2TB Drives - Sorry reviews left & right

[MalVeauX]

Hey guys,

So I'm looking at 2TB drives. But prices are waxing and waning. The WD 2TB Green is $199 at the egg. I should have gotten it when it was $139 back during the black friday sales. Alas, I didn't, because I was not sure it was up to snuff (their 1TB Greens are great, no problems). Then there's several new players with their 2TB drives on the market, all cheaper than the WD drive. But are they as good, better, maybe worse? I have no idea. All I have are reviews here and there with good and bad (I hate that people either give 5 stars or 1 star and that's about it).

The Seagate 2TB LP series is only $149 right now. A great price for a 2TB drive. And I do want green/low power, I like the slower speed for less noise, less heat, as they're on 24/7 in my machine. Their speed is not my concern as they are for serving data to my other machines and can't transfer any faster than gigabit networking will allow anyways, so no need to go super fast or anything. But I keep reading about these `click' problems. Like the drive suffers like the 1.5TB Seagates did. I've not found any big documentation on this other than places that sell it, some people claim it works great, others say they had to return it due to clicks right out of the box. Hard to know what's real and what's marketers trying to steer you towards their products (let's face it, we know they do it).

Then there's Hitachi's offering at 2TB (but 7200 rpm) at $169 (retail drive, not even OEM). On the egg, it has better reviews than the Seagate does. Kind of weird. These Deskstar models used to be called `death'star for a reason (were these lines the DeathStars or simple a name resemblance?). So I'm not sure if it's worth entrusting my money and data to. Plus, I don't need 7200rpm.

So does anyone have any good source/documentation behind some of the bad reviews, or maybe some news that lifts the fog on the `clicking' of the seagates? As in, is there truth to that, the series is doomed like the 1.5's from before, or is it just people yelling that the sky is falling because of the previous bad track of the 1.5's? Saving $50 between two drives is very significant (almost covers the cost of another 1TB drive).

Curious to see if there's any rhyme or reason to any of the reviews on the seagate compared to hitachi and WD 2TB offerings.

Thanks!

Very best,

 

[Ayah]

The deathstars were IBM, and it was a very, very long time ago. Before Hitachi ate IBM's hard drive division.

 

[Rubycon]

Hitachi's 2TB drives are fine and cheaper than the others.

 

[MalVeauX]

Hitachi's 2TB drives are fine and cheaper than the others.

Heya,

They're not cheaper than the Seagate (which is $149). The Hitachi is $169. So the question remains, is the Seagate and Hitachi equal in terms of quality (the Hitachi will outperform it for sure being a 7200rpm drive). More importantly, which drive is more reliable to work the longest amount of time.

Very best,

 

[Rubycon]

I was quoted $127 for the HGST drive and $139 for the Seagate. Even if the Seagate was $99 I would not consider it. Too many of the high areal density devices in their product line are going belly up.

 

[MalVeauX]

I was quoted $127 for the HGST drive and $139 for the Seagate. Even if the Seagate was $99 I would not consider it. Too many of the high areal density devices in their product line are going belly up.

Heya,

Quoted $127... where?

Very best,

 

[faxon]

btw you just missed it if you live near a frys, but we had the 2TB drives on sale until last thursday for $149. they were on sale on black friday for i think $129 as well, so expect them to go on sale again soonish, given where we are in cycling all our drives on or off sale

 

[phillyman36]

Im in the same boat. Im going to need some low heat 2tb drive for my media player. Lots of reviews with a lot of doa and failure after a week. Does anyone know the rpm on this Samsung?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152202

I cant find any detailed information.

 

[bradley]

I believe never purchasing a drive above three platters has remained a good decision. Up until this year, I had never experienced a hard drive failure in twenty or more years of computing. I also don't believe it would be prudent for me to purchase another Seagate drive or any OEM hard drive from Newegg.com until they both get their acts together. I'm not concerned about my last well-ventilated 1TB 7200.12 Seagate failing as much as the way it failed, in a swift and catastrophic fashion. Just my two cents.

 

[Rubycon]

Heya,

Quoted $127... where?

Very best,

I have a broker and I see their costs. They buy bulk quantities (except alternators as the seller has a beef about bulk quantities!)

 

[M0RPH]

I think the 1.5 TB drives are the sweet spot, and also agree that 3 platters is the most I want in my drives. I have two WD Caviar Green 1.5 TB and no problems, although I did get one DOA so I guess I'm 2 for 3 with these drives.

I was scared off from the Seagate LP 1.5 TB drives by Newegg reviews like you. Who knows if there's really a problem with the drives or just a rash of bad reviews. I'm guessing that most people don't have any trouble with the drives.

 

[n7]

I have a broker and I see their costs. They buy bulk quantities (except alternators as the seller has a beef about bulk quantities!)

I'm with Rubycon on the Hitachi train also, though what price they are available for would be a factor if i was purchasing.

 

[sxr7171]

There is some kind of crazy issue with our ever increasing areal densities. Those .11 Seagates were bad but since the FW update they seem okay. The .12 so far seem to be okay.

Those Deskstar drives that were called deathstar were from a very long time ago. I think it was 75GXP in the days of 75GB drives. I wouldn't even use that to make a decision anymore.

As for WD it seems my 2TB randomly died about 2 weeks ago. Look at the reviews it seems its getting pretty common. Their 1TB and 1.5TB drives were fine, but the 2TB seem to be a little messed up.

The way I look at it is that if I have all my data backed up - which is essential with any HDD - it doesn't really matter which one I buy. I just buy the cheapest. Which is how I ended up with 5 Seagate .11 drives. None of which have failed so far. I guess I'm lucky.

