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Best HD

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PBMangan

Member
Looking for sata 3.0, 32 mb cache, at least 7200 rpm, and 1 TB.
The main aspect is that I need a drive that will not die.

Looking at the Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS.

Is there something better? More reliable?

Thanks!
 
I'm personally partial to the Spinpoint F1 1tb, although I've admittedly never used the other brand's 1TB offerings
 
Originally posted by: PBMangan
Looking for sata 3.0, 32 mb cache, at least 7200 rpm, and 1 TB.
The main aspect is that I need a drive that will not die.

Looking at the Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS.

Is there something better? More reliable?
Click to expand...
Your instincts are correct...
Once you go "Black", you never go back! :thumbsup:😉

 
Originally posted by: Rike
I assume you mean sata2, which operates at 3 gbps?

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000340AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

5 year warranty FTW

EDIT: Opps, that drive is OOS at the egg. Amazon has them for $110 shipped.
Click to expand...

I don't think that is correct, since it is now past Jan. 3rd.
Seagate redid their warranty on OEM drives, so most are now 3y, unless you get the Enterprise Drive version.

Newegg really needs to update all their warranty info to reflect the new crappier warranty.


http://www.seagate.com/www/en-...oduct_warranty_matrix/
 
So far, thinking back to the 1980's when I got tangled in the emerging technology, I've had the following disks go south on me:

A Western Digital 20 MB drive, around 1988.

A Seagate SCSI-2 drive (I paid about $1,200 for it new), in 1995.

A 20 GB IBM Deskstar around 2004.

A Seagate 7200.10 320 GB SATA2 -- about a month ago.

I replaced both of the Seagate 7200.10's in a RAID0 array with WD Caviar Black 500GB drives. The dead Seagate will go for RMA; the remaining good one is a backup drive.

So far, these Caviar Black models are really great for the money.
 
Originally posted by: PBMangan
Looking for sata 3.0, 32 mb cache, at least 7200 rpm, and 1 TB.
The main aspect is that I need a drive that will not die.

Looking at the Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS.

Is there something better? More reliable?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
You sure are demanding...

I'm concerned about the reliability of large drives. I've had a very low failure rate with drives (not including mfm drives) up to 500gb and thought the talk of failures would disappear with time. The first 1tb drive (wd) I purchased in may'08 had bad sectors. And shortly thereafter, a new 320gb wd (two platter version), a model which I've had much satisfactory experience, died. Three subsequently purchased wd 640gb drives have not had a problem yet.

I'm looking to purchase another large drive and don't have a good feeling about any of the available models. I figure it's safest to just be redundant and get a few of the cheapest drives such as the current low price leader, the 1tb samsung 7200rpm.
 
Originally posted by: PBMangan
Looking for sata 3.0, 32 mb cache, at least 7200 rpm, and 1 TB.
The main aspect is that I need a drive that will not die.

Looking at the Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS.

Is there something better? More reliable?
Click to expand...
The best info I can find

WD 1TB Black @ 1.2M MTBF / 5 year warranty
WD 1TB RE3 @ 1.2M MTBF / 5 year warranty
WD 750GB Blue (16MB cache) @ 1M MTBF / 3 year warranty
WD 300GB VelociRaptor @ 1.4M MTBF / 5 year warranty

Seagate 1TB 7200.11 @ .75M MTBF / 5 year warranty
Seagate 1TB SV35.3 @ 1M MTBF / 5 year warranty

Samsung 1TB F1 @ 1.2M MTBF / 3 year warranty

Hitachi 1TB Deskstar 7K1000 @ 1.2M MTBF / 5 year warranty


 
I would definitely go with SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
 
Because of apparent reliability problems, I chose the fast os drive/slower data drive route: wd 640 black and wd 1tb green (5400rpm - for less noise and heat). I'll be keeping copies of truly irreplaceable things on both drives.

