Reliability of these drives?

[Smoblikat]

So in the near future im looking to purchase a couple 3TB drives to replace my 2TB drives and im wondering which drive is more reliable, the two drives I am considering are:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148844
I like it because it has a 7200RPM spindle speed, which is nice because I stream all my media (locally) and keep .ISO's on it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136874
Its a WD drive, I have always thought that WD makes the most reliable drives out there, especially their green series. But the speed is slower.

Which drive would you pick? Both have only a 2 year warranty which saddens me. Just in terms of reliability which would you pick? Another option I have been considering is continuing my current trend of having a fast front drive, and a slower second drive. Basically my current 2TB setup is I have a 7200RPM drive as the drive I access and I keep my other (WD green) drive disabled and off until I want to backup my data to it. But I will only do this again if I know both drives have comparable reliability. Thanks.

EDIT - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148901
Has 1TB platters which scares me, the tech is fairly new and I need somthing I can rely on. But the warranty is 3 years.

 

[blastingcap]

If all you are doing is streaming off a disk or transferring ISOs, why does it have to be 7200rpm? The Green/Coolspin/whatever 5xxx rpm disks will be fine, and if they are high enough density (many are now 1TB/platter), their sequential transfer rates can be very high, way more than you need for streaming.

TL;DR: buy low-power drives. They are cheaper, use less power, throw off less heat, and are more than fast enough for your purposes. Additional spindle speed will not help.

Consider getting a Toshiba Canvio Desk 3TB if you want a three-year warranty, problem being it's an external drive so you lose the warranty if you crack it open to use internally. But it's USB 3.0 so it doesn't choke like a USB 2.0 drive. Occasionally Seagate runs promos on the external version of the drive you linked, via +1 year warranty adder, but if you look at the specs they still suck. 2400 hours/year operation, 750k MTBF (and what HDD actually meets the MTBF rating? pure fluff).

Seagate has a well-earned rep for iffy reliability in consumer drives, WD has done better but both have slid backwards on warranty duration, which is not a good sign. I tried to get Hitachi 5k3000s but they are out of production and priced too high, hence my resorting to Toshiba Canvio Desk 3TB drives which I hope are using similar tech with similar quality. (Tosh bought Hitachi's 3.5" HDD production facilities.)

 

[Smoblikat]

If all you are doing is streaming off a disk or transferring ISOs, why does it have to be 7200rpm? The Green/Coolspin/whatever 5xxx rpm disks will be fine, and if they are high enough density (many are now 1TB/platter), their sequential transfer rates can be very high, way more than you need for streaming.

TL;DR: buy low-power drives. They are cheaper, use less power, throw off less heat, and are more than fast enough for your purposes. Additional spindle speed will not help.

Consider getting a Toshiba Canvio Desk 3TB if you want a three-year warranty, problem being it's an external drive so you lose the warranty if you crack it open to use internally. But it's USB 3.0 so it doesn't choke like a USB 2.0 drive. Occasionally Seagate runs promos on the external version of the drive you linked, via +1 year warranty adder, but if you look at the specs they still suck. 2400 hours/year operation, 750k MTBF (and what HDD actually meets the MTBF rating? pure fluff).

Seagate has a well-earned rep for iffy reliability in consumer drives, WD has done better but both have slid backwards on warranty duration, which is not a good sign. I tried to get Hitachi 5k3000s but they are out of production and priced too high, hence my resorting to Toshiba Canvio Desk 3TB drives which I hope are using similar tech with similar quality. (Tosh bought Hitachi's 3.5" HDD production facilities.)

Thanks, Im looking to keep everything internal. I had forgotten that density increased speed. I dont need a lot of speed but its nice to have since I do all of my compressing/decompressing on here. I think in the end I will go with the second seagate as my primary and a WD green as the backup for it.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Well, with HDCP a discouragement and an approach for media-access that tries to minimize the boxes we rent from our provider, my computer is the only DVR device in the house. I will try to accommodate my WHS-2011 box to some of these duties, but I'd had a file-server since before the year 2000, and for "serious" stuff -- or at least that's the distinction I would make in those days. I have to be network administrator for two other people who would never bother to understand any of it.

