Hard Drives

[Fit of Rage]

So right now I've got a pretty skimpy 320GB hard drive for my desktop (I'm pretty sure it's a Seagate). I'm gonna try to score something here for black friday, just curious if anyone has recommendations in the 1TB size range. Bottom line is reliability, and right after that would be the cache size (32MB preferred). Anyone have suggestions, whether it be Seagate/Western Digital/other?

Thanks!

[Benno]

hard drive reliability for any brand follow a bathtub curve (failures in the first week OR after several years) for normal use. Thanks to newegg's return policy the 3 bad drives I have purchased over the past 8 years were easily replaced. You're better off getting whatever is slightly cheaper as long as you're guaranteed not to get stuck with a faulty drive.

[Galleleo]

I got a 1.5tb Samsung Story external harddisk. It was on Sale over here. I don't know about the cache is concerned, I have no clue what it is. But it's working fine for me. Haven't had a problem so far.

[Displaced]

1tb samsung F1 spinpoint...

[Jason]

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA Hard Dive - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148433

Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB SATA Hard Drive - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152185

either of these would be your best bet at the 1TB capacity. they both use two 500GB platters. the Western Digital drives (as well as several other manufacturers) use three platters, at 333.3GB each. long story short, fewer platters = greater platter density = better performance.

i've been researching like whoa for an upcoming build i have planned. i've read so many damn articles about every last component you can think of, and i think my eyes are going to fall out of my head.

[Pressure Drop]

hmm i should have made this thread a week ago as i was in the same position yourself.

decided to replaced my 2 300 GB drives i got with my computer 3-4 years ago --- well i plan on using them still but one for the OS and one as a scratch drive or in some other set up


i didn't do alot of research so i could have bought a bum deal but i went all out and bought 3 drives which the ppl who bought them in the reviews didn't whine about and were still cheap.

one thing i did read was that some seagate .11 had a bug and that it was fixed in the .12 drives ... might be a firmware fix or not a big issue since it hit about 6 months ago but i decided against buying any .11 drive i saw - maybe if you did some resarch you could pick up a better deal on one of them but i took the safer and lazier avoid approach

appart from that there was what benno said about reliability and also drives in the 30 -50 Celsius temps failed the least but since my pc and most others would run in this range thats not a big deal but overly cool hard drives are more prone to failure

1.5TB Samsung HD154UI Spinpoint F2 DT EcoGreen, SATA 3Gb/s, 32MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ (think this is 5200rpm)
1TB Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ, OEM
500 GB Seagate ST3500418AS Barracuda 7200.12, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 16MB Cache, 9.5 ms, NCQ

they will arrive either later today or tomorrow as i had to battle the internet and retarded websites that had a shit attack cause my name is O'Neill , my confirmed shipping address is named O Neill and some really bad website programming decided to change it to O/'Neill and would accept or allow me to change it and refused to ship to it and so lost ebuyer a sale ... then another site had a mouse mat out of stock and held up my order for 1 item @ < 2% value of the order .... fucking world

[project dragon]

Is buying a desktop harddrive and one of those usb harddrive toasters/docking stations (like this one) and using it as an external harddrive be a viable option, or is sticking with an external harddrive the way to go?

[Galleleo]

I would say an external harddrive is less fragile. I have two external harddrives, a 500gb one from iomega, and the previously named 1.5tb one from Samsung (could be the one Pressure described) and the only downside is that they both need an outlet. For the rest, it's ideal.

[Bioture]

i bought a 1tb simpletech harddrive two years ago for 275 bucks (they're like 90-100 dollas now) and it still works fine. In my rig I have dual raptor drives and a 1.5tb hitachi. I don't have a HD that has failed on me yet in all the time I've been computing (save the jazz drive that my dad got in the mid 90s), so maybe I'm lucky.

[Galleleo]

My original hd in my laptop died about a month after I got my laptop. But that's the only one I ever had die on me.

[fLaReD]

just got a 1.5tb external by western digital...is western digital any good?

[Bioture]

should be fine. you got the black friday deal for 90 bucks right? That was a good deal...

I ordered another hitachi 1tb for 65 bucks -

[Xog]

Anyone recommend a mobile hard drive? :x

[Fit of Rage]

I didn't want to get a Hitachi because I've heard from multiple people that they've got a higher failure rate than others, which is not a chance I'm willing to take given how much data is on it and the fact that it's more primary storage than backup.

I wound up getting a 750GB Western Digital for $60, should work out fine for what I need. I may get a third in the future, we'll see how fast I fill up this one. My bigger project right now is to finish reorganizing/tagging my music and TV shows, as well as installing OSX.

[Xog]

I didn't want to get a Hitachi because I've heard from multiple people that they've got a higher failure rate than others, which is not a chance I'm willing to take given how much data is on it and the fact that it's more primary storage than backup.

I wound up getting a 750GB Western Digital for $60, should work out fine for what I need. I may get a third in the future, we'll see how fast I fill up this one. My bigger project right now is to finish reorganizing/tagging my music and TV shows, as well as installing OSX.

Western Digital is pretty good quality. That's the one that was failing on my system, but I've had that in my laptop since 2004 and its active powered-on life was a total of 1.8 years. Good stuff, I'm just not sure if Seagate is higher quality or not.