 08:37 AM

Over the years I've become leery of Seagate drives -- had a bunch of failures starting with the 96 MB drives they made in the 80's (every one I sold to customers I had to replace). I've become partial to IBM and Western Digital (a pair of WD drivea have been working in one box, running 24/7, for, oh, lemme see, since 2004 now -- they're about due, methinks).

I've sort of learned that huge drives tend, in my experience, to go blooie earlier. I kind of limit myself to 500 GB and will wait a while longer to adopt terabyte drives (hell, I haven't gotten anywhere close to 500 GB on my data base servers, what the heck do I need with a terabyte?).

I've heard good words about Toshiba, no experience though.

It's a tough choice, kind of a crap shoot, back up early and often.

Celyr 07-02-2013 09:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TobiSGD (Post 4982065)
Having worked in the RMA for several OEMs I have never seen that a specific brand has a higher failure rate than others. Based on this experience I just buy my disks with regards to needed features and price, I don't prefer or reject any manufacturer.

Did you work for maxtor at the 80GB era ?

TobiSGD 07-02-2013 09:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Celyr (Post 4982548)
Did you work for maxtor at the 80GB era ?

No, I have not worked for any manufacturer, only OEMs, selling PC systems to the masses. Of course you will sometimes see problems with whole series of drives (IBM DeskStar anyone?), but those usually are quickly fixed and people in any case I know of got a working replacement drive or a refund.

perbh 07-02-2013 10:02 AM

@tronayne
He he - great minds think alike ... I could have written your post word for word as to my own experiences.
I have always limited myself to the 500-gig mark - and I have 8 yo drives in a multitude of rigs - still going strong.
'ts certainly true that 'the bigger they are, the harder they fall' (ie. bigger drives tend to fail more often).
I have always been fond of Samsung - never had any problems there. Seagate and WD I stay away from - too many failures.
All the IBM-disks I have come across run v-e-r-y hot, though they seldom seem to fail ...
However, all that being said and done - I still believe its more the 'luck of the draw' (or crap-shoot if you will)

tronayne 07-02-2013 10:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by perbh (Post 4982584)
@tronayne
All the IBM-disks I have come across run v-e-r-y hot, though they seldom seem to fail ...
However, all that being said and done - I still believe its more the 'luck of the draw' (or crap-shoot if you will)

Yeah, I've wondered about that -- IBM seems to build 'em (anymore) like tanks but you have to wonder how's come they get hot (well, hotter than others), not burn your finger, but not comfortable either. I mean, it's just a motor spinning platters for Pete's sake.

Samsung seems to build a lot of stuff that works pretty good over time (saw one of their 6' LED TV's not too long ago -- knock your socks off picture on the thing, Big Bucks, too). Heard lots of good words about their drives and, given the age of my WD drives, I'll get on to Micro Center and see about having them ship a couple for the parts-'n'-pieces closet.

perbh 07-02-2013 11:00 AM

@tronayne,
Funnily enough - I had a raid-box with 15 WD drives in it (400 gig) and half of them failed in less than 6 months!
I 'decommissioned' the raid and used the remaining disks in some oldish optoplex-280 I had kicking around. That's some 3 years now and I haven't had a single failure of those disks since ... *shaking head* - go figger!!

astrogeek 07-02-2013 02:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cascade9 (Post 4982457)
2 year warranty-
http://storage.toshiba.com/storageso...dt01aca-series

You generally get what you pay for in markets as competitive as HDDs. 2TB 2 year warranty or 1TB 5 year warranty for a very similar price....

I clearly remember seeing 3 yr. listed - but cannot find it now. Clearly it is 2yr... oh well!

I go cross-eyed when reading these things!

I also agree somewhat on reading the reviews. The way I approach it is to read the bad reviews and look for recurring product problems as opposed to dissatisfaction from other causes. When looking at drives from that perspective you can see trends like "Failed affter 2 months...", or their absence.

In the case of the Toshiba drive, there were a good sampling of reviews (30+) and only one that was potentially an early failure (DOA which was blamed on storage at extreme cold temps). The drive was introduced spring 2012, so I thought that was a fair indicator.

I will update this thread if I have any surprises!

astrogeek 07-12-2013 01:08 AM

UPDATE...

