Western Digital Drives Reliable

[willbemcse]

Compusa has this deal WD for $99.99 after MIR. The drive comes with 1 year warrenty only
or I can get Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 250GB Hard Drive for $90.00 from zipzoom and get 5year instead of 1 year.

 

[furballi]

Wait for another Fry's special on Seagate HDDs. Around $50 to $60 AR.

 

[imported_Phil]

Western Digital Drives Reliable

So go buy one?

 

[DaveSimmons]

All drives are reliable, except the ones that aren't.



(Any brand or model will have manufacturing defects, but it's rare for a product line to have a design defect. The last confirmed one was 1-2 models of IBM "deathstars")

 

[stevty2889]

Thats a great price on that drive, I would definatly go for it. I am very happy with my WD 250gb 16mb cache drive. Even my 250MB western digitals from like 1992 are still working, haven't had one die on my yet. Same thing with Seagates, never had one of those die on me either.

 

[RallyMaster]

I personally have two 80GB Maxtors (those seem to be the ones that fail most) and an 160GB Seagate (seem to be the most reliable), and I've used them the same way. It's just that Maxtors are louder. My neighbor's 80GB WD isn't that loud and hasn't failed yet either. It shouldn't matter that much unless you care about noise.

 

[willbemcse]

I had WD before it died after couple of months. Does having a 16mb drive really makes any difference vs 8mb.

Does anyone has this drive right know??

 

[Markbnj]

I'm happy with my WD's, both the Raptor and the 400 gig. The Raptor is a fast place to store the o/s and apps, but I do a complete backup to the 400 gig drive every night . Not because I think WD is unreliable, but just because.

 

[RallyMaster]

Hmm...my friend has the 250GB WD. Let me ask him and get back to you...

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: willbemcse
I had WD before it died after couple of months. Does having a 16mb drive really makes any difference vs 8mb.

Does anyone has this drive right know??

16mb cache doesn't really make much differance, but it's a quick and quiet drive.

 

[RallyMaster]

Friend says drive is quiet and cannot be heard over his fans. Doesn't notice the doubling of cache over his previous DiamondMax9 (now belongs to me). He agrees with post above me.

I would spend the $90 on the Seagate though. But then again, I swear by Seagate reliability and warranty.

 

[yenningComity]

I am the friend and ignore his rants about Seagate. WD is fine, but if you are going to pay that much why not just buy an oem off newegg and forget the rebates? Also the only time you will notice the extra cache is in benchmarks, in real life the gains aren't going to make a visible difference for the most part.

 

[RallyMaster]

89.99 for the 250GB Seagate SATA 3.0Gbps (free shipping at zzf) http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101541
91.50 for the 250GB WD SATA 3.0Gbps (free shipping at zzf) http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101220-12

 

[willbemcse]

Is there a lot of reliability issues with seagate 7200.8 series.vs 7200.9. I am looking for 200 or sata just wondering if it is worth paying extra for it.

 

[tropic]

Originally posted by: willbemcse
Is there a lot of reliability issues with seagate 7200.8 series.vs 7200.9.

Both series are reliable. Compatibility with quirky Nvidia SATA controllers can be hit or miss, especially with the 7200.9 series. Seagate isn't the only manufacturer with this problem. Anyway, my ST3500641AS needed an updated firmware before it would play nice with my NF4 SATA controller. The update was easily obtained from Seagate tech support and painlessly flashed.

 

[essasin]

I have WD raptors that I purchased in 2003 that have been running strong on machines that are constantly on.

 

[Gdepp519]

I have 3 WD drives.. 1x 40gb [] 2x 200gb

and i've had absolutely no problems with them what'so'ever... but if i didn't buy a
WD then i would buy a segate.. but since i haven't had any problems with WD
i will stick with the company

 

[mikeford]

You can't go by brand on hard drives, even within the same model there can be a lot of variation, but thats the best info you can go on. Search on the model number and see what people have to say about it. To me a 5 year warranty says a LOT, so does a 1 year, just not in the good sense.

 

[OdiN]

WD and Seagate are good. Grab the Seagate since it's cheaper + 5 year warranty.

Just stay away from Maxtor whatever you do.

 

[w00t]

Reliablity I'd say Seagate or Samsung.

 

[Gdepp519]

Originally posted by: w00t
Reliablity I'd say Seagate or Samsung.

samsung?? really??

 

[f1y]

I have that same drive, 3 weeks old. for $75 warrantied until 2009


http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=45&threadid=1836733

 

[edmundoab]

hasn't given me any problems but I hear mix stories about Western Digital

 

[AdamK47]

I don't like that WD drive at all. It uses old 83 GB platters that have been around for years now. The 16MB of cache doesn't make up for that deficiency.

When shopping for hard drives for the past week I decided on getting the 250 GB OEM Samsung P120. I purchased two from Microcenter and put them in RAID-0. These drives have great sustained transfer rates thanks to the 125 GB platters. According to WinBench 99 I get 145 MB/s starting transfer and 86.3 MB/s ending transfer.

 

[imported_Imp]

I recently ran through a Seagate and now have a WD. Just to note, the drives are fine, stupid mobo has defective SATA channels so I had to get a WD IDE HDD. Anyways, the Seagate was MUCH quieter, and I never even heard anything from it (i.e. head parking, spinning, etc.). The WD however is louder with a click on boot and shut down from the head park, which scared the crap out of me when I first had it; apparently, it's classified by WD as normal. In terms of reliability, I've had the WD for about 2 months now with no problem. The Seagate is running in another system fine for 4 months. I actually wanted another Seagate, but they only had 80Gb IDE with 2 Mb cache so that was a no go. Oh well, I'd go either way with WD or Seagate now.

Check out WD's site on warranties. Their "retail" drives only carry 1 year while OEMs go for 3, and if you want it extended to 3, gotta pay up. May be better off going OEM and saving a few bucks there. Think Seagate has 5 year so that's a bit better.