1TB WD Black OR Seagate 7200.12 - opinions wanted

[dnadrifter]

I will be purchasing a new mac pro soon and plan to add two 1 TB drives setup with a software RAID 0 with a small stripe for cache and the much larger for data.

I am trying to decide between the 1 TB WD Black and the new 1 TB Seagate 7200.12.

From what I have read in reviews, the WD 1TB has a pretty good proven track record as well as good performance. (Overall...there of course are always failed drives)

The Seagate is new and somewhat unproven and some folks seem to be a little gunshy of Seagate because it sounds like the had some firmware issues with the 7200.11. However the new drive looks to be at least as fast if not faster than the WD. Uses only 2 X 500GB platters rather than 3 X 333GB like the WD, which should make reliability better. And the Seagate may also be quieter.

With all that I am leaning towards the WD because of the track record and some have said they don't see any noise difference at least between the WD and other drives even though the WD are supposed to be a bit noisy.

Anyway any opinions would be welcomed...Thanks.

 

[kalex]

They are both good drives. Track record or not any drive can fail at any time. I learned this over the years. its not a matter of if it will fail, its a matter of when it will fail. You mentioned that you are going to keep data on the drives. is that archival data or temporary project data that you are currently working on? in RAID0 config if one drive fails you loose data on both drives because data is written in stripes across 2 drives to increase speed. so if you take backups often and don't care about loosing the data you should be fine with either drive.

Alex

 

[Ttownbeast]

I like the western digitals for price they are pretty fast too I also like the seagates because they are tough as hell I wrote about one of my old macs in another thread that flew out the back of my truck the mac got smashed when it hit then got ran over. The drive that was in that one was a seagate all I needed to do to it was put it in a new case and it ran just fine booted right up.
I have never had issues with either brand so I say grab yourself a silver dollar and choose heads or tails

 

[DeepCobalt]

I've got two 1TB WD Caviar Blacks and a 640GB Caviar Blue in my Mac Pro, and they are all very quiet, IMHO.

 

[jons]

Seagate ftw!

 

[dnadrifter]

You mentioned that you are going to keep data on the drives. is that archival data or temporary project data that you are currently working on?
Alex

Thanks for all the responses so far...I appreciate it.

These drives will be used for working data. I will be backing up to a single external or external RAID 0.

On paper it seems like the seagate is better as it is newer with only two platters...how big of a deal do folks think that is?

 

[Sehnsucht]

Seagate ftw!

+1. Seagate owns.

 

[dnadrifter]

Seagate ftw!

+1. Seagate owns.

Any particular reason why you would go with the 7200.12?

 

[Tesselator]

Why 1TB when you can have 1.5 TB at the same speed for less money? https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/707152/ Any reasons?

 

[0488568]

I had the 1,5TB Seagate with updated firmware and everything, it died in about 45 days. Never going back to Seagate. I'm waiting delivery on 2 1TB Hitachi Deskstar E7K1000

 

[nanofrog]

I had the 1,5TB Seagate with updated firmware and everything, it died in about 45 days. Never going back to Seagate. I'm waiting delivery on 2 1TB Hitachi Deskstar E7K1000

The link takes you to a Samsung though.

But given the recent issues Seagate's had, I'm a little leary of the new 7200.12's. It was more than just the 1.5TB 7200.11, and even affected their enterprise models.

 

[surflordca]

The link takes you to a Samsung though.

But given the recent issues Seagate's had, I'm a little leary of the new 7200.12's. It was more than just the 1.5TB 7200.11, and even affected their enterprise models.

I have 2 Samsungs F1 SpinPoints. Love them. They are quiet and never gave me a problem...

 

[kellen]

Never had a problem with either drive. Currently run a 500GB seagate, the 1.5TB seagate, WD 640 black and another 1TB seagate.

Going to probably go with WD from now on though, due to the problems I have read with Seagate, with their 1.5TB and 500GB laptop.

 

[nanofrog]

...go with WD from now on...

That's what I did for SATA drives.

