$100. 2TB. Need Input!

[icanhascpu2]

So, I'm looking for a 2TB hard drive about $100 (no more than $110 shipped).

I'm not really after performance, I have my SSD for that, I'm just after reliability, so I don't mind even if its not 7200rpm.

I have Newegged and Amazoned, and I have a general idea, but I would like more educated reviews and input from people that actively come to a forum like this, as you guys would likely have better info about things that other places wont. Like, i dont want to get a hard drive and find out it has some rare bug or malfunction/reliability issue in it that isn't commonly known but may be known here etc.

Anyway thanks for any suggestions! My home computers will thank you for it.


**Edit:** Went with the Red, thanks all!

 

[Elixer]

Why kind of input do you want ?
The only thing we all know for sure is that it will fail at some point in time.
Nobody can tell you when it will fail, it just is a big fat unknown. Could be on day 1, or months / years.

Having said that, I tend to get drives that have a longer warranty, and that means WD Black drives. Next step down are the Red ones, then the blue.

 

[Yuriman]

I bought a WD Green 1.5TB and it failed within a week (bad sectors). I RMA'd it and the new drive has been operational for 3 years. I have a 5(?) year old WD Green 500GB that has never given me problems.

I seem to remember there was a lot of talk when high capacity drives first started coming out, like <1TB, because the reliability dropped significantly with the increase in density.


The WD Green is a great storage drive, I recommend you do a few full writes to any drive you buy to ensure that there aren't any bad sectors before using it for storage.

 

[tweakboy]

Maybe 130 my friend.. gl

 

[fuzzymath10]

I have two 3TB drives - the 7200rpm barracuda and the caviar red. The 7200rpm drive is faster and a bit louder, but I am very pleased with how both are performing. The only drives recently causing me trouble are my caviar greens, and I plan to continue using the reds as a result; the only disadvantage is price (I should have bought more than one when it was $120).

I have an infamous 1.5TB barracuda 7200.11 RMA that has been running well for over five years.

 

[icanhascpu2]

Why kind of input do you want ?
The only thing we all know for sure is that it will fail at some point in time.
Nobody can tell you when it will fail, it just is a big fat unknown. Could be on day 1, or months / years.

Sure, but a guy can smoke all his life and never get lung cancer, and someone who never smokes could get lung cancer. Does that mean smoking stop cancer? No, generally people in the know understand that smoking will put you at higher general risk.

Im looking for a hard drive that isnt going to have a larger general chance to give me 'cancer'. Thanks for the tips at the end.

I bought a WD Green 1.5TB and it failed within a week (bad sectors). I RMA'd it and the new drive has been operational for 3 years. I have a 5(?) year old WD Green 500GB that has never given me problems.

I seem to remember there was a lot of talk when high capacity drives first started coming out, like <1TB, because the reliability dropped significantly with the increase in density.


The WD Green is a great storage drive, I recommend you do a few full writes to any drive you buy to ensure that there aren't any bad sectors before using it for storage.

Thanks for the input. Good tip with the doing full writes to test. ill remember that.

I have two 3TB drives - the 7200rpm barracuda and the caviar red. The 7200rpm drive is faster and a bit louder, but I am very pleased with how both are performing. The only drives recently causing me trouble are my caviar greens, and I plan to continue using the reds as a result; the only disadvantage is price (I should have bought more than one when it was $120).

I have an infamous 1.5TB barracuda 7200.11 RMA that has been running well for over five years.

Thanks for the input

 

[icanhascpu2]

Interesting info on a Seagate 2TB.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R205L2P...=&amp;nodeID=&amp;tag=

Leaning to WG more now.

 

[smitbret]

What's stated there is true, but don't let that alarm you too much in this price range. I just bought 4 of the 2TB Seagates from NewEgg a month ago and they were all the 1TB platter version.

2nd of all, keep in mind that these 1TB platter HDDs are FAST and a 30% reduction in speed puts it on par with the WD Greens.

This should only really be an issue if you are concerned with raw transfer speed and nothing else.

 

[lilrayray69]

What is the difference between the Red, Blue, Green, and Black WD drives? Is it just the warranty it comes with? I'm thinking of getting a 1TB HDD along with a SSD but I keep reading on here about them failing. I've personally never had a HDD fail, and I've used some pretty old ones. I'm using a 500GB Samsung now that is at least 4 years old.