The point is that I would expect each of them to fail as the odds are high this generation from all makers. The one with good warranty support is a better bet.

 

[pjkenned]

At the end of the day, the thing that scares me about these big drives isn't the drives dying... it's not using Raid 1/5/6.

I've been thinking about adding 6 of the Hitachi drives to the storage pool. For what it's worth, Tigerdirect had the 2TB drives for <$130 with bing/ rebate like a week ago.

 

[Voo]

At the end of the day, the thing that scares me about these big drives isn't the drives dying... it's not using Raid 1/5/6.

Why should that scare a home user? The only thing about Raid is holding the down time as low as possible (Raid is still no backup), which isn't that much of a high priority for me (I mean I have to replace the HDD in any case, so the amount of time spent doesn't change at all and if I need the data right now, I can just use the backup).
For me that doesn't justify the extra cost of Raid1, Raid5 would be more interesting, but it's still 1/5 more expensive..


Any drive can fail, independent on number of platters, manufacterer, size,.. so you have to backup your data in every case, so personally I'd just get the cheapest drives with a reasonable size.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I have a broker and I see their costs. They buy bulk quantities (except alternators as the seller has a beef about bulk quantities!)

Your computer has an alternator?

 

[n7]

Your computer has an alternator?

I :wub: Rubycon's humor

Unless i'm going crazy, i believe she's referencing this: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2501

 

[Rubycon]

Your computer has an alternator?

Well I could use a few extra 12V amps on the cuda system.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Would be funny to put an alternator in a PC. Hook it up to a belt driven by a 12V motor and the alternator would produce electricity for lights or something. Totally pointless and probably very inefficient and noisy, but it would be funny. Even better have the belt also power a car AC compressor to cool the PC.

Would love to bring that to future shop asking if they can diagnose the noise issue.

 

[Rubycon]

Would be funny to put an alternator in a PC. Hook it up to a belt driven by a 12V motor and the alternator would produce electricity for lights or something. Totally pointless and probably very inefficient and noisy, but it would be funny. Even better have the belt also power a car AC compressor to cool the PC.

Would love to bring that to future shop asking if they can diagnose the noise issue.

It would be VERY inefficient and not to mention noisy! You'd want at least a 56H frame motor of 1/2 hp to produce a usable output.

If you have a skylight a medium sized photovoltaic panel could power a pair of 120mm fans with ease.

 

[Gillbot]

It would be VERY inefficient and not to mention noisy! You'd want at least a 56H frame motor of 1/2 hp to produce a usable output.

If you have a skylight a medium sized photovoltaic panel could power a pair of 120mm fans with ease.

not to mention it would be far easier to use an ac motor to drive the alternator.

 

[Rubycon]

not to mention it would be far easier to use an ac motor to drive the alternator.

A 56H frame IS an AC motor!

 

[ultimatebob]

The deathstars were IBM, and it was a very, very long time ago. Before Hitachi ate IBM's hard drive division.

Yeah, they should really have axed the Deskstar brand name. Even now, it has a nasty stigma associated with it.

That said, all of the infamous 75GXP's that I used worked fine. Go figure.

 

[pjkenned]

Why should that scare a home user? The only thing about Raid is holding the down time as low as possible (Raid is still no backup), which isn't that much of a high priority for me (I mean I have to replace the HDD in any case, so the amount of time spent doesn't change at all and if I need the data right now, I can just use the backup).
For me that doesn't justify the extra cost of Raid1, Raid5 would be more interesting, but it's still 1/5 more expensive..

If you are using a raid 1, 5, 6 and etc, you can still access data if a drive fails. I'm mostly on Raid 6 + hot spare arrays now so in theory it rebuilds using the drive just sitting there... It does cost more, but losing multiple TB's of data is crazy. I agree with the backup comment. Backups are always good, but I'm lazy and only schedule daily backups of all of my boxes :-/

 

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

Wow, the 1.5TB drives are half what the 2TB drives are in some cases. That's nuts. A difference of 500Gb, yet $109 versus $199 in price. That's silly. $85 for a 1TB and $109 for a 1.5TB, for a 500Gb increase for $25. That's a cheap 500Gb. But again, like $80 more to get that other 500Gb platter shoved in there. That's silly.

I'm thinking that for the money, I'll just get some 1.5TB drives instead. I hate doing that, as it means more drives overall for me, and I'd prefer to use less drives. But the price difference is huge. or the cost of a single $199 WD 2TB drive, I can get two 1.5TB WD drives at $109 each, or $218 together. That's a whole 1TB more for nearly the same price. But more importantly to me, it's two separate drives making it 1.5TB of redundancy instead of 2TB of zero redundancy. That's a big difference to me. Looks like I'm going to suffer the 1.5TB's instead for now.

Seems larger capacity drives are going to be on the way next anyways. Especially as the tech is moving up (new sector's being much larger, etc).

My issue with the capacity is the setups like this:

(2) 1.5 TB drives
(2) 1.5 TB drives
= 3TB of redundant capacity (1:1 mirrors/synchs).

(2) 2TB drives
(2) 2TB drives
= 4TB of redundancy capacity (1:1 mirrors/synchs).

For the same foot print, 1TB difference which adds up. But the cost difference is insane. $440 for the 3TB setup, and nearly $800 for the 4TB setup. That's such a silly difference that it's obviously a better deal to just get two 3TB setups for the same price and end up with 6TB for the same cost as the 4TB setup; again, knowing that each two drives are mirrored pairs. Bleh. That just makes it even more annoying since cases that can house 8 to 16 drives are harder to get without going server chasis or rack mount and being costly.



Very best,