I received the Toshiba drive and installed the new system today.

For completeness: Toshiba HDKPC09 (DT01ACA200), 2TB.

Initial comments - all good!

Totally quiet.

VERY cool! If it had come with sunglasses I could take it out to pick up chicks!

Seriously, I had it connected outside the box (i.e. no forced air) all day while installing from a local -current repo, plus many GBs from backup and other systems - __really__ cool all the while.

And did I say fast? It is notably faster than the Seagate 750GB it replaces.

This is my first >1TB drive, first day, first impressions all very good!

If it holds up I am a very happy camper!

Celyr 07-12-2013 01:18 PM

It may sound absurd but biggest is the HD fastest is.
This is because data density is higher so head has to travel less.

dugan 11-07-2013 02:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dugan (Post 4982162)
I bought a Caviar Red a few days ago. So far I've been happy with its speed, quietness, and minimizing of heat.

* touch wood

I'd just like to follow up and say that the drive is still working great. I'm very happy with it.

tvespasian 11-11-2013 12:01 PM

Avoid Western Dildoe drives!
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by perbh (Post 4982615)
@tronayne,
Funnily enough - I had a raid-box with 15 WD drives in it (400 gig) and half of them failed in less than 6 months!
I 'decommissioned' the raid and used the remaining disks in some oldish optoplex-280 I had kicking around. That's some 3 years now and I haven't had a single failure of those disks since ... *shaking head* - go figger!!

I've consistently experienced a failure rate ~ 50% from this slop-shop brand regardless of configuration, OS, hardware attached. Western Dildoe excretes the world's least realiable storage folks. Look up some data on WHICH brand keeps the data recovery specialists in the most business. I did, after a catastrophic double failure on a WD meant to replace an aging ATA HDD 12 yrs ago. My wife's brand new Samsung laptop this spring came pre-infested w M$ Winblowz 8 on a WD drive, in "secure boot" mode w a particularly noxious Samsung UEFI implementation. The 500 GB WD5000BPVT NEVER WORKED! WD "kwawlitee" has remained constant over the 12 years. I can cite other anecdotes from the computer recycling shop I used to hang out with. For reliable computing: AVOID WESTERN DILDOE!

THANK GOD FOR GNU, SLACKWARE and Toshiba!

TobiSGD 11-11-2013 12:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tvespasian (Post 5062638)
I've consistently experienced a failure rate ~ 50% from this slop-shop brand regardless of configuration, OS, hardware attached. Western Dildoe excretes the world's least realiable storage folks. Look up some data on WHICH brand keeps the data recovery specialists in the most business. I did, after a catastrophic double failure on a WD meant to replace an aging ATA HDD 12 yrs ago. My wife's brand new Samsung laptop this spring came pre-infested w M$ Winblowz 8 on a WD drive, in "secure boot" mode w a particularly noxious Samsung UEFI implementation. The 500 GB WD5000BPVT NEVER WORKED! WD "kwawlitee" has remained constant over the 12 years. I can cite other anecdotes from the computer recycling shop I used to hang out with. For reliable computing: AVOID WESTERN DILDOE!

THANK GOD FOR GNU, SLACKWARE and Toshiba!

At first, thanks for making your post unavailable for anyone searching information about Western Digital with not using the original name.
I can only say what I always say when things like that come up: I worked for several OEMs over the years, mostly in QA and RMA, and there is no brand that has better quality than others or a lower failure rate. Anecdotal evidence is no evidence, but I can also add one, from my main machine:
Code:

>>> smartctl -a /dev/sdc                                                                                                              demon 19:18:10 ~ [INS]
smartctl 5.43 2012-06-30 r3573 [x86_64-linux-3.12.0-rc5-sl2] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-12 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:    Western Digital Caviar Green
Device Model:    WDC WD5000AADS-00S9B0
Serial Number:    WD-WCAV90498516
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 10209d052
Firmware Version: 01.00A01
User Capacity:    500,107,862,016 bytes [500 GB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:  8
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Mon Nov 11 19:18:21 2013 CET
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
 


 9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  070  070  000    Old_age  Always      -      22012



196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      0



No Errors Logged


SavoTU 11-11-2013 01:54 PM

I used to work support for a few large firms in the uk and would have to agree with TobiSGD that it seems more luck than any particular brand failing more than another. I am going to curse my self now but i had a death star drive years back and although it's not in use any more it does still work and is around the house somewhere, and my current hard drive is a MDT which as i understand refurbished Weston Digital drive.

