Hard drive question

[Tullphan]

I was looking at these hard drives & I noticed that the 2 that were $10 higher stated that they were "designed with enhanced reliability in a 24x7 environment".
Are hard drives like other things...all made in the same factory with different names put on them? Or are these 2 genuinely built better to demand the premium price?

 

[Puffnstuff]

I would get the enterprise versions of the drive for such a small price difference. There are differences and the seagates are noisier than their desktop counterparts. We'll never know for sure exactly what those differences are until someone buys them and opens them up to compare parts. I would think that the bearings would be more robust in the enterprise edition since it's supposed to run 24/7.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

The spindle bearings make a world of difference. Also, their ability to dissipate heat is another. I noticed the More expensive ones also support NCQ and have firmware that is designed to talk with RAID controllers. These are little things that add up. Ultimately it is up to you to decide if the $10 difference is worth it.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

$10 is nothing for a little extra peace of mind.

 

[TallBill]

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
$10 is nothing for a little extra peace of mind.

Not to mention the already insanely low prices on drives these days.

 

[Tullphan]

I noticed the WD said nothing specifically about NCQ but RAID-specific time limited error recovery - Improves error handling coordination with RAID adapters and prevents drive fallout caused by extended drive error-recovery processes.
The WD touts the Fluid dynamic bearing motor while the Seagate touts the NCQ as well as the perpendicular recording technology.
Guess it's a crapshoot between the 2?

 

[SuperNaruto]

I got both wd re2 and seagate es.. Can't really tell what the difference is, can't even notice it.

The RE2 & ES has higher MTBF and slighly better parts.. but under high demand, they're onlye 20-30% better than regular drives... from the anandtech storage articles.

 

[fire400]

you can multitask better if you have a RAID 0 with NCQ

but don't get too excited if your drives decide to die on you

 

[Tullphan]

I was just wondering, for $4 difference, if I should go w/the 320gb Seagate non-NCQ (regular ol' Seagate) over the 250gb WD "RE" model?

 

[Zepper]

Almost all SATA 300 drives support NCQ. There are places that have tested both the YS WD and the ES Seagate drives so you can know the difference if you want. Tomshardware and storagereview for example. Single user systems should leave NCQ disabled.

.bh.

 

[Tullphan]

So as far as reliability goes, of those hard drives, one will be just as good as the other?