At the same time, I and some hardware-savvy friends tend to approach the edge of technical improvement with some caution. for instance, you never buy a new car in a model that was initially just released; you start aiming for the second or third year afterward, just to anticipate bugs being ironed out.

So, to me, just buying five 1TB HDDs over the last year was a big step. By end of this week, I should have a 3TB storage pool on my server. And maybe I'll buy some WD "Red" drives or 2TB drives in another year.

So far, though, with some WD Blue SATA-III drives on a five-year-old SATA-II controller, I'm impressed and a bit surprised. If they only last considerably beyond the 2-year warranty, I'll be happy that they're light, fast -- and contrary to some buyer reviews -- quiet.

 

[smangular]

I tried to get Hitachi 5k3000s but they are out of production and priced too high, hence my resorting to Toshiba Canvio Desk 3TB drives which I hope are using similar tech with similar quality. (Tosh bought Hitachi's 3.5" HDD production facilities.)

Careful you may be shooting your self in the foot. I've seen some reports that hard drives/platters are binned (like CPU speeds are tested/allocated) and slower/higher error drives get relegated to be used for external drives.

I too want to be careful and save money on several TB of storage but you usually get what you pay for...

 

[blastingcap]

Thanks, Im looking to keep everything internal. I had forgotten that density increased speed. I dont need a lot of speed but its nice to have since I do all of my compressing/decompressing on here. I think in the end I will go with the second seagate as my primary and a WD green as the backup for it.

OK, I think too much is being made of 7200rpm compared to 5400rpm. For instance the WD Red 3TB matches or beats the slightly older 7200rpm drives like the WD Black 2TB and Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1285-page4.html

I don't think anyone would call a WD Black 2TB slow for a hard drive.

Anyway, good luck with the Seagate.

Careful you may be shooting your self in the foot. I've seen some reports that hard drives/platters are binned (like CPU speeds are tested/allocated) and slower/higher error drives get relegated to be used for external drives.

I too want to be careful and save money on several TB of storage but you usually get what you pay for...

I suspect the same, given that external drives using the same model number sometimes sell for LESS than the bare internal drive alone. So I am using the external drives for a) noncritical files and b) as an offsite storage drive to back up my NAS. It will get refreshed from time to time, something even a lower-binned hard drive ought to handle... hopefully it won't ever need to be used as the last resort backup drive it is.

 

[smangular]

At the same time, I and some hardware-savvy friends tend to approach the edge of technical improvement with some caution. for instance, you never buy a new car in a model that was initially just released; you start aiming for the second or third year afterward, just to anticipate bugs being ironed out.

+1 Sure that is a wise and cautious approach, but deciding where that line is a whole new problem. For example, 1 TB drives have been around quite some time.

 

[blastingcap]

+1 Sure that is a wise and cautious approach, but deciding where that line is a whole new problem. For example, 1 TB drives have been around quite some time.

I would add that in my experience, HDDs no matter how old or new the tech, are not fully reliable. Therefore it is necessary to have redundancies. This is why RAID-type thinking beat SLED-type thinking: it is cost-prohibitive to make SLEDs equal in reliability to RAID-style arrays.

Buying less-dense older HDD tech in the hopes that it is more reliable than newer HDD tech doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Whatever marginal gain you get in reliability (which might actually be zero or negative gains) you lose in the unwieldiness of the array. I sure would rather deal with a pair of 3TB HDDs (mirrored) than six 1TB HDDs of older vintage.

 

[Cerb]

EDIT - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148901
Has 1TB platters which scares me, the tech is fairly new and I need somthing I can rely on. But the warranty is 3 years.