Code:

smartctl -a /dev/sda
smartctl 5.43 2012-06-30 r3573 [x86_64-linux-3.10.14] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-12 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:    MDT MD5000AAKS-00A7B0
Serial Number:    MDT-MCASY1185612
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 2ac57f20f
Firmware Version: 01.03B01
User Capacity:    500,107,862,016 bytes [500 GB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:  8
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Mon Nov 11 19:30:01 2013 GMT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG    VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE

  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct  0x0033  200  200  140    Pre-fail  Always      -      0

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032  058  058  000    Old_age  Always      -      31308

  196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032  200  200  000    Old_age  Always      -      0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged


astrogeek 11-11-2013 02:07 PM

While this thread is currently resurrected I'll add that my Toshiba has lived up to all my expectations so far.

Daily use (haven't checked hours lately and it is offline at the moment) but lots of activity and has been moved around quite a bit as well. Very happy camper!


For completeness: Toshiba HDKPC09 (DT01ACA200), 2TB.

Slackovado 11-11-2013 02:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by astrogeek (Post 4982157)
@pressman57 - I have only ever had 3 HD failures, but they were all Seagate. On the other hand, I have also had a lot of Seagate drives so my failures would be weighted that way. Thanks for your comment!

@TobiSGD - I tend to be that way myself, although I have a few strong preferences/prejudices. But I just never really thought much about brand with regard to hard drives. Thanks!

@BloomingNutria - I found some similar comments about WD Green - I did read a lot of reviews today! In the end, WD Caviar Black came out as the best WD choice IMHO. Thanks!

@ReaperX7 - WD again, but thanks for including Toshiba in the list. Your comments on WD Green were among the few good ones I found on the Green drives, but I give them better weight considering the source. ;)

@STDOUBT - Thanks, yes I intend to try to recover it. I will have a look on eBay for the same drive as the best option for that. Thanks.

@gezley - WD Black again, top of my list for most of the day! I looked at the VelociRaptors, I could buy that just for the name, nice specs too - but too pricey I am afraid! I agree on the weighting due to warranty, mostly (although BloomingNutria's comments have a ring of truth too).

In the end it came down to WD Caviar Black 1TB ~$88, or the surprise Toshiba HDKPC09 2TB ~$96.

I looked at too many reviews for each on Newegg, Tigerdirect and others and found that The WD had really good reviews, a few negatives, but overall very good and had all but decided on that.

But the more I looked at the Toshiba, I found no bad reviews at all, and plenty of good reviews. I also considered that the Toshiba laptop I am typing from is 8 years old with the original Toshiba drive still going strong... another plus. And I have had good luck with Toshiba products...

So I decided on the Toshiba based on lack of negative reviews, 3 yr warranty and 1TB more for $8. The Toshiba is now on the way.

Thanks for all comments.

Well you've made the same choice as I did a few months ago.
I too chose two Toshiba 2Tb drives to run in Raid 1 configuration.
They replaced three Hitachi 320Gb drives running in Raid 5 configuration for last 6 years with no bad sectors on any of the drives (tested them before retiring).
My understanding is that Toshiba took over the Hitachi hard drive business.

And to add to others statements regarding drive brands, I think it's true that they are all about the same.
Seagate gets a bad reputation but the fact is they do sell more drives than others and as a computer tech I've used all brands and seen them all fail on average about equally.

Slackovado 11-11-2013 03:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tronayne (Post 4982512)
Over the years I've become leery of Seagate drives -- had a bunch of failures starting with the 96 MB drives they made in the 80's (every one I sold to customers I had to replace). I've become partial to IBM and Western Digital (a pair of WD drivea have been working in one box, running 24/7, for, oh, lemme see, since 2004 now -- they're about due, methinks).

I've sort of learned that huge drives tend, in my experience, to go blooie earlier. I kind of limit myself to 500 GB and will wait a while longer to adopt terabyte drives (hell, I haven't gotten anywhere close to 500 GB on my data base servers, what the heck do I need with a terabyte?).