 

[deejaydoubleyou]

While we are talking about new drives for Raid 0, I wonder if I might chip in with a question. (And I will pre-empt this with "I know nothing about Raid setups!")

I am wondering if there is much of a difference in using 2 drives with 16mb or 32mb cache in a raid 0 set up? (Two 16mb/32mb together not one of each) Obviously 32mb cache is better when using it as a single hard drive but just wondering if it still makes a difference in Raid 0.

 

[hajime]

I bought the Seagate FreeAgent 1T last year. It is still running well. After I bought the 1.5T model recently and saw all the bad reviews (see Amazon and Neweggs), I exchange it for the 1TB WB drive. So far so good. I also have the Samsungs F1 SpinPoints. It is fast, reliable and quiet.

 

[MacAndy74]

I've seen Seagate's quality tumble in the last two years.

Go for the Western Digital for sure.

 

[nanofrog]

I've seen Seagate's quality tumble in the last two years.

Go for the Western Digital for sure.

Looking at some of the details on both reviews and newegg, the Seagate is both slower at Random Access, and it's reliability is somewhat questionable.

Not many customer reviews on newegg (49), yet there's listings of DOA's/dies quickly, and bad sectors. Too much for me at any rate, so I think I'll keep passing on Seagate's for awhile. I like WD's as of late, and will probably stick with them. For now.

 

[mattlong1978]

It's all personal taste but....

I've used Western Digital drives for years now can't fault them, I also have a stock Seagate drive which as far as i can tell is fine to.

I'd say go with the WD drive but either way I don't think you will be disapointed.

 

[MacAndy74]

Looking at some of the details on both reviews and newegg, the Seagate is both slower at Random Access, and it's reliability is somewhat questionable.

Not many customer reviews on newegg (49), yet there's listings of DOA's/dies quickly, and bad sectors. Too much for me at any rate, so I think I'll keep passing on Seagate's for awhile. I like WD's as of late, and will probably stick with them. For now.

Good choice. Truth is, all hard disks fail over time. But having said that; believe it or not - I have never had a WD drive fail on me ever!

 

[AppleNewton]

I can vouch for the 1TB WD Black - have a batch of them...no issues what so ever.
And if so, WD support is always easier for me to deal with.
i just like the consistency of Western Digital and ive been partial to them for years now (its easier to decipher their series of drives too,,,atleast for me) so ive stuck with them.

try em both but i definite lean more for the WD Black

 

[Tesselator]

Good choice. Truth is, all hard disks fail over time. But having said that; believe it or not - I have never had a WD drive fail on me ever!

Very true. FWIW besides two 100MB WD Cavier drives that went bad years and years ago I've never had any problems with WD either and I've used a lot of them. IBM and WD were my drives of choice for the VOD hotel drives I managed.

 

[Macpropro80]

Il be buying three 1TB wd black hard drives, Il tell you the results.

 

[bigbird]

HD's for MP

My 2008 MP came with one 320GB Seagate HD. I have since repmoved it and added one WD Caviar Black 1TB, two Hitachi 1TB Deskstar, and one Seagate Barracuda 640MB drives. Guess what? They are all fast, quiet, and reliable. Since I have my fans running slightly faster thank stock (SMC fan control), I can't ell the difference if and when any of the drives are spinning. I only avoided buying any new Seagate 1TB drives because of their 7200.11 issues.

 

[Topper]

This is really not the question you asked but...

I've been looking at hard drive reviews.
The following are the best hard drives in my opinion (backed up by reviews):

Intel X25-M 80GB SSD drive - $320

Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB 10000 rpm hard drive - $230

Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200 rpm hard drive - $110

The SSD drive will not work for me mainly because of it's very low storage capacity.

The 10,000 rpm drive is probably still too low in storage capacity for me.
The other negative is it only has a 16 MB buffer cache.
But the amazing thing about this hard drive is it's 7ms access time. Compare that to the 12ms and greater access time of the 7200 rpm hard drives.

I will probably go with the WD Black 1TB drive.