which 1TB HD: WD Caviar black/hitachi deskstar/samsung f3

[student_trap]

Hello all

Just found out that my 2 samsung drives are on their way out, and need to get another drive asap. The two drives that are dying are both samsung f1's (1x 1TB and 1x 750GB).

I am really quite in the dark over what are any good, and also do not have too much cash: only about £70. So I can only get one drive for the moment.

I have been looking at the WD caviar black (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146082), the hitachi deskstar (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/177466) and samsung spinpoint f3 (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804).

My requirements are a fast drive (it is my boot drive), and also for it to be silent and reliable.

I am disappointed that my current 2 samsung drives are just about to die after 1.5 years, and have heard that the deskstars are very unreliable and the WD's quite loud (I have also had a DOA external WD drive before so am a little wary here too).

Can anyone comment on these drives in any way? I would go for the samsungs as they seem on paper to be the best, but after being stung twice already, Ii don't have much faith in them.

Please help guys as I need to order something ASAP before I loose all of my data :eek:

[SatyMahajan]

Hello all

Just found out that my 2 samsung drives are on their way out, and need to get another drive asap. The two drives that are dying are both samsung f1's (1x 1TB and 1x 750GB).

I am really quite in the dark over what are any good, and also do not have too much cash: only about £70. So I can only get one drive for the moment.

I have been looking at the WD caviar black (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146082), the hitachi deskstar (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/177466) and samsung spinpoint f3 (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804).

My requirements are a fast drive (it is my boot drive), and also for it to be silent and reliable.

I am disappointed that my current 2 samsung drives are just about to die after 1.5 years, and have heard that the deskstars are very unreliable and the WD's quite loud (I have also had a DOA external WD drive before so am a little wary here too).

Can anyone comment on these drives in any way? I would go for the samsungs as they seem on paper to be the best, but after being stung twice already, Ii don't have much faith in them.

Please help guys as I need to order something ASAP before I loose all of my data :eek:

I use 3 x 1TB WD Caviar Black (1 TB Mac OS X + Apps + Music, 1TB Projects, 1TB Windows) and 1 x 2TB WD Caviar Green (Time Machine)

Would highly recommend them.

[nanofrog]

Samsung and Hitachi's SATA drives aren't that reliable in my experience.

WD OTOH, has given me much better service lately. They also have higher UBE (Unrecoverable Bit Error) rates of 1E15 rather than 1E14 you typically find for consumer models, and they also have a longer warranty (5yrs vs. 3yrs).

Hope it helps. :)

[bearcatrp]

I run Hitachi exclusively. Never had a problem. Currently have 2 1TB and 1 2TB Hitachi drives in my mac pro and 2 1TB Hitachi drives in an external enclosure. They may not be the top speed demons of drives but reliable. The 2TB drives actually is faster than my 1TB drive. Had nothing but problems with western digital drives. Never used samsung or seagate drives though.

[nanofrog]

I run Hitachi exclusively. Never had a problem. Currently have 2 1TB and 1 2TB Hitachi drives in my mac pro and 2 1TB Hitachi drives in an external enclosure. They may not be the top speed demons of drives but reliable. The 2TB drives actually is faster than my 1TB drive. Had nothing but problems with western digital drives. Never used samsung or seagate drives though.
Odd. I've had the other way around. Both the Hitachi's and Samsung's end up with a higher frequency of bad sectors (notably shorter span of time), and die much sooner on me.

If I had to guess, it's the QC for the platters. It wouldn't surprise me, as QC has gone to the dogs in most consumer electronics.

[bearcatrp]

Yeah, it seems most companies QC have gone way down hill in the last 5 years. More interested in quantity than quality. Shameful. :(

[akadmon]

+1 for WD.

I've purchased, lemme see, 7,8...9 WD drives over the past 3 years. Zero failures so far. Not complaining about the noise either, at least in OS X (I had to turn off indexing in Windows 7, as it ran almost constantly, driving me nuts).

[hugodrax]

how do you get a list of bad sectors?

[nanofrog]

how do you get a list of bad sectors?
There's software utilities released by the drive makers (it also provide re-mapping capabilities to get around them). There's even 3rd party utilities as well, usually marketed under data recovery.

[Aldaris]

Samsung here, and loving them!

Really the only drives I would buy.