I've heard good words about Toshiba, no experience though.

It's a tough choice, kind of a crap shoot, back up early and often.

"Huge" is a relative term and that goes for drives too. What used to be "huge" drive 5 years ago is the least capacity you can buy today (which is the 500Gb).
It's true that the more platters in a drive the hotter and more noisy it runs but as platter densities have increased platter numbers have decreased. With 1Tb per platter these days, you can buy a 1Tb drive and it'll only have one platter.
Also with the higher densities comes better performance so larger drives are faster than smaller capacity drives.
The trick is to find the current "sweet spot" which right now seems to be around 2Tb capacity (best bang for the buck for both capacity and performance).
But with 4Tb drives showing up on the shelves it'll change again in a year or two.

salasi 11-11-2013 03:40 PM

As far as I can tell, all Hard Drive manufacturers have 'bad batches'; I don't know why this should be the case, but it seems that it is. This makes interpreting any 'anecdotal data' almost impossible, but everyone has the impression that some manufacturer or another produces rubbish, and it is 'kind of' true; at some time, most manufacturers have produced rubbish, and there is someone out there who will tell you about it, and tell you that the ones that failed for them, are ones that you should under no circumstances buy.

Overall, that'll be everything.

That said, I haven't had an issue (...yet? I'm touching wood now, just in case I'm cursing things) with the IBM/HGST Deskstar drives, having missed out the 'Deathstar' generation, and I've just bought 1T Ultrastar (which is a slightly old drive, now). Its a bit 'clicky-clicky-clicky' when accessing data, but otherwise good, but I notice that HGST used 5 platters for a very conservative data density (for reliability) but higher dissipation than they might have achieved with 4 or even three platters.

k3lt01 11-11-2013 06:32 PM

I've bought Seagate, Western Digital, and Fujitsu. The Futjitsu lasted 12 months before it cacked itself, it was noisy and slow and relatively expensive for what it was.

One Seagate was dead when I opened the package but was replaced no questions asked. I have never had any difficulty with Western Digital and actually prefer them.

I had a DVD recorder for tv a few years ago and it had a 250GB Samsung I think it was and it died during a move from my old house to my new house.

propofol 11-12-2013 02:11 AM

"Western Digital Black" seems to be the way to go. They are the only WD drives with a 5 yr warranty. Has anyone had issues with these?

narz 11-12-2013 04:07 AM

I'd like to see statistics that Seagate hard drives are any less reliable than the other majors like Western Digital since everyone here is shitting on them. My last 5 hard drives have been SG Barracudas, made tons of use out of all them since the 90s, they never failed on me, I just upgraded them when I needed more space. My only personal experience with Western Digital has been with an external hard drive that failed after about a year. My anecdotal evidence says WD blows.

astrogeek 11-12-2013 03:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by narz (Post 5063043)
I'd like to see statistics that Seagate hard drives are any less reliable than the other majors like Western Digital since everyone here is shitting on them. My last 5 hard drives have been SG Barracudas, made tons of use out of all them since the 90s, they never failed on me, I just upgraded them when I needed more space. My only personal experience with Western Digital has been with an external hard drive that failed after about a year. My anecdotal evidence says WD blows.

I don't think everyone is passing on Seagate, as you say, although some have had their own bad experiences with Seagate just as you have had yours with WD. My own anecdotal evidence as posted earlier...

Quote:

Originally Posted by astrogeek (Post 4982157)
I have only ever had 3 HD failures, but they were all Seagate. On the other hand, I have also had a lot of Seagate drives so my failures would be weighted that way.

... suggests Seagate had a higher failure rate, but I still tried to be fair.

The point is not defamation, or defecation, but the sharing of knowledge and experiences.

dugan 11-12-2013 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by propofol (Post 5062985)
"Western Digital Black" seems to be the way to go. They are the only WD drives with a 5 yr warranty. Has anyone had issues with these?

No, other than noise and heat.

