# Large Reliable HDD Needed



## red268 (Apr 12, 2009)

I'm running out of space rapidly on my hard drives due to various new projects, (Media course, not pr0n!!) and I need a big storage drive.

I'm looking for a 1TB drive. Performance isn't a big point, but reliability is, since it'll only really be used for storage. Also, a drive with low power consumption would be a bonus.

I've found this one from Western Digital.
What do you think? Any better ones about? Must be in the UK too.

Thanks


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## Darknova (Apr 12, 2009)

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143288

This one is slightly cheaper.

I've got 3 sammy drives, wouldn't use anything else to be honest. Quiet, reliable, quick.

I've found that WDs tend to be be noisier (however, my last WD drive is about 2 years old)


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## red268 (Apr 12, 2009)

Darknova said:


> http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143288
> 
> This one is slightly cheaper.
> 
> ...



That's the one I first looked at. Seems to be quite a lot of people moaning about reliability in the comments though. Also, thought the WD might be a bit better for power consumption. (Not sure how much of a difference it really is though. Apparently 5W, but, that means nothing to me really.)


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## Darknova (Apr 12, 2009)

Honestly mate, it's so close in quality between the Sammys and the WDs you can't go wrong either way. I just prefer Sammy


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## Mussels (Apr 12, 2009)

samsung.

seagate have the firmware issues, and i've had nothing but hell lately with WD drives. they're either slow as Fck capped at 45MB/s on the greenpowers) or very noisy (vibration).

samsungs i've got a lot of, and they've all been good performers, quiet and no vibrations.


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## red268 (Apr 12, 2009)

Mussels said:


> samsung.
> 
> seagate have the firmware issues, and i've had nothing but hell lately with WD drives. they're either slow as Fck capped at 45MB/s on the greenpowers) or very noisy (vibration).
> 
> samsungs i've got a lot of, and they've all been good performers, quiet and no vibrations.



Capped at 45MB/s!! Damn!! Although, I don't usually get much more than 30 when taking media off the camera anyway. But still ....

The WD supposedly has 6 times the life span of the Sammy


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## Mussels (Apr 12, 2009)

red268 said:


> Capped at 45MB/s!! Damn!! Although, I don't usually get much more than 30 when taking media off the camera anyway. But still ....
> 
> The WD supposedly has 6 times the life span of the Sammy



western digital greenpowers are the drives they sell in their external USB enclosures. since USB is capped at 40MB/s (30-35 is most common) they dont care - thats why they tend to be the cheapest ones around.

I get 60-110MB/s on my samsungs, depending which end of the drive the data is on.


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## Darknova (Apr 12, 2009)

red268 said:


> The WD supposedly has 6 times the life span of the Sammy



Most drives will last 5 years or more. Hell, I have old Maxtor harddrives that are a good 8 years old that still work.


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## red268 (Apr 12, 2009)

Well thanks to both of you. I may as well get the Samsung. Slightly cheaper, much faster, can't see the power consumption making much of a difference to be fair, and, hopefully it'll be good and reliable!!

If it lasts well, I'll be getting another one as a back up for the first one.


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## FordGT90Concept (Apr 12, 2009)

I'd get a Seagate Barracuda ES.2 drive myself.  They are offered with 1 TB capacity.  They have a 1.2 million hour MTBF and a 5 year warranty.


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## n-ster (Apr 12, 2009)

You want Reliability? why not Raid 1? It would be extremely reliable! though you'd probably have to bust your budget big time...


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## Darknova (Apr 12, 2009)

n-ster said:


> You want Reliability? why not Raid 1? It would be extremely reliable! though you'd probably have to bust your budget big time...



RAID 1 is not entirely reliable, any corruption is copied 1:1 as well. RAID 5 is better, striped with parity.


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## Ketxxx (Apr 13, 2009)

This Cheaper and a better performer. Review


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## n-ster (Apr 13, 2009)

Darknova said:


> RAID 1 is not entirely reliable, any corruption is copied 1:1 as well. RAID 5 is better, striped with parity.



