Hard Drive Shipments Rebound to Record Level in 2012

[cdawall]

Why exactly are we arguing what brand is best? It has zero to do with the original topic. Oh wait it's because ONE person's opinion is seagate is crap and all of the anti-seagate pro-WD croonies have emerged.

Since we are going to be way off of topic does anyone have any opinions not based on fact whatsoever they want to share about? Anyone for an anti AMD debate?

 

[Jetster]

Love AMD

 

[KainXS]

I've heard it's usually cheaper per GB to buy an external drive, and tear out the drive. Voids the warrantee, but they make exceptions if you claim to have taken it out to recover data if the drive fails... but then that probable depends on the brand.

I've had all brands of drives fail on me, but I usually stick with WD.

its true, it is cheaper, and it makes no sense, . . . . well at least in my area

 

[Jetster]

Its the supply and demand thing. USB drives just don't sell

 

[damric]

You can keep your slow, noisy, heavy, hot, unreliable hard drives. I'm never buying one again.

 

[jihadjoe]

It makes sense that they'll sell a ton of drives now that prices are starting to normalize. Demand is still inflated from the shortage during the flood and subsequent high prices.
A lot of people have been holding off on buying drive, but will have to eventually (or lose out on pr0n).

 

[Aquinus]

Hard drives rarely fail on me, and when they do, they're Western Digital. Which is fine, because I understand that drives aren't made perfectly and stuff can happen in the design and manufacturing process. It doesn't bother me, because WD tends to offer a good warranty and good performance drives. I find if the drive lasts a year (of a lot of use, 24/7 machine) it will most likely outlive the warranty. I have a 40Gb IDE drive from 9 years ago and it still works great. It has something like 4 and 1/2 years of up time (as recorded by smart,) and the drive (for IDE) still works great, and you know what. That's a Western Digital too. WD has great support and great drives, and if you don't get a drive that is great, then their great support will replace it quickly. It doesn't usually take them more than a day to process the RMA once they get it and they send it back 2-day shipping. At least, that has been my experience.

All in all, at least when a WD drive fails, WD will cover it and I know it's going to take me no time to request the RMA and send it out.

 

[ChristTheGreat]

Why exactly are we arguing what brand is best? It has zero to do with the original topic. Oh wait it's because ONE person's opinion is seagate is crap and all of the anti-seagate pro-WD croonies have emerged.

Since we are going to be way off of topic does anyone have any opinions not based on fact whatsoever they want to share about? Anyone for an anti AMD debate?

When someone says something which is false, why would we stay hidden and not correct?

You want an opinion, I will give you one: It is like the Petrol. demand stay high so if they Up the price, it will stay. Just like when they move from 1.35$/L to 1.49$ and the barrel didn't changed...

The price is not even like what we had. Before the Flood, HDD Green 2Tb, I could find for 65$, had a Warranty of 3years... Now we can find green or Seagate 2Tb for like 100$, but they seems cheaper than before. SO they have a shipment record, yeah, and at high price, this is not logic... So basically, they were able to produce enought drive, and if you remember, it was on october? so 3 months after, we where in 2012. So this went kinda fast to be able to rebuild their production..

 

[bmaverick]

Just one week before the WD flooding in Asia, my Samsung 1T drive with warranty was $32 shipped from the NewEgg.

I had given up on WD drives in the past 5 years since 4 had died. Before that it was SeaGate. So, this Samsung is going strong now. It's beaten two WD drives that had died in a shorter time.

 

[newtekie1]

When someone says something which is false, why would we stay hidden and not correct?

You want an opinion, I will give you one: It is like the Petrol. demand stay high so if they Up the price, it will stay. Just like when they move from 1.35$/L to 1.49$ and the barrel didn't changed...

The price is not even like what we had. Before the Flood, HDD Green 2Tb, I could find for 65$, had a Warranty of 3years... Now we can find green or Seagate 2Tb for like 100$, but they seems cheaper than before. SO they have a shipment record, yeah, and at high price, this is not logic... So basically, they were able to produce enought drive, and if you remember, it was on october? so 3 months after, we where in 2012. So this went kinda fast to be able to rebuild their production..

The problem is that right before the flood, WD and Seagate were actually loosing money on every desktop drive they sold. Hitachi's and Samsung's hard drive divisions were dumping drives on the market at extremely low prices just to raise capital because they were struggling. So WD and Seagate had to match the prices to compete.

Then the flood hits, supply drops, and prices skyrocket. Hitachi and Samsung's hard drive divisions are still struggling, so the parent companies decide to sell them off, so they are bought by WD and Seagate.

So now drives are selling for what they should be selling at to make a profit. The prices are back down to where they were about 9 months before the flood. We got spoiled for about 6 months before the flood by extremely low prices on hard drives because of Hitachi and Samsung flooding the market with cheap drives, but there was no way that could continue for very long, flood in Thailand or not. Drives are still selling for $0.05/GB, that is extremely cheap prices, 2 years ago the prices were about double that.

 

[cdawall]

When someone says something which is false, why would we stay hidden and not correct?

That has absolutely nothing to do with Seagate being shitty drives and WD being god. So no you completely missed the point of my post and are making a fool of yourself.

 

[Hood]

That has absolutely nothing to do with Seagate being shitty drives and WD being god. So no you completely missed the point of my post and are making a fool of yourself.

They're all shitty drives, Seagate's are just a bit shittier. There must be a reason their drives sell so much cheaper than anyone else's. Is it because they love us and want to give us a great deal? - no. It's because they can barely give them away as door prizes, much less SELL them at retail. I'll bet lots of OEM computers come with Seagate drives lately, which is fine since the $20 power supply won't last 6 months anyway, nor will the $50 motherboard.
There, how's that for a Seagate rant? Now let's hear someone shred WD for a while...