Totoro-kun 11-12-2013 04:09 PM

Interesting thread you have here. It's always nice to talk about quality of a hard drive. I also work in computer company and we sell all kinds of hard drives, but I could not really say which are better than the others (aside from warranty time and few small factors like noise/power consumption, speed, etc). I've noticed, that usually failure rate is higher in first months of use regardless of manufacturer (I guess it is a time needed for manufacturing defects to show up), if it lives past this, usually it works a long time until it starts to wear out (then failure rate rises again).

On this occasion I've noticed an interesting statistics which confirms my thoughts.

I personally prefer Hitachi, WD black and Samsung drives for these tend to be quieter, faster and I had best luck with them :)

astrogeek 11-12-2013 04:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Totoro-kun (Post 5063362)
Interesting thread you have here. It's always nice to talk about quality of a hard drive. I also work in computer company and we sell all kinds of hard drives, but I could not really say which are better than the others (aside from warranty time and few small factors like noise/power consumption, speed, etc). I've noticed, that usually failure rate is higher in first months of use regardless of manufacturer (I guess it is a time needed for manufacturing defects to show up), if it lives past this, usually it works a long time until it starts to wear out (then failure rate rises again).

On this occasion I've noticed an interesting statistics which confirms my thoughts.

I personally prefer Hitachi, WD black and Samsung drives for these tend to be quieter, faster and I had best luck with them :)

Thanks for the link, interesting.

TobiSGD 11-12-2013 04:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by narz (Post 5063043)
I'd like to see statistics that Seagate hard drives are any less reliable than the other majors like Western Digital since everyone here is shitting on them.

Nope, I am not. Mechanical disks currently in use here:
- SAMSUNG HD204UI (Spinpoint F4 AFT), running 24/7 for 23069 hours now, no problems
- Seagate STM3500418AS (Maxtor DiamondMax 23), running almost 24/7, 20839 hours, no problems
- The WD mentioned above
- A bunch of older drives, working in some special purpose systems (Jukebox, etc) in the range from 10GB to 200GB, even cheap ones, like my Excelstor Jupiter 80GB (Hitachi disk design licensed to Excelstor for manufacturing), some of them older than 10 years.

cascade9 11-12-2013 11:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by salasi (Post 5062755)
As far as I can tell, all Hard Drive manufacturers have 'bad batches'; I don't know why this should be the case, but it seems that it is.

Even if the manufacturers never made a 'bad batch', transport issues can create the same effect (e.g. dropping the crate/palette/container)

Quote:

Originally Posted by salasi (Post 5062755)
This makes interpreting any 'anecdotal data' almost impossible, but everyone has the impression that some manufacturer or another produces rubbish, and it is 'kind of' true; at some time, most manufacturers have produced rubbish, and there is someone out there who will tell you about it, and tell you that the ones that failed for them, are ones that you should under no circumstances buy.

Yeah, true. I personally dont really worry that much about 'what doesnt work for everybody else' I only worry about 'what works for me'.

Quote:

Originally Posted by propofol (Post 5062985)
"Western Digital Black" seems to be the way to go. They are the only WD drives with a 5 yr warranty. Has anyone had issues with these?

The VelociRaptor drives are 5 year warranty, and there are lots odf 'enterprise' WD HDDs with a 5 year warranty as well.

astrogeek 12-17-2013 07:04 PM

In for 2TB, in for 3TB...

After 6 months of continuous use of the Toshiba HDKPC09 on the desktop, I have now installed a new Toshiba 1TB 2.5" drive in my perfect laptop.

My "perfect" laptop is a Toshiba Satellite M45 S2693. It has been running Slackware 12.x with selected updates since forever, with the original drive.

The drive had 40,000+ on it hours and still passed the smartctl tests, but had an increasing number of reallocated sectors, and was always in need of more space.

I considered getting a newer computer but could not find anything I liked in my price range - plus I REALLY, REALLY like this one, having lived 12 hours a day for several years at its keyboard! It is perfect, after all!

I installed Slackware 14.1 to a cleared partition and decided it was fine for my uses, so I decided to upgrade this one instead of going for a new one... full boat of RAM and new drive.

I have been very happy with the drive which was the topic of this thread so I found a Toshiba MQ01ABD100 1TB laptop drive for about $60 and installed it a few days ago.