Just don't. Surveillance drives have significantly different behavior to regular desktop drives, generally including little to no error recovery. They're tweaked for 24/7 writing of multiple streams (the new WD Red series seems to be an RE and AV mashup). Also, the few reviews on those specific drives are not good.

Keep in mind that your issue here is warranty--a business decision--not reliability. Each RMA is not cheap. By reducing the length they offer RMAs on cheaper drives, they both save warranty servicing costs, and increase incentives to buy their more expensive drives.

 

[Smoblikat]

Just don't. Surveillance drives have significantly different behavior to regular desktop drives, generally including little to no error recovery. They're tweaked for 24/7 writing of multiple streams (the new WD Red series seems to be an RE and AV mashup). Also, the few reviews on those specific drives are not good.

Keep in mind that your issue here is warranty--a business decision--not reliability. Each RMA is not cheap. By reducing the length they offer RMAs on cheaper drives, they both save warranty servicing costs, and increase incentives to buy their more expensive drives.

Ya, I changed my mind and will be getting a pair of the 154$ seagates.

 

[blastingcap]

Ya, I changed my mind and will be getting a pair of the 154$ seagates.

Out of curiosity, why not WD or Hitachi's equivalent drives instead? Those Seagates rated for 2400 hrs/year load kind of freak me out.

 

[corkyg]

Anecdotal generalizations are probably all false, including this one.

I'll give you another to chew on - the bigger the drive, the less reliable it is.

 

[blastingcap]

Anecdotal generalizations are probably all false, including this one.

I'll give you another to chew on - the bigger the drive, the less reliable it is.

Data > anecdotes, sure, but Backblaze (the online backup storage company that deals with thousands of hard drives) had a blog post where they said 5k3000s were their most reliable and Seagate and WD were tied for second place (or last place, if you want to look at it that way), even the RE4 drives.

Taken the the logical extreme, your second statement means we should be using the smallest drives we can find, even if they are less than 10GB each. Unless you meant more platters = less reliable in which case I totally agree.

 

[Soulkeeper]

Those 1TB/platter seagates rule the roost for performance right now.
They'd mop the floor on those green drives. Unless being a green hipster is your primary concern i'd get that over the green. I doubt the reliability between the two can even be calculated. Neither are enterprise drives, marketed for 24/7, or raid.
Also if you look close at the pcb on the new seagates you can see they shrunk the process tech and footprint used. Essentially the newest low power tech for a 7200rpm drive.


^^ no offense to any green hipsters

 

[blastingcap]

Those 1TB/platter seagates rule the roost for performance right now.
They'd mop the floor on those green drives. Unless being a green hipster is your primary concern i'd get that over the green. I doubt the reliability between the two can even be calculated. Neither are enterprise drives, marketed for 24/7, or raid.
Also if you look close at the pcb on the new seagates you can see they shrunk the process tech and footprint used. Essentially the newest low power tech for a 7200rpm drive.


^^ no offense to any green hipsters

You make 5400rpm high-density drives sound like they are barely faster than floppies. You may want to read OP's requirements and these two URLs. Then look at pricing (esp. factoring in electricity costs if you are in a higher-cost area) and factor in Seagate's lower MTBF and load scenarios and worse warranty. Just sayin'.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1232-page4.html

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1285-page4.html

 

[Smoblikat]

Out of curiosity, why not WD or Hitachi's equivalent drives instead? Those Seagates rated for 2400 hrs/year load kind of freak me out.

Price. Im on a budget, I like the platter density and speed of the seagates versus the only other drive im considering (the WD green).

 

[Soulkeeper]

You make 5400rpm high-density drives sound like they are barely faster than floppies. You may want to read OP's requirements and these two URLs. Then look at pricing (esp. factoring in electricity costs if you are in a higher-cost area) and factor in Seagate's lower MTBF and load scenarios and worse warranty. Just sayin'.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1232-page4.html

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1285-page4.html

yes ... someone is "wrong" on the internet.
Looking at the power usage of the 1TB/platter seagates you'll notice they are still relatively low for the application of "a couple drives" as the OP requires.

