What's the recommended drive these days?

[Idontcare]

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB for $134.99

Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB for $169.99

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB for $189.99

Is there a consensus on whether any of these specific drives ought to be avoided or preferred?

I see the preliminary performance reviews of Seagate drive coming out, and the Caviar Black makes a good set of benches at Storage Review.

I really don't need 1TB, would be fine with 500GB but I am assuming if you want the best in transfer rates and caches that you got to go with these terabyte drives for their areal densities.

 

[myocardia]

All I'm going to say is that I believe there's a reason that the Samsung's are so much cheaper. I'm not sure if they still have the abysmal failure rate that they had in the past, but I definitely wouldn't trust my data to one of them. Either of the other two should be just fine, although honestly, I can't imagine anyone not choosing 50% more storage for an extra $20.

 

[taltamir]

There are very few drives I have not heard of some bug or another. I heard of some issues with the 1.5TB drive, but i dont recall what, I haven't looked up the caviar black (so that means i dont know, not that it has none). and i heard that the samsung F1 has dropping out of raid issues and failure rates.
But just because some people experience a problem doesn't mean you will. Every time I heard about specific issues with each model, and never have I personally encountered them. (it was just a collection of people on the official forums complaining about the same issue)

 

[n7]

Never trust your data on one HDD...back it up.

That said, i've been very happy w/ my Samsung 1 TB.

Neither the Seagate or WD are remotely worth the excessive extra...i'd suggest looking for sales though.

If the Seagate's 5 yr. warranty (vs. the others' 3 yrs.) appeals to you, you should be able to find the Seagate for a similar price.

NCIX Canada has that Seagate on sale for <$130 pretty much every second week here.

As a note, the 640 GB versions from those same companies use the same larger platters; just two instead of three, & offer similar performance.

 

[hclarkjr]

nice review here of those drives and some others too. i have the 750gb WD caviar black and have not had no problems with it at all. very fast too

 

[Idontcare]

Well in the end I just couldn't pass up this deal on a 500GB Hitachi with free shipping and $49.99 after $10 MIR on the egg.

It's really for storing rarely accessed files locally (tend to do infrequent *.xls searches thru them looking for that file I barely remember from 2004, etc) which of course are backed up on an external drive too.

Couldn't convince myself to convince the wife that I needed that $190 1.5TB drive when I'll only be using about 200GB of it.

Dam you newegg with your sexy daily deals :frown: