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Most Reliable TB Hard Drive

Thiol

Thiol

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 26, 2008
693
0
Hi all,

We've been reading a lot about trying to find the fastest 1 TB hard drive, with the Samsungs getting a lot of attention. My question is a little different... Do we have any good data yet on what the most reliable hard drives are? I realize that all will fail at some point, but are some less likely to do so than others? I'm currently trying to set up a RAID storage archive.

Thanks!
 
I was in the same situation as you were, longevity is more important to me than speed. I bought a 1tb seagate with the model ns not as because it had a higher mtbf. This drive is fast and very quiet and 1tb is very nice size in the mac pro!
 
Thiol said:
Hi all,

We've been reading a lot about trying to find the fastest 1 TB hard drive, with the Samsungs getting a lot of attention. My question is a little different... Do we have any good data yet on what the most reliable hard drives are? I realize that all will fail at some point, but are some less likely to do so than others? I'm currently trying to set up a RAID storage archive.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I went with Seagate for the 5 year warranty.
 
I went with WD due to the lower temperatures, lower price, lower power consumption, lower db levels, and the whole Seagate firmware debacle. Seagate is junk.
 
aibo said:
I went with WD due to the lower temperatures, lower price, lower power consumption, lower db levels, and the whole Seagate firmware debacle. Seagate is junk.
Click to expand...

Lol and lower performance, lower speed, lower mtbf as well :D
 
jjahshik32 said:
Lol and lower performance, lower speed, lower mtbf as well :D
Click to expand...
As a 1TB drive, it's used as a secondary storage drive rather than a speedy boot/apps drive (who would do that?). Lower power, heat, cost, and noise should take presedence over sheer speed for a drive of this capacity.

The 320GB/platter WD6400AAKS I'm booted off, on the other hand, will rape the Seagate 1TB/32MB in terms of speed (and hey, quietness too) any day... whether the Seagate has the firmware issue or not.
 
aibo said:
As a 1TB drive, it's used as a secondary storage drive rather than a speedy boot/apps drive (who would do that?). Lower power, heat, cost, and noise should take presedence over sheer speed for a drive of this capacity.

The 320GB/platter WD6400AAKS I'm booted off, on the other hand, will rape the Seagate 1TB/32MB in terms of speed (and hey, quietness too) any day... whether the Seagate has the firmware issue or not.
Click to expand...

oh yea I'd definitely take the speed even if its storage and the ability to transfer/extract files much faster. I plug in the 1tb seagate drive in the mac pro and I direct it as my new d/l hdd so whenever I d/l from torrent or newsgroups of 8-10gb files I d/l it to the seagate and I use the seagate to extract the files as well as keeping the files. Also to note if its a big of a drive as 1tb, speed is nothing but crucial for it to seek/find files of such magnitude.

As for the seagate, I dont hear a peep out of this drive is very very quiet (the mac pro is no more than 2ft away to the right side of me) and I dont notice any heat issues as well, its even cooler than my 150gb raptor 10k drive. And I dont know what this firmware issue your talking about, I've never update or mess with any firmware that came with any of my hdd and they all run just fine.

Another side note is that this seagate 1tb drive is super fast, feels faster in most operations than my raptor 150gb 10k just that the raptor has a much faster seek time.
 
I went with the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1tb for the same reason I've been choosing Seagates lately. The drive companies are in the business of making money. When they give a warranty they have clear market data that says that their drives on average do not fail within the warranty period or else they would lose money. The longer the warranty, the longer they're sure the drive will perform under normal conditions. Hence, the longer the warranty, the more chance I have of having a reliable drive. Given that I also backup my data, the longer warranty also lengthens the life of my investment as well.
 
nemloc said:
I went with the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1tb for the same reason I've been choosing Seagates lately. The drive companies are in the business of making money. When they give a warranty they have clear market data that says that their drives on average do not fail within the warranty period or else they would lose money. The longer the warranty, the longer they're sure the drive will perform under normal conditions. Hence, the longer the warranty, the more chance I have of having a reliable drive. Given that I also backup my data, the longer warranty also lengthens the life of my investment as well.
Click to expand...

I agree with you on this as well, and the seagate drive that I chose was an NS ending serial number as to the AS because the mtbf is twice as the AS model because the NS usually runs as a server for longevity.
 
jjahshik32 said:
As for the seagate, I dont hear a peep out of this drive is very very quiet (the mac pro is no more than 2ft away to the right side of me) and I dont notice any heat issues as well, its even cooler than my 150gb raptor 10k drive. And I dont know what this firmware issue your talking about, I've never update or mess with any firmware that came with any of my hdd and they all run just fine.
Click to expand...

The Seagate firmware issue I'm talking about is this one -- a bunch of the 7200.11 32MB drives were shipped with faulty firmware that instead of using 32MB cache, use 0MB cache. Good thing you have that warranty.

And the Seagate drive probably seems very quiet to you because you've got a friggin Raptor in there -- the loudest drive out there. You can't hear it over the Raptor. The sound and heat issues are all relative. Of course, compared to your Raptor, the Seagate seems cool and quiet. Try putting that Seagate in with WD's AAKS or GP offerings and the Seagate drone will drive you insane. It did to me. My two Segate drives are now relagated to an external Firewire 800 case that I turn on once a month for a time machine backup. My god are they loud compared to the 3 WDs.
 
aibo said:
The Seagate firmware issue I'm talking about is this one -- a bunch of the 7200.11 32MB drives were shipped with faulty firmware that instead of using 32MB cache, use 0MB cache. Good thing you have that warranty.

And the Seagate drive probably seems very quiet to you because you've got a friggin Raptor in there -- the loudest drive out there. You can't hear it over the Raptor. The sound and heat issues are all relative. Of course, compared to your Raptor, the Seagate seems cool and quiet. Try putting that Seagate in with WD's AAKS or GP offerings and the Seagate drone will drive you insane. It did to me. My two Segate drives are now relagated to an external Firewire 800 case that I turn on once a month for a time machine backup. My god are they're loud compared to my 3 WDs.
Click to expand...

0 cache?? My seagate is showing the 32mb of cache (I'm sure like any other hdd and products there will be some group of people with some kind of defects/problems and yes even your precious WD hdd). And its not a bunch of them, its like 4-5 people complaining about it as to millions of users that are fine with the drive. I'm sure if I google hard enough I can find similar or even other problems with your WD drive as well.

Plus the 150gb raptor doesnt make any noise except the click noise when its thinking which isnt a huge deal at all, if anything I like that click noise when the raptor drive is thinking, I guess I'm used to that noise since the good ol pc days 15+ years ago. Other than that I dont hear any other clicking noise/vibration nothing out of the whole mac pro its dead silent. Only if I put a dvd in will it sound like an airplane taking off but other than that no noise whatsoever, even my 8800gt is completely silent (cant even hear the fan on even on intensive tasks).

Also in this thread and if you scroll down I found: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6896145
supposedly there is a high % defect of doa for these drives, good thing you have that 3 year warranty as to just 90 days.

Someone commented: "Follow up to my post re the WD6400AAKS RMA from Western Digital. Turns out...WD couldn't replace this drive due to it being out of production availability?? I took that to mean I don't need this drive, period. I requested they ship me a 7500AAKS in place of the original order and not charge me for the huge inconvenience. Apparently they're shipping it to me, but we'll see it I get my CC billed. Newegg gave me a refund minus shipping. Their website has many DOA posts recently for this drive. STAY AWAY is my advice."

I mean I can say stuff like that as well and I've heard about these drives dieing pretty quickly as well. And if you ask me reliability is #1 reason for buying a hdd and these WD hdd fail at the first/main priority task.


Its quite the opposite for me though, I used to love Western Digital hdd's back 10 years ago and was the only hdd's that I used to purchase. And I had a bad experience with seagate drives in the past about 5-6 years ago, but these days I've switched to the other way around.

Honestly though, I really dont hear a difference in the hdd's making its noises at all unless I take pop the side panel door open from the mac pro and put my ear inside the case right next to the hdd almost touching it. To me dB is not a huge deal since they all sound relatively the same when operating and especially with the mac pro closed up and 2+ ft away from you. Heat is another issue but for me I'm in a small room with the mac pro and the heat is fine (doesnt really heat up my room with adding the seagate) but the speed is very welcomed from the seagate 1tb.
 
Thiol said:
Hi all,

We've been reading a lot about trying to find the fastest 1 TB hard drive, with the Samsungs getting a lot of attention. My question is a little different... Do we have any good data yet on what the most reliable hard drives are? I realize that all will fail at some point, but are some less likely to do so than others? I'm currently trying to set up a RAID storage archive.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

After getting burned by four horrible IBM 75GXP's several years ago, I care WAY more about reliability than speed, noise, or cost. There's good data here:
http://storagereview.com
(check out the Reliability Database / Survey)
Seagate has many more drives in 90th percentile, and my experience with them has been great.

Seagate vs. WD:
http://www.storagereview.com/1000.sr

I went with 4 Seagate 1Tb in a RAID 5 for my new Mac Pro; about the only ways to lose things here now is a fire or robbery.
 
I'm not sure how anyone could truly tell how reliable these drives are on average, since TB drives are very new... to the point where only defective drives will have failed thus far :)

Personally... I've had Seagates, Quantums, WDs, Fujitus, Maxtors, IBMs, and probably more, and the only drive I ever had fail on me was one I got in a computer on eBay.

The 40 MB drive in the Mac Classic still runs... 1990. 300MB IIci drive still works (1989)... the 500 MB drive in the 8100/80AV worked when I dismantled the whole thing a few years ago.... 1 GB Performa 6205CD's drive was still working last time I tried it (year or so); the 6 GB drive that came with the Beige G3 still worked last time I had it attached to the PC I built for my mother a few years ago... last time I checked was again, about a year.

Three drives in the Beige G3... a 40, a 100 anad 120 are 4-6 years old and all run fine.

How many of you have had failed hard drives? I've really never had any component fail at all, other than optical drives which.. I sort of don't even count because they seem to always wear out eventually.
 
Location Photographer Needs for Serious Image Storage

Good afternoon...with respect, I'm seeking a bit of mature advice. I'm a senior photographer that works in the third world..just returned..and am about to head back out again to east africa working as usual for me, serious projects dealing with the human condition..meaning i cant screw up. Over the years, once switching over to digital gear, i started out with the larger lacie heavy drives to download my work to. Since then i went to the lighter weight "orange ruggedized" lacies and have used a G-Tech on a commercial job and it has refused to mount

So my question. The last time out i took a set of the orange units and barely had enough room to work on them so im thinking that ill take a couple of 1tb drives.

Conditions are hot, like arizona in summer time..airborn dust and dirt although theyre usually protected from such conditions except when i have to download in the middle of shooting due to full chips etc. So id like to purchase the most reliable...starts everytime...product regardless of cost, transfer speeds etc...

As I said, I photograph serious human conditions where having a drive go down is unthinkable. Its from one bad exp covering the Tsunami in losing a 4gb chip that i wont utilize anything above a 4gb chip as it really hurts to lose images...cant imagine a 16gb chip going down or getting lost amongst all the gear and i had a moment this last tikme out with the orange lecies where things didnt "feel" right...so theyve been thrown to the side as i purchase new drives for each project.

So l would greatly appreciate guidance from those of you that know the products to avoid and those i should consider. Best regards and again, with respect I appreciate your advice.

rr
 
Don't bump old topics that are older than a year old. Start your own.
Not to mention that you posted in the wrong forum. Go post in the Mac Peripherals forum.
 
it is very interesting to see users telling others not to "resurrect" topics of older a year ... and some of the opinion --- search before you start a new topic.

for some users, they will be confused and of course the main bulk of users would likely start a new topic than to search for an existing similar issue.

granted, all should've read the READ ME etc ... :p
 
Start anew, bump an oldie - I don't care - it matters not to me.