This review is better imo

Or anandtech's review

I'm not trying to argue with a random guy that chooses to quote me on the internet ...
It should be noted that, as with most any tech purchase, you are buying a "dream" opinion and preference is much greater than who argues best on the forums.

 

[blastingcap]

yes ... someone is "wrong" on the internet.
Looking at the power usage of the 1TB/platter seagates you'll notice they are still relatively low for the application of "a couple drives" as the OP requires.

By the same token, the speed advantage of the Seagate is marginal at best for OP's purposes.

Marginal vs marginal... meaning other factors come into play like price, warranty, reliability, power draw, etc. Note exactly what I said re: power and what costs may be in people's specific areas. There are people in the EU paying 45 cents per kWh (which is also close to what Hawaii's average rate is) which is why I stated that as a potential factor. At 24/7 even 5 watts difference can add up over the years at 45 cents/kWh. Conversely people in Seattle probably don't care as much since they get dirt cheap power by comparison.

Wrongness isn't inevitable. Reasonable minds can disagree.

 

[Smoblikat]

yes ... someone is "wrong" on the internet.
Looking at the power usage of the 1TB/platter seagates you'll notice they are still relatively low for the application of "a couple drives" as the OP requires.

This review is better imo

Or anandtech's review

I'm not trying to argue with a random guy that chooses to quote me on the internet ...
It should be noted that, as with most any tech purchase, you are buying a "dream" opinion and preference is much greater than who argues best on the forums.

Im confused, how do they only have 2400 power on hours? Thats 100 days. Unless that doesnt mean what I thhink it means.

By the same token, the speed advantage of the Seagate is marginal at best for OP's purposes.

Marginal vs marginal... meaning other factors come into play like price, warranty, reliability, power draw, etc. Note exactly what I said re: power and what costs may be in people's specific areas. There are people in the EU paying 45 cents per kWh (which is also close to what Hawaii's average rate is) which is why I stated that as a potential factor. At 24/7 even 5 watts difference can add up over the years at 45 cents/kWh. Conversely people in Seattle probably don't care as much since they get dirt cheap power by comparison.

Wrongness isn't inevitable. Reasonable minds can disagree.

Power is irrelevant to me. All I care about is reliability. Everything else comes after, from what I have seen here both drives have comparable reliability so Ill choose the seagates because they have extra speed. Unless the power on hours means how long it is alive for, THEN ill get the greens.

 

[Soulkeeper]

seagate recently revised their power on hour ratings to reflect 8hr 5 day a week operation. I am dissapointed by this, but I doubt this was based on build quality and more likely based on cost cutting (ie the warranties).

You say reliability is top. Ultimately reliability/warranty takes a back seat when buying non-enterprise drives

 

[blastingcap]

seagate recently revised their power on hour ratings to reflect 8hr 5 day a week operation. I am dissapointed by this, but I doubt this was based on build quality and more likely based on cost cutting (ie the warranties).

You say reliability is top. Ultimately reliability/warranty takes a back seat when buying non-enterprise drives

In other words you are speculating, so please get off your high horse (you edited your post later to say you didn't want to "argue" with a "random" forum poster.. yeah I love you too, random forum poster ). If you have data from sources let's see it. There isn't a lot out there regarding large-scale studies of consumer-grade hard drives that I can see, but I do recall Backblaze going on the record as saying Seagates and WD drives, even RE4 drives, not doing as well as Hitachi 5k3000s. So, there is empirical evidence out there as much as you would like to cover your ears and sing "la la la, all consumer drives are of equal reliability la la la." I do agree that it is speculative and that warranty changes do not NECESSARILY indicate lower quality, but even if drives were of equal reliability, all else equal, longer warranty should win out for obvious reasons. Furthermore, warranties are not created equal and neither are attitudes towards customers, e.g, Seagate's infamous handling of 7200.11 orders speak to the company's attitude towards customers.