You need 3 HDs minimum for RAID 5 though no? RAID 1 can handle 1 drive failure... so can RAID 5...


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## Mussels (Apr 13, 2009)

n-ster said:


> You need 3 HDs minimum for RAID 5 though no? RAID 1 can handle 1 drive failure... so can RAID 5...



if you run raid 1 or raid 5 and a virus gets into your machine... the originals and the backups are fucked. it backups the data on the go, so data corruption, user error, or a virus will trash the entire lot.

RAID only prevents data loss from total drive failure... it is NOT a backup solution.


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## Darknova (Apr 13, 2009)

Ketxxx said:


> This Cheaper and a better performer. Review



Ket, That's more expensive mate. It's £100, the others are around the £78 mark.


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## Ketxxx (Apr 13, 2009)

Ebuyer have changed the price sine I linked yesterday, the green drive was  £111. Even with a £20 difference now, the Black is still a much better performing drive for little difference in price.


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## Darknova (Apr 13, 2009)

Ketxxx said:


> Ebuyer have changed the price sine I linked yesterday, the green drive was  £111. Even with a £20 difference now, the Black is still a much better performing drive for little difference in price.



The Samsung F1s are still up there with the WDs, and it's £22 cheaper....


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## Ketxxx (Apr 13, 2009)

F1s have a flaw in them where the WD Black is a good all-rounder. Read the review I linked to


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## Mussels (Apr 13, 2009)

Ketxxx said:


> F1s have a flaw in them where the WD Black is a good all-rounder. Read the review I linked to



what flaw might that be?

edit: found it.

"While drives like Samsung's SpinPoint F1 offer excellent sustained throughput but falter with more random workloads, the latest Caviar doesn't skip a beat when presented with a mix of random read and write requests"

So for an OS drive, samsung might not be so hot. for storage, they're great.


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## Ketxxx (Apr 13, 2009)

Still a flaw. No point getting a drive with a flaw in it. May as well spend that bit extra and know for a good long while the drive can be used for any and all purposes.


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## Mussels (Apr 13, 2009)

Ketxxx said:


> Still a flaw. No point getting a drive with a flaw in it. May as well spend that bit extra and know for a good long while the drive can be used for any and all purposes.



fair enough. It all depends on your intended purposes of the drives. samsung F1 work great for me, as i only use them externally.

Do the F2 drives have the same problem?


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## Darknova (Apr 13, 2009)

> The Caviar Black is in a tricky position, then. Sure, it's the fastest 7,200-RPM drive on the market, but it's also a little pricey and probably too loud for many enthusiasts' desktop systems. The Black is better suited to workstation and server environments that will capitalize on the drive's quick access times and strong performance with workloads that include more randomized I/O request patterns.



Main reason I got my Sammys over WDs, they're louder.

As the OP said, it'll be a storage drive, as such boot times etc. are invalid. I think the WD Black is a great drive, but for a drive purely for storage the F1 is £22 cheaper.


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## Mussels (Apr 13, 2009)

i have 4 sammies running right next to me, and they're hardly audible. one or two drives alone would be silent.

The single seagate in the pile is where most of the noise is coming from.


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## Studabaker (Apr 13, 2009)

To me reliability means Western Digital.

I don't know why everyone is so worried about noise as you didn't mention it (at least in your first post).  My new WD RAID array is absolutely silent, nothing like my 2 year old WD PATA, which was pretty quiet in itself, but nothing like these new drives, they don't make noise at all.


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## Ketxxx (Apr 13, 2009)

WD drives USED to be noisy, god knows, I still use a WD 80GB IDE drive, as good a performer as it was, its damn noisy. Now the case is very different, many people comment on how quiet WD drives are. For me, theres much more satisfaction in buying a drive that you know is the absolute best in its class and can be used for anything. Rather than skimping for the sake of £22 and having that burning question in the back of your mind "Was it really worth cheaping out for the sake of £22 on a much older drive?"