I was looking at the SeaGate Barracuda, which I thought to be a good brand in the past, but everyone here seems to recommend the WD.

 

[icanhascpu2]

What's stated there is true, but don't let that alarm you too much in this price range. I just bought 4 of the 2TB Seagates from NewEgg a month ago and they were all the 1TB platter version.

2nd of all, keep in mind that these 1TB platter HDDs are FAST and a 30% reduction in speed puts it on par with the WD Greens.

This should only really be an issue if you are concerned with raw transfer speed and nothing else.

Well for me its not so much the performance lost is what is concerning, its the fact that they are trying to be shady like that in the first place. makes me wonder what else they are doing/will do in the future when I need the drive replaced. However its possible they ALL do this, so I wont be too alarmed.

 

[smitbret]

If you are going to shop for consumer grade drives, then expect consumer grade marketing. The average Joe won't know the difference or care so why shouldn't they market them accordingly?

It's like shopping for golf clubs. A 3-iron can be $20 or it can be $200. Is there a difference? You bet there is. Would someone off the street know? Nope.

 

[icanhascpu2]

Smitbret, why do you think I made this thread?

Also the average joe off the street isnt looking for hard drives/golf clubs. people that generally DO want to find out the difference when they are shopping for a given item. Why market without the shady business? To get a high rate of return customers. i know if I were lied to by a company, it wouldn't matter after that if they possibly had a better product. My self respect is worth more.

 

[dclive]

So, I'm looking for a 2TB hard drive about $100 (no more than $110 shipped).

I'm not really after performance, I have my SSD for that, I'm just after reliability, so I don't mind even if its not 7200rpm.

I suggest you RAID1 2 drives together, and develop a full backup plan.

 

[fuzzymath10]

I wouldn't call that super shady. Maybe slightly misleading. For storage, the primary metric is capacity for the majority of people, and the warranty is the same. Platter count is an indicator but not a guarantor of superior reliability; my oldest drive is a 4 platter. You could buy a 3- and 2-platter version of the same drive and have the 2-platter one fail first. If you bought 1000 of each, maybe you'd see something different. Also, it's possible (didn't read fully) that it could be 3 "partially defective" 1TB platters rather than 3 fully functional previous gen 670GB ones. Then you would benefit from the higher density.

That said, my personal (and statistically insignificant) experience suggests that my drive of choice would be the Caviar Red if you find it at the right price and failing that, the Barracuda. I was never fully satisfied with the Caviar Greens between the idle buzz they gave from day one and the lacklustre performance. But they're cheap!

 

[philipma1957]

get yourself western digital reds. why ?

3 year warranty.

Also has raid firmware vs the green.

It also is designed for NAS.

It does not spin up and down as often as the greens.

One more thing western digital has a good rma plan

http://support.wdc.com/warranty/index.asp?wdc_lang=en

http://support.wdc.com/warranty/index_end.asp?lang=en

https://westerndigital.secure.force.com/WarrantyCheck?lang=en

http://websupport.wdc.com/rdsfdc.asp?linktype=rmacreate&portaltype=wd&custtype=end&fs=&ss=&lang=en


2 tb red prices

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listi...&amp;condition=new


https://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=HD-W20EFRX

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822236343


http://www.provantage.com/western-digital-wd20efrx~7WNDG2TV.htm


I have used 100's of western digital drives. For the average user reds are pretty good

 

[icanhascpu2]

I wouldn't call that super shady. Maybe slightly misleading.

Wow, so many people are ok with being lied to. If you were given information about a product, and you made an educated choice about that product based on its performance, and then you were given a product that preformed 30% less than the official information, you would not feel cheated?


Anyway the reds seem to be popular!

 

[icanhascpu2]

I suggest you RAID1 2 drives together, and develop a full backup plan.

I have a seperate 1TB ill mirror important stuff

 

[Elixer]

If you want to track prices of all the drives:
http://camelegg.com/ and http://camelcamelcamel.com/ (same site, but they monitor different stores).

