So what is the most reliable HDD de jour?


Roscoe62

Recommended Posts

I've seen all the posts on the WD EARS drives and I've got to say it's making me a little nervous. I've got 3 WD EADS drives in my array and I'm really happy with their peformance, but locally I can't get a hold of any more.

 

At the moment I've still got some Seagates, but I've been bitten with a few unreliable ones, and I don't like the constant clicking sounds some of them make so I'm hesitant to go back to using them.

 

Does anyone have any recommendations at this point in time?

Link to comment
Guest smnas

Hello. I use to be a one-sided man when came to hard drives. I use to always buy Western Digital drives, then only bought Seagates. I change between the two every five years for so, but to be honest, their a muchness of a muchness. I've bought more Seagates than Western Digitals, and neither of the brands or drives that I own or owned haven't failed me (fingers crossed :) ).

My unRAID server only has Seagates in it, so I'd recommend SG drives, and for my server, I'll be sticking with SG drives. I would not recommend other brands like Samsung as their a company that tries to do everything, and it's best to pick a HDD company which only makes HDDs as they put a lot of R&D into one thing not dozens of different things. That is my theory and would only go the two brands, SG just a little bit more :). Cheers!

Link to comment

What's wrong with the EARS drives? To my knowledge Linux is fully prepared to use 4k drives. Are they physically failing? I haven't heard anyone complaining about these drives failing.

 

My only recommendation from personal experience is to NOT use Seagate or Maxtor drives. I never had a WD drive fail on me.

Link to comment

I've been buying Seagate only for a number of years.  They have been quieter which I find very important.  And they are very reliable.  I have had drives from all makers fail.  Seagate drives have been the most reliable for me and when they failed, gave ample warning.  Plus, the company handles replacing drives in a simple quick manner.  I was lucky not to have purchased any of the 1.5 gig drives when they had the bad firmware.

I'll always buy Seagate and prefer 5 year warranty drives which most of mine are.  I write the date when I start using them on the drive cover and when the warranty is up I take them out of service and they only get used as temp spares afterwards.  I don't buy the biggest size or the very latest model.  That is how I avoided the 1.5 gig fiasco.  Wait for the models to prove themselves in the market.  Read the drive reviews and take them to heart.

 

However, I've been reading about the WD green drives here on the unRAID forum and may be open to using them in my unRAID machine if I won't see much of a performance hit.  They use less power and at least in the near future I'm not very confident in using Seagates 5900 rpm drives which are also lower power.  However, once Seagate works out the bugs in those drives they should have alot to offer.

 

I can't bring myself to even think about buying drives from any manufacturer except Seagate and maybe WD. 

Link to comment
Guest smnas

A good point on the acoustics of the sound that both WD and SG drives emit, WDs have a better known track record of building quieter drives as some of their drives use fluid ballbearings, unlike SG drives which I believe only use traditional ballbearings, the fluid-based ballbearing drives generates less noise. Unless your a sound engineer or plan to use 16+ drives, SG drives are good for for the job.

Link to comment

heh queeg, your post has reassured my choice to stay away from Seagate drives. You talk about all the bad experiences that you have had with them yet say you will buy again. I choose to vote with my money. One question about warranty. Aren't they all 3 years now? I would love to find a drive that was 5 years. Maybe only high end ones are? Though you are talking about 1.5gig drives and that was a long long time ago so they might had been 5 years back then.

 

In fact, I still have one Seagate drive around. A 250gig drive a friend gave me when he upgraded. It's in my unraid server at the moment and man is it LOUD. It sounds like a jet engine when it spins up and has a high pitch whine while spinning. Sounds like the bearings are going out. Also clicks more than once when it spins up. Anyway, again just my experience with them.

 

I may also buy another Seagate but only if the price is a lot lower than a comparable WD, and only for my unraid server that can recover when it fails.

Link to comment

Yeah, I'm another that got hit with the Seagate firmware fiasco, and I do find the Seagate "clicking" sound very off-putting. I've been very impressed with the WD EADS drives I bought but, like most good things, they have to go and change things!  :-\

 

Still, it sounds like the WD EARS drives might be OK for Unraid as long as they are jumpered. I only hope they SUPPLY the jumper!

Link to comment

Still, it sounds like the WD EARS drives might be OK for Unraid as long as they are jumpered. I only hope they SUPPLY the jumper!

 

Umm, care to explain yourself? What is the jumper for? I might be getting one of these soon and heard nothing about having to jumper it.

Link to comment

I'm in favor of Seagates. I've got around 15, some I've had running for 9 years or more all day 5-6 days a week. I think I only have one WD still in service. In the past I started buying WDs but most have died in less that 3 or 4 years while the Seagates are still running.

Link to comment

The Jumper is to select backwards-compatibility mode on the drive. This is required to realize the full performance capabilities of the drive.