I think most peoples answer to that question would be a firm "No".


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## Mussels (Apr 13, 2009)

Studabaker said:


> To me reliability means Western Digital.
> 
> I don't know why everyone is so worried about noise as you didn't mention it (at least in your first post).  My new WD RAID array is absolutely silent, nothing like my 2 year old WD PATA, which was pretty quiet in itself, but nothing like these new drives, they don't make noise at all.



i've seen so many WD drives die lately, they mean "cheap pieces of sh!t". I expect it varies a bit by region, as they do come from different manufacturing plants.

Your WD might be quiet compared to your old one, and silent in comparison - but in my setup, a single WD (640AAKS, 750 greenpower) was louder than four samsung F1 750GB's.


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## Ketxxx (Apr 13, 2009)

^ I somehow think thats overstating just a tad and the plecebo effect likely played a role given WDs old reputation of loud drives 

In all the years I have used WD drives not a single one has ever failed on me. The oldest one being probably about 10 years old now and still going like it did when it was new. Thats quality construction


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## Mussels (Apr 13, 2009)

Ketxxx said:


> ^ I somehow think thats overstating just a tad and the plecebo effect likely played a role given WDs old reputation of loud drives
> 
> In all the years I have used WD drives not a single one has ever failed on me. The oldest one being probably about 10 years old now and still going like it did when it was new. Thats quality construction



its no placebo effect. i had two WD 640's in there, and the whole e-sata cage would actually vibrate on the desk because of it.

I had three WD 640 AAKS drives die within 12 hours of owning each (they'd work fine until the PC went into sleep mode, then they would never turn on again), and seen two greenpowers die at the local LAN events (bought at the start of the LAN from a nearby store, dead by the end of the lan)

Like i said its quite possible its region specific. Out of the 50 odd samsungs i've bought and resold (i do bulk orders for friends) i've only ever had ONE fail, and that kid had a suspect PSU.

Edit: those failures for the WD's were all late last year. within a 3 months period. The samsung was a few years back.


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## Studabaker (Apr 13, 2009)

Mussels said:


> I had three WD 640 AAKS drives die within 12 hours of owning each (they'd work fine until the PC went into sleep mode, then they would never turn on again), and seen two greenpowers die at the local LAN events (bought at the start of the LAN from a nearby store, dead by the end of the lan)



That sounds highly anomalous, and more like something else was killing the drives.  Wouldn't work again after the computer went to sleep mode?  Like I said, sounds like something else was killing those drives, even the PSU even though you may not want to believe that.


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## Mussels (Apr 13, 2009)

Studabaker said:


> That sounds highly anomalous, and more like something else was killing the drives.  Wouldn't work again after the computer went to sleep mode?  Like I said, sounds like something else was killing those drives, even the PSU even though you may not want to believe that.



oh no, i've said it could be manufacturing defects, the store could have had them next to a rack full of EMP warheads... anything. In my opinion it was some kind of firmware bug, as i got a different revision back from the warranties (which i sold for samsungs)

The point is that everyone has a horror story or brand they wont touch and they rarely agree.


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## Studabaker (Apr 13, 2009)

Mussels said:


> oh no, i've said it could be manufacturing defects, the store could have had them next to a rack full of EMP warheads... anything. In my opinion it was some kind of firmware bug, as i got a different revision back from the warranties (which i sold for samsungs)
> 
> The point is that everyone has a horror story or brand they wont touch and they rarely agree.



That is very true, I did a Google search for which brand HD everyone thinks is the best and Seagate actually won out on one of the forum's polls I looked at.  I just think that Seagate gets around more than WD and is more known than WD, but I based my recent decision to stick with WD on the Newegg reviews where at least 1/10 Seagate buyers is reporting nightmares with their Seagate drives of all sizes and flavors.