[seisend]

+1 WD

I use 3X Caviar Black 1 TB in RAID 0 . Works without problems and super fast.

[maestrokev]

Odd. I've had the other way around. Both the Hitachi's and Samsung's end up with a higher frequency of bad sectors (notably shorter span of time), and die much sooner on me.

If I had to guess, it's the QC for the platters. It wouldn't surprise me, as QC has gone to the dogs in most consumer electronics.

I've owned 8 Hitachi 7K1000.B, all purchased at different times in the last year, 4 have been replaced under warranty due to drive failure. So far no problems with the 2 WD Black or 6 WD Green drives. All drives manufacturers go through bad periods, seems like last year was Hitachi's Return of the Deathstar.

[Transporteur]

Western Digital!

Haven't bought anything else in the past three years (about 20 in total, most of them RE and Black) and not a single failure till now.
I wasn't that lucky with Samsung, Hitachi and especially Seagate.

So from my personal experience the WD's are pretty reliable but the Blacks are noisy!
I recently purchased a pair of WD Green drives and I'm totally satisfied with them. Fast, silent and darn cheap.

[jetjaguar]

samsung f3s here and they are great

[nanofrog]

I've owned 8 Hitachi 7K1000.B, all purchased at different times in the last year, 4 have been replaced under warranty due to drive failure. So far no problems with the 2 WD Black or 6 WD Green drives. All drives manufacturers go through bad periods, seems like last year was Hitachi's Return of the Deathstar.
It's quite possible a manufacturer will have a bad batch, or even a bad year.

But it's when it's over multiple years that gets my attention, and causes me to not trust a brand. Hitachi and Samsung qualify from what I've seen (multiple years across their consumer drive lines) as well as information from people I trust.

It's left me with the impression thier platter facilities (usually separate from the the drive electronics and assembly facilities) have persistent problems with reproducing consistent materials and processing.

[Cynicalone]

I would vote for WD. I have 1TB and 2TB Blacks and Greens.

[trublood]

i have been using WD for a long time so i'll prefer WD http://tinytwitt.com/content/15/smile.gif

[CCK]

Just ordered 2- 1.5Gb Green drives from Macmall, $109 ea + free shipping.

[thermodynamic]

Hello all

Just found out that my 2 samsung drives are on their way out, and need to get another drive asap. The two drives that are dying are both samsung f1's (1x 1TB and 1x 750GB).

I am really quite in the dark over what are any good, and also do not have too much cash: only about £70. So I can only get one drive for the moment.

I have been looking at the WD caviar black (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146082), the hitachi deskstar (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/177466) and samsung spinpoint f3 (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804).

My requirements are a fast drive (it is my boot drive), and also for it to be silent and reliable.

I am disappointed that my current 2 samsung drives are just about to die after 1.5 years, and have heard that the deskstars are very unreliable and the WD's quite loud (I have also had a DOA external WD drive before so am a little wary here too).

Can anyone comment on these drives in any way? I would go for the samsungs as they seem on paper to be the best, but after being stung twice already, Ii don't have much faith in them.

Please help guys as I need to order something ASAP before I loose all of my data :eek:

I love WD.

I just replaced a 640GB Hitachi with a 1TB WD. Some files kept vanishing off the Hitachi, most of which were Logic Studio loops. It's possible there's another cause, but the WD is faster...

In the last 5 years I only had one WD go bad. Overheating in a cheap external, fanless case I bought and let it reside in (my fault for not spending the extra $25).

I keep reading bad things about Seagate. The fact the Best Buy blueshirt tried to hawk seagate on me didn't help either... Especially as I had read up on seagate drives before heading out there! :eek::eek::eek:

[thermodynamic]

I would vote for WD. I have 1TB and 2TB Blacks and Greens.

Caviar Black = good.

Green models, the 2TB ones, more often run at 5400RPM and are sloooooooooow. That much space on a small number of platters doesn't inspire confidence in me, either, and I love WD...

[Transporteur]

Caviar Black = good.

Green models, the 2TB ones, more often run at 5400RPM and are sloooooooooow.

Even the Green makes about 100MB/s average, which is as fast as a 1TB WD Black!

Here is a little comparison between the 2TB Black and Green.
-> http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1077/1/

[KeriJane]

Here's my 2¢ worth...