http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v2-0revealing-more-secrets/

"We are constantly looking at new hard drives, evaluating them for reliability and power consumption. The Hitachi 3TB drive (Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3030ALA630) is our current favorite for both its low power demand and astounding reliability. The Western Digital and Seagate equivalents we tested saw much higher rates of popping out of RAID arrays and drive failure. Even the Western Digital Enterprise Hard Drives had the same high failure rates. The Hitachi drives, on the other hand, perform wonderfully."

Im confused, how do they only have 2400 power on hours? Thats 100 days. Unless that doesnt mean what I thhink it means.

Power is irrelevant to me. All I care about is reliability. Everything else comes after, from what I have seen here both drives have comparable reliability so Ill choose the seagates because they have extra speed. Unless the power on hours means how long it is alive for, THEN ill get the greens.

If you really cared about reliability you would use ZFS or similar, and have 2+ parity disks or three-way mirrors or something. Then you could use pretty much whatever garbage drives you wanted, knowing that even if two failed in a row, you'd be okay. This acceptance of drive failures is actually more robust than trying to use one or two marginally more reliable HDDs. But for many consumers that's overkill, so don't think I'm actually advocating that everyone do this!

2400 hours is the rating per year, so basically an office hours environment kind of duty, not 24/7. It doesn't necessarily mean lower quality, just like MTBF rating lower than others does not necessarily mean lower quality, just like shorter warranty does not necessarily mean lower quality, etc. but at some point you have got to wonder that if their quality were so high, why not signal their confidence in their products via longer warranties? That is, if you knew your drives were perfect then in theory you could offer 100 year warranties knowing that they'd never be collected against. So it is sophistry to say that lower duty life and warranties are meaningless... they do mean something, but it's really hard to measure as an end-user. And there aren't that many studies out there of 1000s of consumer-grade HDDs wrt reliability.

 

[Soulkeeper]

In other words you are speculating, so please get off your high horse (you edited your post later to say you didn't want to "argue" with a "random" forum poster.. yeah I love you too, random forum poster ). If you have data from sources let's see it. There isn't a lot out there regarding large-scale studies of consumer-grade hard drives that I can see, but I do recall Backblaze going on the record as saying Seagates and WD drives, even RE4 drives, not doing as well as Hitachi 5k3000s. So, there is empirical evidence out there as much as you would like to cover your ears and sing "la la la, all consumer drives are of equal reliability la la la." I do agree that it is speculative and that warranty changes do not NECESSARILY indicate lower quality, but even if drives were of equal reliability, all else equal, longer warranty should win out for obvious reasons. Furthermore, warranties are not created equal and neither are attitudes towards customers, e.g, Seagate's infamous handling of 7200.11 orders speak to the company's attitude towards customers.

http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v2-0revealing-more-secrets/

"We are constantly looking at new hard drives, evaluating them for reliability and power consumption. The Hitachi 3TB drive (Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3030ALA630) is our current favorite for both its low power demand and astounding reliability. The Western Digital and Seagate equivalents we tested saw much higher rates of popping out of RAID arrays and drive failure. Even the Western Digital Enterprise Hard Drives had the same high failure rates. The Hitachi drives, on the other hand, perform wonderfully."



If you really cared about reliability you would use ZFS or similar, and have 2+ parity disks or three-way mirrors or something. Then you could use pretty much whatever garbage drives you wanted, knowing that even if two failed in a row, you'd be okay. This acceptance of drive failures is actually more robust than trying to use one or two marginally more reliable HDDs. But for many consumers that's overkill, so don't think I'm actually advocating that everyone do this!

