Toshiba DT01ACA300 vs Seagate ST3000DM001 - reliability and speed?

[eton975]

Question in title. I'm leaning towards buying the Toshiba because of Backblaze's terrible luck with the Barracuda, but does anyone here run either of these, and can say how fast, noisy and reliable they are?

 

[RecoveryForce]

I haven't seen too many of the Toshiba roll through. To be honest, they may just be too new and have too small of the market share to have a full grasp on where they stand. That said, I'd take my chances with a Toshiba over any of the newer Seagate drives. But, you may want to consider an HGST with very high stats or the trusted Western Digitals.

No matter what you choose, you would be wise to have a solid backup routine.

 

[eton975]

I haven't seen too many of the Toshiba roll through. To be honest, they may just be too new and have too small of the market share to have a full grasp on where they stand. That said, I'd take my chances with a Toshiba over any of the newer Seagate drives. But, you may want to consider an HGST with very high stats or the trusted Western Digitals.

No matter what you choose, you would be wise to have a solid backup routine.

OK, so largely unknown. Thanks.

 

[PliotronX]

I haven't seen too many of the Toshiba roll through. To be honest, they may just be too new and have too small of the market share to have a full grasp on where they stand. That said, I'd take my chances with a Toshiba over any of the newer Seagate drives. But, you may want to consider an HGST with very high stats or the trusted Western Digitals.

No matter what you choose, you would be wise to have a solid backup routine.

I will second and third this post.

 

[Nec_V20]

Question in title. I'm leaning towards buying the Toshiba because of Backblaze's terrible luck with the Barracuda, but does anyone here run either of these, and can say how fast, noisy and reliable they are?

As I replied on another thread:

I have three of the 3TB ST3000DM001-9YN166 HDs running in my system. They have been running 24/7 respectively for:

1) 1142 days 19 hours (Firmware CC9C)
2) 980 days 20 hours (Firmware CC4B)
3) 977 days 9 hours ( Firmware CC4B)

These drives are not in a RAID array.

I have a Hitachi HDS5C3020ALA632 2TB drive which has been running 1513 days 18 hours in the same system as the Seagate drives.

The most important part of my system is the PSU which is a Corsair AX850. Not only is it a Gold unit, but it also has very low ripple on the 12V rail and excellent overvoltage protection. Excessive ripple is what destroys hardware.

Many buy the PSU as an afterthought from what is left of their budget after they have splurged out on all the sexy stuff.

It could just be that the 3TB drives are more sensitive to ripple than other drives.

If you look, Backblaze has said that they have had good experiences with the 4TB Seagate drives. If the price difference is not all that big where you are then you might consider getting one of them. I have had one of the 4TB Seagate drives (ST4000DM000) running in my system 24/7 for 483 days 22 hours.

The fact of the matter is though that Backblaze were desperate at the time they bought the Seagate 3TB drives and they knew - or should have known if they were not terminally stupid - that they were implementing a drive completely unsuited to the task they demanded of it.

It is also possible that Seagate at the time of the HD crisis were more lax in their Quality Control for the sake of meeting the demand which could not be met from other sources. I bought my three 3TB drives mentioned above before the crisis.

The Toshiba 3TB drive (DT01ACA300) is in fact a rebadged Hitachi (HGST) HDS723030BLE640.

Because of YMMV I cannot say that my experience with the 3TB Seagate drives is more typical than Backblaze's, though as you can see from the Firmware revisions I got them from at least two different batches.

I have had really good experiences with both Hitachi and Seagate HDDs. Thus I am loathe to speak out a recommendation for the one above the other.

I bought the 3TB Seagate drives back in the day because of price. If the Hitachi 3TB drives had been the same price I might well have gone for them.

The Toshiba drive is not an unknown and has a good pedigree. I think the 3TB Seagate drive might falsely be getting a bad reputation, from my own personal experience of the ones I have in my system.

I don't think there is much difference in the noise levels between the two drives.

Hope this helps.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I have a couple of the Toshibas.

Yes, they're rebadged Hitachis. No, they're not unknown quantities - in fact, they're a bit on the old side now. I think Toshiba has since replaced them with a different model. Yes, the 7200 rpm drives are a tad noiser and use a bit more power than a 5900 rpm WD Red. Yes, they are pretty fast. No I have not had any failures, but three drives isn't a useful sample size.

I bought them to match my other 5 Toshiba HDDs.

<<<--- fanboi

$ zpool status NAS_2
  pool: NAS_2
 state: ONLINE
  scan: scrub in progress since Mon Jul 27 20:57:18 2015
        56.5G scanned out of 2.15T at [B]413M/s[/B], 1h28m to go
        0 repaired, 2.57% done
config:

        NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        NAS_2       ONLINE       0     0     0
          raidz1-0  ONLINE       0     0     0
            ada1    ONLINE       0     0     0
            ada3    ONLINE       0     0     0
            ada7    ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

 

[Soulkeeper]

I have one of these 3TB seagates ST3000DM001 and a 5TB toshiba MD04ACA500 running next to each other in the same system.
They are comparable speed/noise wise, few MB/s faster on the toshiba.