That's what I thought he was talking about. But why is it required for unRAID? I read elsewhere that this only affects windows XP and that Linux and every other modern OS is ready for the change. Is this just something particular to unRAID that the developer didn't account for? If so I hope there is an unRAID update to fix this soon. That backwards compatibility lowers performance and will probably require a reformat of the drive if it is changed later on.

Link to comment

heh queeg, your post has reassured my choice to stay away from Seagate drives. You talk about all the bad experiences that you have had with them yet say you will buy again. I choose to vote with my money. One question about warranty. Aren't they all 3 years now? I would love to find a drive that was 5 years. Maybe only high end ones are?

I have had great experience with Seagate.  All drives eventually fail.  When I look around my place I see a bunch of older Seagate drives that are still runnable but beyond their warranty date.  I've bought lots of drives over the years.  No other brand lasted past their warranty date for me.  Yes, I have had a couple Seagate drives fail.  They gave ample warning and I didn't lose data.  Seagate replaced them.  

 

Though you are talking about 1.5gig drives and that was a long long time ago so they might had been 5 years back then.

Yes, it's been a long while since Seagate had a bad drive.  Thanks for pointing that out.  But my comment wasn't really about that.  It was about having a strategy of not buying the latest and greatest model until it's proven itself in the marketplace.  Read the reviews from the buyers at Newegg as a part of that. 

 

In fact, I still have one Seagate drive around. A 250gig drive a friend gave me when he upgraded. It's in my unraid server at the moment and man is it LOUD. It sounds like a jet engine when it spins up and has a high pitch whine while spinning. Sounds like the bearings are going out. Also clicks more than once when it spins up. Anyway, again just my experience with them.

Seagate drives have been the quietest in the market for a long time so I'm guessing that 250GB drive is really old.  If that is your only experience with Seagate then I'd say you don't have any experience with Seagate drives.

 

 

Link to comment

My preferences are (in order): WD Green, Samsung EcoGreen, Seagate LP.

 

I won't touch Hitachi, Maxtor, or Fujitsu.

 

The majority of the drives in my server are WD Green EADS.  Since those are no longer available, I would recommend WD Green EARS (I currently have a 1 TB EARS).  Mine did not ship with the jumper, so be prepared to provide it yourself - at least they are cheap.  Or perhaps if you gripe to WD enough, they will ship you a couple.

 

My server currently has two Samsung EcoGreens also, a 1.5 TB and a 1 TB.  The 1.5 TB is currently my parity drive.  In my experience, these drives may or may not need a jumper.  The 1 TB drive did, and I didn't give the 1.5 TB drive a chance without one (I installed the jumper before hooking it up to any computer).  Once jumpered, both Samsung drives have been operating perfectly well - their temperatures are similar to the WDs, and they are just as quiet.

 

I haven't bought a Seagate drive in years, but based on the reviews of the Seagate LPs on these forums, I would trust them.  If I found a Seagate LP on some crazy sale (such as a 2 TB for under $100), then I would buy it.  Otherwise, I would go for either WD or Samsung.

 

It's a bit dated, but here's a fairly similar discussion from last year, with some good points made by the other contributors:

Is Western Digital the only good hard drive manufacturer these days?

 

Nitpicky edit: Also, 'Hard Drive' is masculine in French (disque dur), so the phrase would be 'HDD du jour'.  ;)

Link to comment
Guest smnas

I think both WD and SG HDD's have had their bad experiences in the past, and it seems to be the case from the feedback on this forum. It could be a bad batch from either company and it will leave a bad taste in peoples mouths. Some people vote with their wallets, while others with their opinions.

I'm in Australia and Seagate drives or anything from $5 to $15 dollars more than the WD's, so that might indicate that people are favouring SG's here a little more and the PC shops profiting from a increase the price, or maybe their better quality with lesser returns for faults? Something to think about there too.

As was posted earlier, I would stay away from Maxtor, Hitachi, and other brands alike, as WD and SG are pioneers in the HDD field. It is interesting though that others are raving about Samsung, that is funny as I've seems heaps of them fail, both past and present from weeks old to not even reaching a year old. Maybe their investing a lot of R&D into their HDD's now or just better at building them? Not sure on that, but I would not buy a Samsung, that is for sure.

Either all, I find both WD and SG's to be fine, it depends on cost, over sound, over their reviews/opinions on the purchaser too, or all of the above. The SG's were more expensive for me in the end, about $15 dollars a pop more, and I've got 7 in the unRAID server alone, but I believe their just a little better, again, each to their own. Cheers!

Link to comment

One question about warranty. Aren't they all 3 years now? I would love to find a drive that was 5 years. Maybe only high end ones are? Though you are talking about 1.5gig drives and that was a long long time ago so they might had been 5 years back then.

 

Seagate OEM drives have the 3 year warranty now. Their retail packaged drives still have the 5 year warranty.

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.