I've had good luck with samsung 400 and 500 gb drives but price-wise, the samsung 1tb 7200rpm at newegg is not the cheapest when considering shipping.
 
Originally posted by: seemingly random
I'll be keeping copies of truly irreplaceable things on both drives.
Click to expand...
What happens if some freak power surge blasts your whole system?
Or maybe your PS zaps out, taking the rest of the rig with it?

 
Originally posted by: Blain
Originally posted by: seemingly random
I'll be keeping copies of truly irreplaceable things on both drives.
Click to expand...
What happens if some freak power surge blasts your whole system?
Or maybe your PS zaps out, taking the rest of the rig with it?
Click to expand...
These are certainly possibilities. However, in my experience, they are much less probable than an individual failure with current large drives. Other possibilities are theft, fire and heavy weather. Theft has occurred but not for a long time and fire seems very improbable but you never know. A tornado once came very close. Now, if I could only find some wood...

There's always the option of backup to another computer on the network but then a power surge could affect all pc's plugged in. The safest backup would be on some portable media stored in a bank lock box or something similarly off site. But then one might worry about media degeneration, among other things. So, in the end, one can only deal with probabilities.

With the amount of data we store, a file server with redundant storage is becoming more attractive and maybe necessary. All of the above scenarios are still possible to varying degrees though. I've been considering a server with four 1gb 5400rpm drives in raid n with a small ssd as the system drive - not sure about the reliability of ssd's yet or even if it's critical for a non-data drive. Procrastination might pay off since drives with 500gb platters are apparently coming soon.

Just noticed that newegg has 1tb green wd drives for $105 - $5 less than what I paid yesterday - oh well...
 
At Newegg, a $5 fluctuation is nothing.
I've seen memory go from $50 up to $75 then back down to $50 in just a couple of days.
 
Originally posted by: Blain
At Newegg, a $5 fluctuation is nothing.
I've seen memory go from $50 up to $75 then back down to $50 in just a couple of days.
Click to expand...
Funny that you mention this - newegg has 2x2gb g.skill ddr2-800 ram on sale for $35. I don't really need any more but it would be useful for a vmware machine. It's stunning that just three years ago we were paying $300+ for 2x1gb corsair ram.
 
i7 marketed 'triple-channel' has dropped $121 already.

as far as power issues....that's why they make a UPS. Obviously off-site is best.
 
Does TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery), need to be disabled on the newer RE3 HDs for proper operation in non-RAID environments?
In the past TLER enabled "RE" HDs had issues when running as stand alone drives.
 
Originally posted by: PBMangan
The main aspect is that I need a drive that will not die.
Click to expand...

Who can say what the long term reliability of a drive is unless they have been used long term? Ask again in 10/20/100 years which 2008/09 drives were reliable or just find a workable backup solution.

 
Originally posted by: Blain
Does TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery), need to be disabled on the newer RE3 HDs for proper operation in non-RAID environments?
In the past TLER enabled "RE" HDs had issues when running as stand alone drives.
Click to expand...

I'd like to know this also.
 
Sorry to bring this up again, but which of these three drives is the better performer?

1) WD Caviar Black
2) Samsung Spinpoint F1 terabyte drive
3) WD Green 1 tb

I need to buy a new drive soon and want to know the best performer. Thanks.
 
Originally posted by: Dorkenstein
Sorry to bring this up again, but which of these three drives is the better performer?

1) WD Caviar Black
2) Samsung Spinpoint F1 terabyte drive
3) WD Green 1 tb

I need to buy a new drive soon and want to know the best performer. Thanks.
Click to expand...


Best performance for *what* ? Are you going to raid?

The 'green' drive is slowest, it spins at 5400.
The Black has 5yr warranty. Sammy has 3y.
If raid, then don't get the Black.
If not, then in general, they are pretty much the same, in that, you won't really notice that big of a difference between them.

Hit up google (or whatever) for some synthetic benchmarks, but... you can't really go wrong with either IMO.
 
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