 

[Nec_V20]

I have one of these 3TB seagates ST3000DM001 and a 5TB toshiba MD04ACA500 running next to each other in the same system.
They are comparable speed/noise wise, few MB/s faster on the toshiba.

This is not surprising considering the higher data density of the 5TB Toshiba drives vs. the 3TB Seagate drive.

 

[IGemini]

I have two of the ACA300 Toshiba drives, running as media storage on separate machines. Toshiba owns HGST 3.5" production...just mentioning.

On my main computer it serves as an eSATA media drive. The default Windows AHCI driver would allow the drive to go into sleep...a little too aggressively. Even happened when in use. Issue went away after installing Intel RST 13.2 IIRC. Has 870+ days on the drive powered on. Haven't had the same problem on the Linux box.

No real reliability issues with data, and they're pretty quiet. Can't even hear it with the 80mm drive fan off.

 

[Nec_V20]

I have two of the ACA300 Toshiba drives, running as media storage on separate machines. Toshiba owns HGST 3.5" production...just mentioning.

On my main computer it serves as an eSATA media drive. The default Windows AHCI driver would allow the drive to go into sleep...a little too aggressively. Even happened when in use. Issue went away after installing Intel RST 13.2 IIRC. Has 870+ days on the drive powered on. Haven't had the same problem on the Linux box.

No real reliability issues with data, and they're pretty quiet. Can't even hear it with the 80mm drive fan off.

Not quite correct.

On March 8, 2012, Western Digital (WD) acquired Hitachi Global Storage Technologies for $3.9 billion in cash and 25 million shares of WD common stock valued at approximately $0.9 billion.

The deal resulted in Hitachi, Ltd. owning approximately 10 percent of WD shares outstanding, and reserving the right to designate two individuals to the board of directors of WD.

It was agreed that WD would operate with WD Technologies and HGST as wholly owned subsidiaries and they would compete in the marketplace with separate brands and product lines.

To address the requirements of regulatory agencies, in May 2012 WD divested to Toshiba assets that enabled Toshiba to manufacture and sell 3.5-inch hard drives for the desktop and consumer electronics markets.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I've had 3 of that model Seagates (external models put internal). Of the 3 I've had 1 fail after 3.5 years. The other 2 are going strong. Since they are internal I can't really speak to noise, but I don't hear them. 7200 RPM - you get what you would expect out of them.

 

[AlienTech]

There are many version of ST3000DM001. How would you compare them? specifications are vastly different between them. There are also 512byte and 4K sector drives all using the same model numbers.. it would be like saying how fast is that car without knowing if its the 6cylinder or 8 cylinder..

Dont know about Toshiba but they had major problems when they came out. But the 4TB and 5TB models have been far mroe reliable than anything else. So they must have fixed the issues in the 3TB models as they all use 1TB platters.. I dont think their market is large enough for them to have multiple specs.. But we also know their were first using HGST drives then drives made by HGST and now their own so what has changed? Those made by HGST as OEM drives were really cheap and unreliable..

 

[Soulkeeper]

This is not surprising considering the higher data density of the 5TB Toshiba drives vs. the 3TB Seagate drive.

I just felt like adding my 2 cents.
platter count is different, but both 1TB/platter
It's not always the case that a drive is faster by adding platters of the same density. Sometimes performance goes down.

for anyone interested in platter capacity:
http://rml527.blogspot.com/ <-- good site to research individual drives by model number

in case nobody saw this yet:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/a-look-at-backblazes-toshiba-hard-drives/

 

[RecoveryForce]

Yes, there are some Hitachi drives now showing as Toshiba since their agreement was made. But, there are some newer Toshiba 3.5" drives that are using Toshiba architecture and not Hitachi. They have two completely different ways of how they write their firmware. The HGST models are more than trustworthy. The newer Toshiba architecture models should be excellent, but only time will tell.

 

[smitbret]

I have a couple of the 3TB Toshiba drives in my server. One has been serving as the parity drive for my FlexRAID setup and has been going strong for 18 months. The other was popped in as a data drive back in November.

Neither is as quiet or cool as the Seagate 2TB drives that sit next to them but they are certainly close.

I wouldn't think of putting a 3TB Seagate anywhere that storage reliability is important.

 

[eton975]

Well, finally getting a DT01ACA300. Probably gonna be doing software RAID1 with my existing ST2000DM001 for increased reliability.

Of course, as you all know, RAID isn't a proper backup, so anything supercritical is still being backed up. Wish me luck.

 

[Aries1470]

Just following up with your setup, how has it been going as it is 4 months now

 

[eton975]

Just following up with your setup, how has it been going as it is 4 months now

Going well, no problems. Doesn't vibrate my case like the ST2000DM001 did on occasion (moved that drive to a NAS)

 

[smitbret]

Going well, no problems. Doesn't vibrate my case like the ST2000DM001 did on occasion (moved that drive to a NAS)

Strange that the Seagate was creating that much vibration. I have 3 of those in my server working alongside 2 WD Greens and 4 Toshibas, including a DT01ACA300 and a DT01ACB300. Not much difference in noise, vibration or temps between any of them except the Greens seem to seek more loudly than the rest.