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On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 2:39 AM, Mick <michaelkintzios@×××××.com> wrote: |
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> I've been watching this thread with interest, because I've been trying to find |
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> out which HDD I should be buying for a new PC. For every person reporting |
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> problematic Seagates there's another person complaining about Western Digital |
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> being too noisy, failing, or in the case of the black versions, far too |
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> expensive. |
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> |
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> Amidst all the anecdotal aphorisms against one or the other manufacturer, I |
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> saw mentioned that the likelihood of failure doubles up when you go from 1TB |
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> to 2 TB. If true, I guess that the 3TB would have fewer failures than 4TB |
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> drive. |
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> |
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> For what it's worth I have had a number of Seagates failing on me, but since |
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> this was in the 90's. On my laptop a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 (ST9500420ASG) |
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> is running fine for the last 3.5 years so, I was thinking of taking a punt on |
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> a 'Seagate Barracuda 3.5 inch 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB 6GB/S Internal SATA'. But |
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> what you're mentioning here gives me cause to pause. |
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|
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One important thing to know is that there are only 3 HDD manufacturers |
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remaining: Seagate, WD and Toshiba. Any other brand names you see are |
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just relabeled versions of those. Maxtor/IBM/Hitachi/Fujitsu/Samsung |
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and all those who came before them are gone. |
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|
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My personal preference the last several years was always Samsung, I |
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never had a single problem with one of those. Unfortunately they are |
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no longer in the HDD business... |
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|
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In general, for 3.5" drives, I think "NAS" or "RAID" or "Enterprise" |
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branded drives tend to be more expensive, but of a higher quality and |
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rated to run in 24/7 environments. Even if you're not using it that |
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way, it suggests that it's a more rugged drive. The "Personal", |
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"Desktop", "Budget" etc. and drives that come in external enclosures |
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tend to be a roll of the dice. Some have speculated that the HDDs |
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which score lower on quality assurance tests get stuck into these |
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lower-priced lines (kind of like CPU binning). |
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|
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The Seagate "Desktop 4TB" drives I got for $140 have extremely |
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aggressive power-saving and spin-down (sometimes it takes 10 seconds |
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just to access the drive after it spins down!). They are 5400rpm, but |
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that is unadvertised and some people claim to have received 7200rpm. |
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The specs on lifetime are pretty poor. I read that they are only rated |
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for something like 200 days of cumulative use. But I expected it to at |
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least work for a week! I keep running passes of badblocks and it keeps |
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finding new bad sectors that weren't there the previous time I ran it. |
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It is literally degrading before my very eyes. I have zero trust in |
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it. |
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|
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For 2.5" hard drives, I have seen many, many crashed 2.5" drives from |
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every brand, but never had one fail on me personally. I've always |
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attributed it to human influence, people tend to be rough on laptops, |
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tossing them onto the table, dropping them, leaving them in a hot or |
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freezing cold car, etc. Also the nature of laptop use means a lot of |
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on/off which means a lot of hot/cold which is really bad for hard |
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drives. |
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|
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And for 5.25" hard drives I have an old 1.2 GB Quantum drive that |
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sounds like a screaming cat going through a jet engine. You can |
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seriously hear it from outside my house with all the windows and doors |
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closed. But it actually still works all these years later. :) |