Hitachi - Quiet, reliable. Has a great adjustable AAM feature that can reduce the already low seek noise to virtually nothing. As quiet as these drives are when running, they make a little noise upon start as they spin up to speed. This is noticeable if your system tends to idle the drive and then start it up again a lot.

WD Caviar Black 1TB. Fast, reliable, lots of "seek" noise. the AAM feature can be set to "ON" which vastly reduces seek noise at the cost of increased seek times. I believe mine went from 12ms to 17ms when I turned the AAM "ON". It didn't make a huge difference in apparent system speed.

WD Caviar Green 1TB. Reliable, cool and quiet. I use 2 of these in my external RAID enclosure. Not as slow as you'd think when used as a system drive, I put one in a PC and the owners think it's faster than before. (replaced a failed 7200rpm Caviar SE16) Never even tried turning the AAM ON.

If silence is your priority, I'd get the Caviar Green.

If max speed, the Caviar Black.

Either one will be fine unless you're the kind of person that runs benchmarks a lot.

Have Fun,
Keri

[thermodynamic]

Even the Green makes about 100MB/s average, which is as fast as a 1TB WD Black!

Here is a little comparison between the 2TB Black and Green.
-> http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1077/1/

:eek:

Thanks MUCH for the info!

:)

[Mac-Michael]

WD all the way

[bzollinger]

+1 for the WD black. I'm running a 500GB and a 1TB and they have been great. The warranty is good too!

[student_trap]

thanks to everyone for the advice. I did purchase 2 of the newer hitachis, but there was a problem with delivery and they are now out of stock so I am back to square one!

However, considering this, I thought that I may be better off changing everything up to a quicker system in general.

So what would you guys recommend?

1. Buy 4 500GB RE3's for a 1+0 raid system
(although this would leave me with limited space, and no scratch drive)

2. buy 2 1TB caviar blacks for (OS+data)+(back-up)
(although I wonder whether this would be quite a slow option?)

4. Buy a small disk for OS and apps (any ideas? I dont think that I could afford an SSD) alongside a 1 TB caviar black for data and a 1TB Caviar green for backup, and one of my existing drives as a scratch disk?


What do you think?

[student_trap]

OK guys well im leaning towards getting a smaller drive for the OS and 2 1TB drives for files and backup.

Can anyone advise me on what to get for the smaller (fast) boot drive?

I will need to order very very soon so please let me know soon er rather than later if you can help :)

[student_trap]

Hey all, well in the end I bought 2 WD Caviar Black 1TB and think that I will use one as an OS only drive with the other for file storage.

I am also thinking about picking up a 1TB caviar green for backup soon

What do you guys think?

[Fiete5401]

What do you guys think?

Excellent choice I think. I'll upgrade the hd in my late 2006 iMac with the same WDCB drive soon.

[slughead]

I currently have 5 WD Caviar greens, my dad has 4 more. We've been very happy.

I always do a full surface scan on every drive I buy before I start using it. All 9 were clean.

We've had 1 failure between the two of us in the past few months, and that may have been my fault (I may not have waited for the drive to fully spin down before removing it, possibly caused a head crash).

I know this is not very scientific but failure rates seem low enough. (you're backing up anyway, right?

WD's RMA process is freakin amazing. $5.50 for a shipping sticker you print out yourself. Then you just bring the HD in a shoebox to a UPS store and they'll do the rest. You can even give WD your credit card number and they'll ship you the HD before they receive the RMA (free of charge)! Even without doing that, it only took 1 week to ship and get back.

Also, 5 year warranty.

I put 4 in a RAID 1/0 (software). It seems to work great.

[koruki]

I hope you haven't bought your Hard disk yet cause seems everyone is recommending you the WD. I got the Samsung F3 yesterday and was blown away. I been using WD exclusively the last two years and although they are solid, they are slow(I use them as mirror drives for storing photos so its ok). The F3 totally humiliated the Velociraptors I have, the write speed beat them easily. I was doing a big transfer and it was pushing 120MBps. Until I fired the drive I have been skeptical. Def a excellent OS disk, was at a LAN on the weekend and my friends old machine was loading games quicker than his main machine because of the F3.

Do a quick google about F3 and its nothing but praise, they are quiet too.
I ran a few benches and the only thing the Velociraptors can claim on the F3 is seek times, everything else it was a sad sight.

If I didn't have a X25-M G2 Stripe I'd use the F3 as my OS disk without a doubt.