# What's a good harddrive that's not too expensive?



## JUDOHAWK (Jun 7, 2010)

Long story short, my Caviar blue a little over a year old just up and died today.  Completely dead.

So I got an RMA set up and sent it off to WD. But I've heard of people having issues with their drives they receive back.  

Luckily though, I kept my old Sata Hitachi deskstar  Had to install and OS and all that jazz so I may even just keep using this drive for the hell of it.

But in the event that the replacement drive gives me troubles I think I'd rather just buy a new one than ship it back to them again.  I have little patience to play the refurb musical chairs game.


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## slyfox2151 (Jun 7, 2010)

a nice blue or black WD 1, 1.5 or 2 TB drive ^^ there fairly cheap. i think the 1tb drive go for $70 USD or $88 australian.


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## JUDOHAWK (Jun 7, 2010)

Yea, but depending on how this RMA goes I might try another brand instead.


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 7, 2010)

Samsung F3, it's available in 500Gb, 1Tb, 1.5 and 2Tb.

It's quite cheap and a fantastic drive, performance wise.


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## JUDOHAWK (Jun 7, 2010)

Those are reliable yea?  I mean I totally didn't expect my caviar blue to die on me. I had no issues whatsoever everything was working quick :/


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## hat (Jun 7, 2010)

Get a WD Caviar Black.
Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200...

I've noticed WD has these "RE3" drives out now... what's up with those?


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 7, 2010)

JUDOHAWK said:


> Those are reliable yea?  I mean I totally didn't expect my caviar blue to die on me. I had no issues whatsoever everything was working quick :/



Reliability cannot be guaranteed, outside of a warranty from the manufacturer. None of the manufacturers make "Unreliable" drives(Outside of the IBM Deathstar), a lot of people will give you horror stories of X company, because they haven't had drives other than theirs, or extremely small samples.


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## slyfox2151 (Jun 7, 2010)

personaly iwould just get a nother WD drive, its unlikely a nother one will die (acuatly the odds decress for you since you already had one drive die )


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## hat (Jun 7, 2010)

If you're very worried about data redundancy, get a RAID 1 array.


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 7, 2010)

slyfox2151 said:


> personaly iwould just get a nother WD drive, its unlikely a nother one will die (acuatly the odds decress for you since you already had one drive die )



the odds don't change, one drive does not effect a new drive. 

the F3 series are faster than raptors in general IIRC.


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## JUDOHAWK (Jun 7, 2010)

Well I'll see how my RMAd drive does first.

In general I'd probably just get another WD drive anyway since I loved it when it was running.  But this morning it was completely dead.

I suppose there were some warning signs though.  The past few days on startup where it detects the drive it was taking upwards of almost 30 seconds and it almost seemed to hang. But past that everything was quick.

Then with this hitachi in everything's normal now.


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## MilkyWay (Jun 7, 2010)

Dippyskoodlez said:


> Samsung F3, it's available in 500Gb, 1Tb, 1.5 and 2Tb.
> 
> It's quite cheap and a fantastic drive, performance wise.



Yes i can also vouch for the Samsung F3 drives they are good for the price to performance. If you want to get energy efficient drives there are the WD Green drives. WD Black drives are supposed to be fast. Most drives have a chance of failing but i don't think of it you can RMA and everything will be fine like you just have done.

See how your drive does when it comes back first.


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## eidairaman1 (Jun 7, 2010)

Never had a bad product from Hitachi, or Seagate. Had a few fails from WD, IBM, and Maxtor.  Never tried Samsung but hear they are good.


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## JUDOHAWK (Jun 7, 2010)

Well this Hitachi has been running great for awhile, glad I still have it.

Really saved my ass when my WD drive failed on me.


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## JUDOHAWK (Jun 10, 2010)

Well I sent it out first thing monday and it's showing as received right now. Shouldn't be long now.

I've heard from people recently who sent in a blue and got back a black.

But I couldn't be so lucky lol.

Almost forgot to ask.  What's the best way to test out the new drive?


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## Indra EMC (Jun 10, 2010)

I'm using* SEAGATE* HDD since my first build, and have no problems with them


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## FreedomEclipse (Jun 10, 2010)

I highly recommend Samsung hard drives. I use to be a heavy user of Maxtor before they were aquired by seagate, the average lifespan of almost continous daily use around 3years before they break & thats why i stopped using them


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## Mr McC (Jun 10, 2010)

I agree with Dippy, Kieran and Freedom: a Samsung F3 is hard to beat in terms of price, performance and reliability.



Indra EMC said:


> I'm using* SEAGATE* HDD since my first build, and have no problems with them http://www.kaskus.us/images/smilies/jempol1.gif



Due to firmware problems that affected a considerable number or drives, Seagate made me return what was probably a perfectly good motherboard and the issues continued until I finally isolated the cause of my problems. I wouldn't recommend Seagate.


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## pr0n Inspector (Jun 10, 2010)

Just a warning, Samsung outsources its support department. Depending on your region, you may get horrible or excellent support.


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## Radical_Edward (Jun 10, 2010)

I've had okay luck with Seagate. I've owned 4 of their hard drives, I have another on the way. Of those first four 1 was DOA and another started going bad another 7 years of use. (One bad sector, started throwing errors.) 

I've not had too much experience with Western Digital. I've dealt with a few of their 80GB models with no issues, I had one of their older 160GB SATA drives for a while as a back up drive. I just purchased a 500GB model, so we'll see how happy I am with them after that get's here. 

I do honestly have a 200GB WD IDE drive that I use as a paper weight, as it has the tick of death and everything... My brother has ordered something like 80+ WD's and has yet to get a DOA. But that may just be good luck on his part.