My last Seagate drive was a 1.2GB drive, since then I've only had Maxtors and an IBM and a Hitachi DeathStar which both did what they were supposed to do (die gloriously).  My oldest drive which is still around and working is an 80GB Maxtor that was last formatted about 5 years ago and was bought a handful of years before that.

As far as Samsung goes well, every single product of theirs that I have had or dealt with has been absolute garbage and I'd never trust them with my data.


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## Mussels (Apr 13, 2009)

Studabaker said:


> That is very true, I did a Google search for which brand HD everyone thinks is the best and Seagate actually won out on one of the forum's polls I looked at.  I just think that Seagate gets around more than WD and is more known than WD, but I based my recent decision to stick with WD on the Newegg reviews where at least 1/10 Seagate buyers is reporting nightmares with their Seagate drives of all sizes and flavors.
> 
> My last Seagate drive was a 1.2GB drive, since then I've only had Maxtors and an IBM and a Hitachi DeathStar which both did what they were supposed to do (die gloriously).  My oldest drive which is still around and working is an 80GB Maxtor that was last formatted about 5 years ago and was bought a handful of years before that.
> 
> As far as Samsung goes well, every single product of theirs that I have had or dealt with has been absolute garbage and I'd never trust them with my data.



see? man it must suck to choose what brand hard drive to buy these days, if you're new to it all.


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## Studabaker (Apr 13, 2009)

Mussels said:


> see? man it must suck to choose what brand hard drive to buy these days, if you're new to it all.



actually i think you're right on it being _these days_, but not if you're new to it all though.  it was all just so much better back in the day, i remember that pretty much everything just worked and quality issues were rare.  then the cheap chinese stuff started crowding the market and now it's all so hit and miss.  i mean yeah, everything is chinese now (except for some reason they can't make decent capacitors) and the quality is getting better, but it's still not the way it was back in the day.


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## Mussels (Apr 13, 2009)

WD: i've had all these failures
seagate: i've seen at least one drive die from the firmware bug. here in AU we get older stock, so its more common
Samsung: i've had zero issues, others have

The real problem now is that the one drive name/model can have different variations. I remember samsung 250GB drives could have two different motors in them - one was silent (nidec), and one were noisy. You couldnt tell them apart without physically inspecting them.

In the old days you picked a model that had good repute, and you were set - these days you buy two drives with the same name and model, and get two entirely different drives.


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## kenkickr (Apr 13, 2009)

Out of WD, Maxtor(before seagate buyout), Hitachi, Samsung and Seagate:  I have had atleast one from each manufacturer fail on, Samsung the most and about even for the others.  I'm not trying to throw out a statistic but anymore I primarily base my HD decisions off performance and my needs.  

I have been very happy with my WD's and very suprised by the WD 1TB green drive w/ 32mb cache.  It feels just as snappy compared to one of the 1Tb Blacks but much cooler in an enclosure.


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## Ketxxx (Apr 13, 2009)

Given red268 is in the UK like me, my recommendation would have to be WD, never a single drive failure. As far as this side of the pond goes, their the shizzle


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## Darknova (Apr 13, 2009)

Ketxxx said:


> ^ I somehow think thats overstating just a tad and the plecebo effect likely played a role given WDs old reputation of loud drives
> 
> In all the years I have used WD drives not a single one has ever failed on me. The oldest one being probably about 10 years old now and still going like it did when it was new. Thats quality construction



Stick a load of quiet things in a case, but one is slightly louder, which one do you hear?

We're not saying WD aren't quiet, we're saying they're louder 

I have a load of WD drives, hell most of my servers are built on WD drives (2 Windows servers running on 120GB WDs, and my File server which has 3 Sammys and 1 WD, soon to have another WD). They're great for what I need on my servers, but they're all stuck out in the garage so noise is a moot point.