2400 hours is the rating per year, so basically an office hours environment kind of duty, not 24/7. It doesn't necessarily mean lower quality, just like MTBF rating lower than others does not necessarily mean lower quality, just like shorter warranty does not necessarily mean lower quality, etc. but at some point you have got to wonder that if their quality were so high, why not signal their confidence in their products via longer warranties? That is, if you knew your drives were perfect then in theory you could offer 100 year warranties knowing that they'd never be collected against. So it is sophistry to say that lower duty life and warranties are meaningless... they do mean something, but it's really hard to measure as an end-user. And there aren't that many studies out there of 1000s of consumer-grade HDDs wrt reliability.

uhhh high horse ?

I'm not the one randomly trolling forums quoting people in an attempt to start a fight.
then flooding them with paragraphs worth of nonsense to support my opinions/faith.

Yes you got the first post in response here(and longest posts), but this does not entitle you to supreme knowledge/respect. Your opinions are not all that matter and they are not fact.

You could have just left me alone and not included me in your posts. Yet you will not concede the right of others to post on these forums ?

If you quote me again I will notify a moderator. Please stop.
I won't post here anymore.

 

[Smoblikat]

In other words you are speculating, so please get off your high horse (you edited your post later to say you didn't want to "argue" with a "random" forum poster.. yeah I love you too, random forum poster ). If you have data from sources let's see it. There isn't a lot out there regarding large-scale studies of consumer-grade hard drives that I can see, but I do recall Backblaze going on the record as saying Seagates and WD drives, even RE4 drives, not doing as well as Hitachi 5k3000s. So, there is empirical evidence out there as much as you would like to cover your ears and sing "la la la, all consumer drives are of equal reliability la la la." I do agree that it is speculative and that warranty changes do not NECESSARILY indicate lower quality, but even if drives were of equal reliability, all else equal, longer warranty should win out for obvious reasons. Furthermore, warranties are not created equal and neither are attitudes towards customers, e.g, Seagate's infamous handling of 7200.11 orders speak to the company's attitude towards customers.

http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v2-0revealing-more-secrets/

"We are constantly looking at new hard drives, evaluating them for reliability and power consumption. The Hitachi 3TB drive (Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3030ALA630) is our current favorite for both its low power demand and astounding reliability. The Western Digital and Seagate equivalents we tested saw much higher rates of popping out of RAID arrays and drive failure. Even the Western Digital Enterprise Hard Drives had the same high failure rates. The Hitachi drives, on the other hand, perform wonderfully."



If you really cared about reliability you would use ZFS or similar, and have 2+ parity disks or three-way mirrors or something. Then you could use pretty much whatever garbage drives you wanted, knowing that even if two failed in a row, you'd be okay. This acceptance of drive failures is actually more robust than trying to use one or two marginally more reliable HDDs. But for many consumers that's overkill, so don't think I'm actually advocating that everyone do this!

2400 hours is the rating per year, so basically an office hours environment kind of duty, not 24/7. It doesn't necessarily mean lower quality, just like MTBF rating lower than others does not necessarily mean lower quality, just like shorter warranty does not necessarily mean lower quality, etc. but at some point you have got to wonder that if their quality were so high, why not signal their confidence in their products via longer warranties? That is, if you knew your drives were perfect then in theory you could offer 100 year warranties knowing that they'd never be collected against. So it is sophistry to say that lower duty life and warranties are meaningless... they do mean something, but it's really hard to measure as an end-user. And there aren't that many studies out there of 1000s of consumer-grade HDDs wrt reliability.

Thanks. Although I am still more confused than when I started

ZFS and RAID dont appeal to me because I dont view RAID as a backup, its less reliable than a real backup solution (multiple single drives). I would love to get some nice RE4's of some hitachi drives but im not looking to spend more than 350 - 400 for the whole setup (SATA card, drives, cables) so those are out of the question unless I space this purchase out longer.

