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

student_trap

student_trap

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Mar 14, 2005
1,879
0
'Ol Smokey, UK
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, the hitachi deskstar and samsung spinpoint f3.

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:
 
student_trap said:
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, the hitachi deskstar and samsung spinpoint f3.

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:
Click to expand...

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.
 
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. :)
 
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.
 
bearcatrp said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
+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 said:
how do you get a list of bad sectors?
Click to expand...
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.
 
nanofrog said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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.
 
maestrokev said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
i have been using WD for a long time so i'll prefer WD
smile.gif
 
student_trap said:
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, the hitachi deskstar and samsung spinpoint f3.

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:
Click to expand...

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:
 
Cynicalone said:
I would vote for WD. I have 1TB and 2TB Blacks and Greens.
Click to expand...

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