1TB WD Black OR Seagate 7200.12 - opinions wanted

[Tesselator]

If access times are important to you:

Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB: 6.75ms Write, 13.8ms Read
WD VelociRaptor 300GB 10K: 3.54ms Write, 7.09ms Read
Western Digital Black 1TB: 6.23ms Write, 12.39ms Read
Samsung EcoGreen F2 1.5TB: 11.6ms Write, 16.6ms Read

These times are important for file servers especially ones that service multi-users like for web hosts or even in a busy office environments. It'll have some affect on boot times and application project data loading too but not much really. Maybe a HUGE project with one thousand tiny files would take 3 min. to load with the EcoGreen (listed above) while the VelociRaptor would do it in 2 min 52 seconds. assuming there was one seek average for each file loaded and that the data rates were the same. 1ms is 1/1000th of a second or 0.001 seconds. If the drive in question is 10ms average it means the drive can do 100 seeks in one second.

Here's a list of access times for a whole bunch of drives:

Write: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...rts/h2benchw-3.12-Write-Access-Time,1008.html
Read: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...arts/h2benchw-3.12-Read-Access-Time,1007.html

Also to note is that when (if) you create a RAID these access times will be multiplied. So a 10ms HDDs used in a 4 drive RAID might be 15ms or 20ms.

 

[Amigalander]

I had been loyal to Seagate for over 10 years, and never had a Seagate drive fail until...

Two new 7200.11 drives in my 2008 Mac Pro both recently failed at about 8 months old.

So I had the same decision as the OP. Do I get two new 7200.12s or two WD Blacks. I was pretty mad at Seagate for their firmware blunder, so I chose to go with WD due to the perceived current reliability and support reputation.

The WD Blacks seem just slightly louder (still quiet and hardly noticeable) than my old 7200.11s. And they also feel just slightly slower than my old 7200.11s (again, hardly noticeable). But both WD Blacks work well! Which is more than I can say for the Seagate 7200.11s...

 

[Tesselator]

You mean at 8 months they weren't still under warrantee?

 

[itou]

western digital has never died on me. having said that, i always change the drive when it hits about 2 years old. call me cynical, but i'm not prepared to wait until the drive dies so that i can die along with it.

i'd stay away from the 1.5TB's too.

 

[Amigalander]

You mean at 8 months they weren't still under warrantee?

I'm sure they are under warranty, but I didn't want to be sending my data out for anyone to see. I'm not sure I could even format the drives at this point which would probably mean nobody could even retrieve the data off them, but I don't want to take a chance. How does one go about a warranty replacement of drives with sensitive data on them if you can't even erase them?

 

[Tesselator]

I'm sure they are under warranty, but I didn't want to be sending my data out for anyone to see. I'm not sure I could even format the drives at this point which would probably mean nobody could even retrieve the data off them, but I don't want to take a chance. How does one go about a warranty replacement of drives with sensitive data on them if you can't even erase them?

Hmm, wow, good question. I guess in that situation I'd see if the supporting shop or the manufacturer would agree to total destruction. If it's a shop I think you probably could - at least here in Japan. Manufacturer might be more difficult.

And by this I mean you'd be willing to show the shop they're actually busted and then take a hammer to it or something.

The platters are a magnetic recording medium so if you had a strong enough magnet I guess you could wipe them. I wonder how powerful a magnet would be needed??

<shrug> I dunno, good question.

 

[dnadrifter]

So I had the same decision as the OP. Do I get two new 7200.12s or two WD Blacks.

The WD Blacks seem just slightly louder (still quiet and hardly noticeable) than my old 7200.11s.

I have been away for a little while...Thanks for all the responses. Sounds like most people think the 1TB black is still quiet enough...that is one thing I was wondering about as one review said they might not be ideal for a "desktop" drive.

I haven't heard anyone talk about platter size differences. Is this not that big of a deal?

I am leaning toward the WD at this point....Thanks.