 

[blastingcap]

Thanks. Although I am still more confused than when I started

ZFS and RAID dont appeal to me because I dont view RAID as a backup, its less reliable than a real backup solution (multiple single drives). I would love to get some nice RE4's of some hitachi drives but im not looking to spend more than 350 - 400 for the whole setup (SATA card, drives, cables) so those are out of the question unless I space this purchase out longer.

Honestly it is not necessarily a bad idea to simply buy the cheapest and hope for the best, replacing bad drives as necessary. This works with redunancy and backup in mind. If you can save enough money to make it worthwhile the Seagates you picked out should be good enough. Then later on you can use that saved money for something else like a faster or larger HDD array. What I would not do is to rely on the Seagates holding up, but you are aware of backup/RAID issues so you should be okay there.

uhhh high horse ?

I'm not the one randomly trolling forums quoting people in an attempt to start a fight.
then flooding them with paragraphs worth of nonsense to support my opinions/faith.

Yes you got the first post in response here, but this does not entitle you to supreme knowledge/respect. Your opinions are not all that matter and they are not fact.

You could have just left me the **** alone and not included me in your opinions. Yet you will not concede the right of others to post on these forums ?


If you quote me again I will notify a moderator. Please stop.

"Attempt to start a fight"?? You made a post about HDD speeds, and I linked some URLs showing that the lines are blurred between 7200rpm and 5xxx rpm speed drives--so much that modern 3TB low-power 5xxxrpm drives are about as fast as last-gen 7200rpm 2TB drives, which is food for thought. How is that picking a fight? Why are you attempting to characterize that as a personal attack? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that the speed differential isn't that big, and that other factors may be important as well.

If anything you attacked me first. Read your own words bro. I did not denigrate you, but you certainly denigrated me as a random forum poster even though you are one too. That is what I mean by getting off your high horse--you are another "random" forum poster as well. You, like me, are speculating as well--unless you have a citation or something? I also didn't call you a troll which is basically what you called me when you accused me of randomly trolling forums. Etc. You've continually denigrated me, wheras I have not denigrated you except to the extent to call you out for hypocrisy seeing as how you, too, are a "random" forum poster and have not posted concrete studies or even a link like the Backblaze link.

I also linked to Backblaze's own words re: reliability in case you and OP may be interested. Considering how you made a comment that implied enterprise drives are more reliable than consumer drives (which I agree is probably true on average), I thought you may be interested to know what Backblaze said.

Summary:

Me: gave additional info, including links showing how modern 5400 rpm drives are actually about as fast as last-gen 7200 rpm drives and probably enough for OP's purposes

You: cry foul for my giving info and then try to make it personal then say stuff about how this is about my posting first, which has nothing to do with anything, then protest how on a PUBLIC INTERNET FORUM that I quote you? And then bluster about how you are going to fetch a mod? If you post on a PUBLIC INTERNET FORUM, expect to be quoted from time to time. If you do not want to be quoted, do not post. You could have PM'ed OP if you didn't want anyone quoting you. I did not insult you at all. If however there is a new rule in AT forums where we are only allowed to quote OPs and respond to OPs, then I will gracefully apologize for not knowing that rule and will refrain from quoting any non-OPs or addressing non-OPs in the future.

Stop trying to make this personal. Let's stick to OP's topic, okay?

P.S. In post no. 18 I sensed your cantankerousness since you made some cryptic remark about "wrong"ness. I wrote: "Wrongness isn't inevitable. Reasonable minds can disagree." In other words, I was saying that neither of us have to be wrong; maybe we are both right; and that reasonable minds can disagree. How on earth you interpreted that as picking a fight, I have no idea.

 

[Smoblikat]

Both of you please remain on topic. This is the internet, NEITHER of you win in the end.

Also, what is the MTBF of the WD drives? Newegg doesnt have it listed.

EDIT - Found it:
300,000 hours

How is that possible? Does power on hours mean MTBF or are they two different things? Because if they are the same im taking the WD's without a hesitation.