My Main rig runs all Sammys *shrugs*


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## Ketxxx (Apr 13, 2009)

If noise is really that big of a deal (not that WD drives are really any louder than others.. again refer to the review linky) then stick a bit of foam either side of the drive to stop vibrations against the case, sorted


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## Studabaker (Apr 13, 2009)

I might have a cheap no-name brand case but I am in love with the soft plastic drive rails they included for tool-free mounting, they do the job of suspension and sound dampening all at once.  Maybe this is why I do not hear a beep from these new drives.


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## Ketxxx (Apr 13, 2009)

I don't like those clip things.. kinda weak IMO. I'd much rather at the very least go and buy some of those sound dampening soft rubbery screw lug things, secure, and soundproof


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## Studabaker (Apr 13, 2009)

Trust me dude, they ain't weak.


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## Ketxxx (Apr 13, 2009)

When I say weak I mean often those clip things start to make things vibrate with lots of disk activity, if yours don't, then more power to you, most just do, is all.


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## WhiteLotus (Apr 13, 2009)

I have the same WD as linked in the OP. Had it for about a year maybe (imported from the USA) and now it is starting to go. I can hear it seeking and response times seem to be slower some how. I am going to invest in an F1 soon and get an external cage to use the WD as a mass storage drive.


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## Studabaker (Apr 13, 2009)

How is the HD cooling on you guys' rigs anyway?  I can almost certainly blame my last DeathStar's death on the fact that I had 3 HDs stacked directly on top of each other and no fans in the case.  Newer HDs almost certainly need a nice big fan blowing air straight into them.  Just a thought.


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## WhiteLotus (Apr 13, 2009)

I only have one drive and a 92mm fan blowing at it from the front of the case.


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## Mussels (Apr 13, 2009)

2x92mm cooling the 500GB, my e-sata cage has 2x80mm fans for all 5 (one in the PSU)

My single lone external, i sit a fanless AM2 stock heatsink on it... it works.


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## Ketxxx (Apr 13, 2009)

No HDD needs cooling unless its something like a Raptor. If you happen to have any kind of front mounted fan thats more than enough cooling for 99% of HDDs available today.


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## n-ster (Apr 13, 2009)

I say, choose the best bang/buck  I like the 7200.12 on newegg for bang/buck (1 500gb platter) too bad that's not in UK... as for Reliability, just do a backup thing for whatever you think is important... like make a partition where all the important files go and use another drive to back that up? To backup Data from drive failures, RAID 1


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## Play3r (Apr 13, 2009)

hmm i have a one of the newish 1.5TB Segate Drives and i havent had any problems with it.

Seagate ST31500341AS

maybe have a look at one of them?

Got one in Aus for $239


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## red268 (Apr 13, 2009)

Well, as I said, I've ordered the Samsung F1.

I've got an Antec 1200 with only the middle front fan in operation and the top 120mm at the back in operation. My hard drives sit behind the front middle fan, so always have good airflow .... although I'd never really thought about cooling my hard drives properly before.

The only hard drives I've ever had fail are the Seagates I've recently owned, which was a known firmware issue. I'm on my third one of those drives now 

If the Samsung works out well, I'll be buying another one to make a back up of that one .... The one I've just bought will be backing up a 500GB WD Elements external drive. So once the Samsung is full, I'll be buying another one to do a full backup of it, plus another two to start fresh with .... obviously, one for storage and one as a backup.

RAID is not a backup solution. Never liked the idea of it. I see the advantages in speed if running in that config, but not in the config of having a clone. Never seen the point. (Sorry, can't remember which is which, RAID 1 or RAID 0 etc etc.)

For everyone that recommended the Samsung, thanks for the votes of confidence!!

For everyone that recommended the Samsung, if it goes wrong, I'll be looking for you!!


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## Hayder_Master (Apr 14, 2009)

WD green = power save and slow speed
WD blue = performance
WD black = performance high speed
so the green one is useful for recovery , like on your link


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