I think that if we can safely assume that each manufacture lies to the same degree relatively speaking, then all we need to do is look at UBE, MTBR, The start/stop cycles, Max operating temperature, and the warrantee length to know which drive is suitable for you or which is "the most reliable".

I wonder if there's a sortable comparison table on-line with those fields?
 
I just listened to a very busy HDD repair man say they were the worst. :p "I've probably seen more WD drives come in for repair than any other brand - but they may also just be the most common brand in default kit configurations too so.."


But where does one find these posted statistics for "track record" anyway? Or is this just an off hand guess?
 
oh i realised i forgot to reply to the topic earlier. for me, maxtor a definite no no. well, maybe if ppl pay me to use them as paperweights or scratch disks, i may consider. :p

i use WD, Seagate, Hitachi and Samsung. No particular pref to brands but I do look at the series. Usually if i need them and have the budget, i'll go with the enterprise models. a good idea is to check out which series are "mac-friendly". generally all hdds should work in PCs and Macs etc, but happens so that some apparently are tweaked in some features that give rise to certain issues in some systems. 've no idea exactly what but that's the kind of impressions i get.

p.s. i quite fancy WD as they are rather silent and over where i live, it is pretty simple to RMA a drive and get a replacement if anything goes wrong. seagate is quite decent too. actually, i realised that Samsung is simple as well! i've also replaced Hitachi drives too.
 
This has been said before, but I think it's worth reiterating: Disregard warranties. All drives fail, but if yours does and you didn't back it up, a replacement drive isn't going to help you much. Warranties are selling points like specs. You care more about the data than the $80 for a replacement.

As for my $0.02, Samsung drives have been speedy, quiet, and thus far, reliable. Had a bunch of WD drives fail, but it doesn't really mean anything at this point. Plan on a failure.
 
i agree, always be prepared for failures and live to fight another day. :D

i'm not pro any brands. however, i am anti-maxtor (mainly consumer versions). good enough encounters to allow me to blanket ban on maxtor brand.

go do a little be of research on what brands of hdds has what special features. then take the plunge. ;)
 
vdrummer said:
After getting burned by four horrible IBM 75GXP's several years ago, I care WAY more about reliability than speed, noise, or cost. There's good data here:
http://storagereview.com
(check out the Reliability Database / Survey)
Seagate has many more drives in 90th percentile, and my experience with them has been great.

Seagate vs. WD:
http://www.storagereview.com/1000.sr

I went with 4 Seagate 1Tb in a RAID 5 for my new Mac Pro; about the only ways to lose things here now is a fire or robbery.
Click to expand...

Pretty much my story as well. I had 3 WD's die within 30 days after their 3-yr warranties expired. All of my seagates (some are 6-9 yr old scsi 10K and 15K drives) are still running. I went with three 1 TB Seagates (2 in a NAS, mirrored, and 1 in an external FW800 enclosure (all over a year old, running 24/7) with no issues.

Like other posters have already pointed out, though, all drives will eventually fail. Got a backup plan?
 
gdieter said:
Pretty much my story as well. I had 3 WD's die within 30 days after their 3-yr warranties expired. All of my seagates (some are 6-9 yr old scsi 10K and 15K drives) are still running. I went with three 1 TB Seagates (2 in a NAS, mirrored, and 1 in an external FW800 enclosure (all over a year old, running 24/7) with no issues.

Like other posters have already pointed out, though, all drives will eventually fail. Got a backup plan?
Click to expand...
Not all the lines are the same though. ;)

SAS or any other version of SCSI will be more reliable than the consumer models by the same manufacturer. Any of the enterprise SATA models are also designed to be more reliable as well.
 
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