Best current HD choice

I have 2 Western Digital Caviar Green drives in an external 4 bay eSATA enclosure and I'm looking to add two more drives. This setup will be not be used for RAID. There are some tempting seeming bargains on HDs available now but I've heard these bargain drives, even from Seagate or Western Digital, are not as reliable as the brand name implies. The warranties are also a consideration. I'm looking for a high (not highest possible) performance in my second pair of drives and thinking of a pair of Barracuda EP 3TB w/SATA III, 64MB cache, 7200 rpm. Should I be put off by the 1 year warranty? What are thoughts about Seagate versus an equal spec Western Digital?

Thanks for insights.

DanielCoffey said:

Do you need to pay extra for the SATA-III over SATA-II?

I would be concerned with such a short warranty too. In the EU that should be a minimum of 2 years I believe.

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No premium for SATA III. The warranties (and model #'s) seem to vary within this bargain price category for similar specs from same maker. I have since found another Seagate with same given specs and price at another vendor, this one with a 2 year warranty. Less scary. Both vendors are known to be reputable, BTW.

Zwhaler said:

Macintosh HD purchased from Apple is a hitachi 2TB. Followed by 2x Seagate Barracuda XT 3+4TB, and once those went out of inventory around a month ago I picked up another Hitachi Deskstar 4TB all 7,200RPMs.

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Thanks. Hitachi is another one I should look at. Have had good experience in the past.

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GermanyChris said:

I use Seagate Barracuda's in both 2 and 3TB.. I like them bunches

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Thanks. Have you noticed much of a performance difference in the various 7200 models?

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Loa said:

Hello,

Stick to major brand names, they're all pretty good these days. Anybody telling you that one company is better than the others is either basing his arguments on older drive models, or anecdotal evidence.

Loa

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Thanks for the input. Takes a bit of the pressure out of shopping.

brentsg said:

This kind of question will just get everyone's subjective opinion based on their tiny personal sample size.

The best you can hope for is to buy the right type of drive for your application and get a good warranty for the money. Also, it's good to avoid any drives with known defects.

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Three good criteria. Thanks.

Phrygian said:

Aren't all these hard drives made by the same mega factories in china anyway? You guys remember that flood that hit one of the main HDD factories and all the prices doubled overnight? Never saw much difference in quality ratings on Seagate or WD HDDs.

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Not all made in China. I was surprised to see one of my new Seagate drives had, "Contents from Cambodia" on the seal of the antistatic bag. An identical drive just had, "This is an antistatic bag." Probably they came from different factories, maybe in different countries.