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## DanTheMan (Jun 10, 2010)

I've had both Seagate and WD drives, Seagate for 6 years and WD for 4. The WD crapped out about 2 months ago. Before it died I bought another drive and used the USB docking station with Acronics to clone the old WD drive before it failed on me. After it finally failed I RMA to WD, got a new one (according to manuf date of drive) and I now use the RMA one as my backup drive in the docking station. But if you get a WD get the black edition - 5 year warranty.


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## JUDOHAWK (Jun 10, 2010)

Well my RMA is enroute to me now, looks to be the same model.  

Let's see how long it lasts.


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## brandonwh64 (Jun 10, 2010)

I like my WD 1tb black drive! it paired with my two 500GB blue drives in raid 0 is very fast


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## techguy31 (Jun 10, 2010)

Get a Samsung Spinpoint F3 it is super great and I got it for 70 bucks.


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## _JP_ (Jun 10, 2010)

The Seagates 7200.12 are getting very good on the price/performance ratio and I've haven't got one that failed me...yet.

*knocks on wood*

Reliability wise, there were some problems with the 7200.11, but that's history.
WD is good too, although the WD on my laptop died and it only had 1 year and 3 months.

All in all, I say Seagate. I don't know about prices where you live, but here it's as good as it gets.


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## m1dg3t (Jun 11, 2010)

Never had any issues with WD, no one in my family/friend circle has ever had any issue with WD. TBH I actually prefer my 1tb black over a raptor i used to run


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## JUDOHAWK (Jun 11, 2010)

I loved my blue, it ran great.

Then like a week ago it started taking along time to start up in BIOS like the motor wasn't spinning up.  But once it did I had no issues.

Then on monday I went to start up the PC and it was dead.

It was a good drive though.


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## MN12BIRD (Jun 11, 2010)

I'm with JP on this one.  Seagate 1TB but make sure it's the 7200.12 and not the 7200.11.  Seagate had some issues with the 7200.11 series but the 12th gen drives all seem to be kick ass.  They were the first to get 500GB platters and the single platter 500GB and double platter 1TB drives are smoking fast!

The Seagate runs cooler and the performance is basically on par with the WD Black. Actually most benchmarks I've seen say the Seagate is a bit faster but I've seen a few that said the opposite.  I know the tech gauge review says in most "real world" benchmarks the Seagate was a tad faster.  Oh and did I mention it costs less? 

Well the WD Black has a 5 yr warranty vs 3 yr on the Seagate so I guess some could argue that's worth the extra cost.


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## eidairaman1 (Jun 11, 2010)

TBH I just use what I use, I however Noticed that I had a 80GB Hitachi with 2MB Cache vs a WD 80GB with 8 MB and the Hitachi was overall faster with data access/latencies and read/write operations. Certainly felt Windows booted faster on the Hitachi


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## JUDOHAWK (Jun 11, 2010)

This Hitachi I have in now is a tank *knock on wood*

I think if I have to end up buying a new drive I'll look at prices for Seagate and WD and decide from there.
Thanks for the suggestions though.

When I bought this caviar blue a year ago I was leaning towards a samsung spinpoint but got a pretty good deal on the blue.  So we'll see.


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## MN12BIRD (Jun 11, 2010)

eidairaman1 said:


> TBH I just use what I use, I however Noticed that I had a 80GB Hitachi with 2MB Cache vs a WD 80GB with 8 MB and the Hitachi was overall faster with data access/latencies and read/write operations. Certainly felt Windows booted faster on the Hitachi



Great point and it just goes to show you more cache doesn't ALWAYS mean faster Hard Drive!


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## eidairaman1 (Jun 11, 2010)

MN12BIRD said:


> Great point and it just goes to show you more cache doesn't ALWAYS mean faster Hard Drive!



whole thing is with an HD its going to be dependent on how fast the heads can read and write along with the platter design along with how fast it rotates, and then the quality of the PCB and ICs including cache.

Obviously the faster a platter spins it will be overall faster at access and read/write commands from that standpoint. SSDs I believe now have to rely on a RTC now along with the operating frequency of the ICs. Cache is a good thing but it has to be efficient to make a difference.


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## JUDOHAWK (Jun 14, 2010)

Getting my RMA'd drive from UPS today.

Exactly one week from the day I sent off the dead one.

For a standard RMA that's pretty damn good turnaround time. Considering I had to send it off first and I sent it off usps.


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## m1dg3t (Jun 14, 2010)

JUDOHAWK said:


> Getting my RMA'd drive from UPS today.
> 
> Exactly one week from the day I sent off the dead one.
> 
> For a standard RMA that's pretty damn good turnaround time. Considering I had to send it off first and I sent it off usps.



Nice! It's always good when a company treat's you right


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## Tatty_One (Jun 14, 2010)

Moved thread to "Storage" because I like my drawers tidy


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## Oscnn (Jun 15, 2010)

Saw that Hitachi 1 TB Deskstar SATA 7200 RPM 32 MB Cache Internal Hard Drive is only $60 now..That is really a good price. Hope it helps.


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## JUDOHAWK (Jun 16, 2010)

Well if it's any consolation, so far so good *knock on wood*

We'll see though.


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## ShRoOmAlIsTiC (Jun 16, 2010)

I plan on never buy anything other then WD again.  They have the best customer service I have ever seen.  I rma'd 2 150gb raptors the other day and yesterday I got 2 300gb velociraptors in return.  took a total of about 5 days.  I still need to ship out the 150 raptors but the advanced rma option is the shit.  They deffinitly earned my alligence


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## JUDOHAWK (Jun 16, 2010)

Hell I did the standard RMA where I send in first and it only took 5 business days to receive a drive back.


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## MohawkAngel (Jun 16, 2010)

Western Digital Black - performance 89$ for 640 gigs at my local store. Stata 2 7200 RPM 32 megs cache


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