I partitioned it to replicate the original and copied everything via a third computer. With that seamlessly running, I then further partitioned the drive and installed Slackware 14.1. That will allow me to continue everything familiar without interruption while I add and configure the 14.1 partition to take over when ready.

Just another drive data point for those interested, I'll update in 6 months if still happy!

astrogeek 03-27-2014 02:49 PM

Just one more data point - and one more Toshiba drive...

I had to replace another drive in another older system with a lot of life left in it, AMD Phenom IIB, so after another round of reviews I settled on yet another of the Toshiba drives that I initially purchased:

Toshiba HDKPC09 (DT01ACA200), 2TB.

So that is 5TB of Toshiba drives I have purchased in the past year, 2 X 2TB and 1 X 1TB (laptop). All good so far!

enorbet 03-27-2014 03:35 PM

I'm curious as to why a few are bandying around such numbers as "20% failure rate" when every consumer data collecting service I've ever seen states actual overall hdd failure rates at under 1% for ALL manufacturers. This seems nearly inconceivable given the speeds and tolerances at which hdds operate, but apparently it is so. Such exaggerations as 20% usually come from the phenomenon wherein it matters little if your odds are 1% failure since if you're unlucky, that instance is 100% to you.

FWIW for the few times I've been unlucky I've gotten excellent service from all manufacturers, even replacement with a larger, faster drive when the model I had was no longer available. Enterprise service is even better. I've known recording studios using Seagate SCSI drives in RAID (and if you didn't realize it long audio/visual recording sessions are very strenuous on hdds) and whether 5 months in or 5 years they drop-shipped replacements the following day.

BTW I don't think IBM has manufactured any hdds for years. As bad as some series of the DeskStar drives were (class action suit) I still bought several and just made sure they were kept as cool as possible.

While on the subject of thermals, back when I was a relentless over-clocking hot-rodder (among other things) I did "smoked airflow tests" on several cases. It was plain to see that if a case has it's hdd bay in various places but the more common one of roughly the lower front half of the case, unless there was a fan blowing directly across the bay, they were almost always "an eye in the hurricane". No matter how forceful or how many CFMs one pushes, a dead spot is common at that location. If you want long life out of any electronics, especially electromechanical devices, it is a wise investment to keep them cool. Fans, cases and even heatsinks are much cheaper and less traumatic to replace than drives and data, and even cheaper than extended warranties.

EdGr 03-27-2014 11:06 PM

Seagate had a firmware bug around that generation of drives. The bug caused drives to fail after a few months of use. http://www.anandtech.com/show/3482

I have had good experiences with Seagate. I own five Seagate drives, ages 4-10 years. All still work.
Ed

salasi 03-28-2014 04:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by enorbet (Post 5142441)
BTW I don't think IBM has manufactured any hdds for years. As bad as some series of the DeskStar drives were (class action suit) I still bought several and just made sure they were kept as cool as possible.

Well, while that is true, the IBM hard disk division was sold to Hitachi and operate(s/d) as Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, I was talking to some of the guys from HGST a few months ago, and they are still operating as a separate division, in spite of being sold on yet again.

s09 03-31-2014 05:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by narz (Post 5063043)
I'd like to see statistics that Seagate hard drives are any less reliable than the other majors like Western Digital since everyone here is shitting on them. My last 5 hard drives have been SG Barracudas, made tons of use out of all them since the 90s, they never failed on me, I just upgraded them when I needed more space. My only personal experience with Western Digital has been with an external hard drive that failed after about a year. My anecdotal evidence says WD blows.

Here are published some stats on that ;)

astrogeek 02-08-2016 03:19 PM

While reading another thread about a failed drive, this thread came to mind so I thought I'd add one more data point...

After 2-1/2+ years on these drives, no problems, no reallocated sectors, no hickups... If I needed to replace another drive today it would come from the same gene-pool.

Any others who participated here care to update their own experiences since that time?

beachboy2 02-08-2016 04:42 PM

Here are some more up-to-date hard drive failure stats from Backblaze:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-...ility-q3-2015/

The customer comments are also interesting.

Oh for the days of the good old Samsung Spinpoint F3 7200 RPM (HD103SJ) drives.

I have several in domestic machines (not in servers or RAID) and they are still going strong.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Samsung-Sp...gAAOSwnH1WaD3g


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