 

[smitbret]

I don't feel like I've been lied to. Did Seagate provide what they said? Let's see:

2TB - CHECK
7200RPM - CHECK
SATA III - CHECK

Well, looks like it's all here.

If you don't like my golf club analogy, then let's try a different one. How about gasoline? There's 3 different octane levels at the pump. For 80% of the population the lowest octane level is just fine whether it's 87 or 88. It makes no difference in their life and Exxon isn't lying to them when they advertise Unleaded Gasoline @ 3.49/gallon. Either one works just fine. Then a guy drives up in his 2013 Corvette. Guess what? He knows he needs the 93 Octane and makes sure that he gets it. He knows the guy in the suburban is just fine with the 87 or 88 octane and doesn't care what it is.

Same thing for HDDs. For most people it doesn't matter. If you have to have certain specs, then pony up the cash and get a Constellation or WD Red. The more you pay, the more you can be certain of what you are gonna get. Don't come in here demanding the cheapest 2TB drive and then complain that it's not made of gold. If you don't wanna take the gamble, then don't. Buy something else but don't call Seagate liars when they delivered exactly what they said they would.

 

[UaVaj]

bascially if it does not die within the first 30 day of continuious 24/7 usage. chances are it will not die for a very very long time. as long as it is properly cooled.

heat is a killer of hd.

 

[smitbret]

If anything Seagate should be commended for upping the performance without upping the price.

 

[Torn Mind]

Buy enterprise grade hard drives and either sacrifice storage space or expand your budget. But there is no true substitute to making backups upon backups and having your data be redundant.

Also, lying involves making a false statement. So long as Seagate did not deliberately advertise 2 platters in the particular drive, they are not lying per se; obfuscation is a different matter to discuss(not irrelevant, just different).

 

[Torn Mind]

Same thing for HDDs. For most people it doesn't matter. If you have to have certain specs, then pony up the cash and get aConstellation or WD Red. The more you pay, the more you can be certain of what you are gonna get. Don't come in here demanding the cheapest 2TB drive and then complain that it's not made of gold. If you don't wanna take the gamble, then don't. Buy something else but don't call Seagate liars when they delivered exactly what they said they would.

I think you meant the RE series(RE4 is the current one). Red drives are optimized for NAS storage.

 

[icanhascpu2]

If you want to track prices of all the drives:
http://camelegg.com/ and http://camelcamelcamel.com/ (same site, but they monitor different stores).

Thank ou kind sir! Very useful.

I don't feel like I've been lied to. Did Seagate provide what they said? Let's see:

2TB - CHECK
7200RPM - CHECK
SATA III - CHECK

Well, looks like it's all here.

Do you really believe this bs or are you trolling here? let me fix your little checkboxs.

2TB - CHECK
7200RPM - CHECK
SATA III - CHECK
Provide testers with one (more expensive) sub-model to do reviews with to get good scores - CHECK
Toss in a bunch of different sub-models that preform 30% less and mislead the buyer - CHECK
Dont supply sub-model code on the sale sheet information and let everyone believe they are buying one thing, when its actually a crackerjack box chance with hard drives as the toys forceing buyers with half a brain to call the seller and make SURE the model is correct - CHECK
Consciously misleading consumers for financial gain = LIE - CHECK and grey area illegal.

Smitbrets GREAT AUTO SALE! BUY THIS BRAND NEW DODGE VIPER! (actually ford pinto)
Car- CHECK
Doors - CHECK
Engine - CHECK

looks like it's all here.

Remind me never to buy anything from you.

bascially if it does not die within the first 30 day of continuious 24/7 usage. chances are it will not die for a very very long time. as long as it is properly cooled.

heat is a killer of hd.

Yeah, I agree. i have a fan sucking in air from the front of the case that goes across and between all of them, to the GPU and out the back. They stay at around 20c

 

[stlc8tr]

Wow, so many people are ok with being lied to. If you were given information about a product, and you made an educated choice about that product based on its performance, and then you were given a product that preformed 30% less than the official information, you would not feel cheated?

Maybe I'm missing something but where is Seagate lying?

Seagate's Amazon marketing spiel is saying that they are selling you a 7200RPM HDD of some capacity (250GB-3TB) with some amount of cache (16-64MB) with a SATA 6Gb/s NCQ interface. Which part is incorrect?