Need HDD advice

XMENPorsche · Post by **XMENPorsche** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 8:42 pm

Just bought a new computer and I'll be adding additional drives. I need a recommendation on hard drives. I eventually plan on adding a SSD boot drive, but for now I just need more storage. Probably going to start with just 1 additional HDD for now.

I refuse to buy Western Digital. I've seen WAY too many of them die at work after a short period of time for me to think that they're reliable. I used to be very high on Hitachi, but I see that they're now owned by WD. Don't know if I can trust them anymore. Thinking about Seagate, but I'm seeing some ugly reviews on Newegg.

Tell me what you guys think? I'm looking for something in the 2Tb, 7200rpm range.

Nilk · Post by **Nilk** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 10:41 pm

hard to say...with the WD bias you rule out the current top ranking WD "Reds". I'd say Samsung, but they are basically Seagate now. Hitachi is basically WD. Not sure if you are buying any platter drives that aren't WD or seagate anymore.

Nilk · Post by **Nilk** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 10:45 pm

Here's the best deals on Seagate hard drives. The 1TB is down around $80, 2Tb around $104 3TB around $140. They have decent overall ratings, though if it were ONE day sooner, they had the 3TB on sale for $120

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barracuda ... XFZ1NZTFHT

Starmage21 · Post by **Starmage21** » Sun Oct 14, 2012 3:17 pm

SSDs are pretty fast, but if you want to spend that kind of money you could have similar performance out of a couple drives in a raid 0 with some kind of offsite backup.

XMENPorsche · Post by **XMENPorsche** » Sun Oct 14, 2012 9:06 pm

What's so special about the WD Red drives? Looks like they carry the same 3 year warranty as the Blue drives. At least the Black Caviar drives carry 5 years.

Nilk · Post by **Nilk** » Sun Oct 14, 2012 9:50 pm

Starmage21 wrote:SSDs are pretty fast, but if you want to spend that kind of money you could have similar performance out of a couple drives in a raid 0 with some kind of offsite backup.

not sure about comparable performance from platter drives in raid 0. my platters in raid 0 come nowhere near the 6gbps my mushkin 240GB SSD hits, though I did pay 180 for it 8 months ago. platter drives are lucky to hit the ceiling of sata 2, much less touch the bandwidth of sata 3.

tbh, I haven't been in the market for a platter for awhile. I'll see what I can turn up on the reds, it just seems if they go on sale, it becomes a hot item. Maybe price for performance? the blacks usually run much more expensive(and my platters are black...though, ok, they don't RAID 0 so well, lol. on the other hand, without the samsung platter drives in the market anymore, there's not many good RAID drives out there anymore.)

Nilk · Post by **Nilk** » Tue Oct 23, 2012 11:21 pm

btw superbiiz has some pretty good hard drive deals. Use coupon UPD8PC to take 15%(up to $15) off of the price..
So this 2TB Seagate, with good reviews on superbiiz, turns into $84 + $5.00 shipping:
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?src ... NUMjJUQVM=

XMEN Ashaman DTM · Post by **XMEN Ashaman DTM** » Sat Oct 27, 2012 6:22 pm

Mine are all WD. I tried samsung once, but the darn thing could not be read in ANY of the motherboards I hooked it up to.

Seagate is probably my second choice. My dad has good experience with them. I've never tried one.

Over the years I've only had one WD drive fail outright.

SSDs are getting cheaper, but you have to spend a bit of cash to get to where the price/GB is a decent deal with the associated performance.

FYI, If you end up breaking your bias and going WD, skip the green or blue drives. Caviar black is what I've run; a bit on the hot side, but no defects or faults. the blue one is the enterprise version, but the ones I've seen come with a 3 year warranty. Green I think is 5400 rpm standard (only).

Good luck!

Skyhawk · Post by **Skyhawk** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 10:06 pm

I like WD myself but its more for the warranty, easiest to get replaced from all hte companies I have delt with. Alot want receipt, WD just wants serial number and can do instantly online. If I remember correctly, green is econo,black is enterprise base, but not sure of the red. Hope this will help a little

SkyHawk

Nilk · Post by **Nilk** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 11:13 pm

red = NAS
blue = general
green = eco(low rpm, high cache, lower voltage)
black = performance(high rpm, high cache)
velociraptor = 10k rpm satas