 

[n-ster]

Just look at reviews on the internet to see if the drive is good or not

I need my experience Seagate have a bit more of bad drives, but their good drives last a long time. I also experienced drives weaker to shock by Seagate

For an external drive that I want to put in an external enclosure, I avoid Seagate, for the rest I usually don't mind Samsung Seagate or Western Digital

While pre flood drives were really cheap, those pride would be fine right now as tech prices always fall

 

[Hood]

I like the WD Caviar Blacks, they are 7200s and have a 5 year warranty (WD green & blue are 2 years, but Seagate Barracudas are only 1 year). like n-ster said, look at the reviews - half the barracudas fail in the first 6 months if they work at all, there's mixed reviews on the WD greens, and glowing reviews on the WD blacks. The blacks cost almost twice as much, but you probably won't lose your data. I've had 2 of the WD green 2TB drives (pre-flood $79 each) running non-stop for 2 years now and both still show 100% drive health, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but my next drive purchase will be a WD black 2TB ($189!) because I need a reliable back up drive for my extensive 24-96 music collection (820 GB and growing).

 

[Grave]

That's why I'm struggling for so much time with free space.... I'm ain't buying a new HD until prices are "normal" again. I can do with my 2.5 TB total.... if needed I'll just delete some HD films or games that I don't watch/play.

I got used to the low margin and big quantity on the PC industry, I'm not paying $$$$$$$ for an HD or VGA that must have been out much cheaper. So I keep holding or buying good used stuff for cheap, like mine 6870.... if more people did that prices would be a lot more reasonable.

last hdd i bought was a year ago and i'm not buying another one until the prices are at least on the same level they were before the price gouging started. i usually buy several hdds per year so its their loss.

 

[Drmark]

I have had 3 Seagate 2tb green drives fail this year out of 11. I just bought 4 Hitachi 4tb drives to start replacing the Seagates.
And with this good news.. where are the 5tb drives they promised us in Feb?

 

[Hood]

I have had 3 Seagate 2tb green drives fail this year out of 11. I just bought 4 Hitachi 4tb drives to start replacing the Seagates.
And with this good news.. where are the 5tb drives they promised us in Feb?

I never heard that 5TB drives were coming, where did you hear that? Maybe they realized that even the 3TB drives were having issues. I'm staying with 2TB drives until the larger ones get more reliable. As for your Seagates, 3 out of 11 in one year is not very good odds. In the past 2 years, I bought 5 WD drives of various capacities and colors, and all 5 are still showing 100% health. So how are the 4TB Hitachis working? Any issues? I have a Hitachi external 1TB drive that's still going after 2 years, even though it's enclosure is fanless and it runs 10c hotter than the drives in my case.

 

[newtekie1]

The blacks cost almost twice as much, but you probably won't lose your data.

Yeah, but at the price of the Black drives you are up in the same price range as the Seagate enterprise Constellation drives, so those are what you should be comparing them to, not the Barracudas.

 

[Hood]

Yeah, but at the price of the Black drives you are up in the same price range as the Seagate enterprise Constellation drives, so those are what you should be comparing them to, not the Barracudas.

I'm not really comparing them, just saying that for maximum data retention, the WD blacks are your best bet. But I haven't studied the Constellations, so I will definitely look into that before I buy. What are your thoughts on and experiences with the high end Seagates?

 

[TheMailMan78]

Yeah, but at the price of the Black drives you are up in the same price range as the Seagate enterprise Constellation drives, so those are what you should be comparing them to, not the Barracudas.

I had two WD Blacks die on me last year. All Mfg. have bad drives. IMO its just luck of the draw. Its all about the "bath tub" scale man.

 

[Frick]

I had two WD Blacks die on me last year. All Mfg. have bad drives. IMO its just luck of the draw. Its all about the "bath tub" scale man.

New drives with new technology (or when they are pushing the sizes) generally have a higher fault rate, at least to begin with. Not so surprising but it's good to know about it.

 

[AsRock]

The problem is the demand never changed.

So true if any thing it got bigger witch is not surprising for multiple reasons.

 

[Hood]

Its all about the "bath tub" scale man.

I like the "bathtub curve" analogy - if your drive fails in the middle of the curve, your money went "down the drain", because it's probably out of warranty. At the beginning a failure gets you a new drive, at the end of the curve you already received more value than what you paid for. So they probably design them to fail right after the warranty is up. But with the 5 year warranty on WD Blacks, compared to 1 or 2 year on most others, isn't it worth the higher price in the long run? (price 1.8 times as much, warranty 2.5 to 5 times as much).

 

[Drmark]

The Hitachi's are running around 100-109F and working out well. No issues or problems yet. The Seagates are running around 90-98F. Slow to run, slow to start-up and crappy.
There are a few places on the internet where during Oct 2011- Feb 2012 the drive Mfg's said the 5tb's would be out by March-ish 2012 sometime.

 

[newtekie1]

I'm not really comparing them, just saying that for maximum data retention, the WD blacks are your best bet. But I haven't studied the Constellations, so I will definitely look into that before I buy. What are your thoughts on and experiences with the high end Seagates?

Actually, if you want maximum data retention, RAID1/5/6 are your best bet. I'll take 3 Barracudas in RAID5 over a single WD Black any day.

I had two WD Blacks die on me last year. All Mfg. have bad drives. IMO its just luck of the draw. Its all about the "bath tub" scale man.

I've got two WD Blues dead on my desk right now that are less than 2 months old, they were purchased Aug. 3rd. I've received a WD RE that was DOA about 6 months ago, and had a RE die after less than 6 months in service.

I completely agree with you, it is luck of the draw with hard drives, from anyone and from any product class. So if that data is important, it should always be in at least two places.