calling all hard drive guru's

techead

techead

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hi guys

after doing some research ive been told to stay away from the new seagate drives as the failure rate is apparently quite high, can you confirm this? Perhaps this is why they quite a bit cheaper than Western Digital ??

secondly, can someone tell me the difference between these two drives and if its worth the money or not? more specifically the design difference. I can see the one slows down to 5400 rpm but I dont know if that is a good idea... maybe you can disable that?

Drive 1

Western Digital CAViAR GP WD10EADS 1000gb/1Tb, S-ata2 , with intellipower ( 5400-7200rpm for powersaveing ) , 32mb cache, 8.9ms - 3 years warranty

Drive 2

Western Digital CAViAR black WD1001FALS 1000gb/1Tb, S-ata2 , 7200rpm , 32mb cache, 8.9ms - 5 years warranty

your help would be much appreciated :)

(yes Im buying one of these so I need to sell my 2 x 250GB that I had in RAID)
 
just search this forum for "seagate" and note all the threads to do with seagate failures. it is very educational.
 
I know Seagate has had a bad rep, but I still they have great quality drives and you could consider me a "Fan Boi" of theirs but, If I had to chose, I'd go for Drive 1.
 
Dude i do not see why you should stay away from seagate, they had a bad batch of hdd's and everything is back on track.

What are you going to use the drives for? I would buy the one without intellipower but thats just me :). 5 years is 2 years longer then 3 :p
 
HTC_guy said:
hi guys

after doing some research ive been told to stay away from the new seagate drives as the failure rate is apparently quite high, can you confirm this? Perhaps this is why they quite a bit cheaper than Western Digital ??

secondly, can someone tell me the difference between these two drives and if its worth the money or not? more specifically the design difference. I can see the one slows down to 5400 rpm but I dont know if that is a good idea... maybe you can disable that?

Drive 1

Western Digital CAViAR GP WD10EADS 1000gb/1Tb, S-ata2 , with intellipower ( 5400-7200rpm for powersaveing ) , 32mb cache, 8.9ms - 3 years warranty

Drive 2

Western Digital CAViAR black WD1001FALS 1000gb/1Tb, S-ata2 , 7200rpm , 32mb cache, 8.9ms - 5 years warranty

your help would be much appreciated :)

(yes Im buying one of these so I need to sell my 2 x 250GB that I had in RAID)
Click to expand...

The Black drive is MUCH faster. Performs on the level of their raptor drives most of the time.
 
hard drives

ok so I did some more diggin on the net and learned something

I have alwasy been a seagate person, but right now after reading everything I just dont wanna go down that road... :)

So WD have relased a new series of drives, well actually three. Green, Blue and Black. Green is the super "environment friendly" drive :confused:

Blue is the mainstream drive, and Black is the performance drive. Which apparently is quite nippy, not as fast as the raptor in most tests but its quite a bit ahead of the seagate drives and the Green and Blue WD drives.

Guess Im going for the black series then. I think the extra $$$ is worth the speed increase and 5 year warranty.

thanks guys
 
There is no ways they would make a drive that rivals the raptor, would be rather stupid :)

Again it depends if this drive is for storage then your wasting your money on a performance drive.
 
But for HTPC use, would the Green Series not be best? 24/7 operation etc is where these come into their own. The Black would be for gamers or hectic server duties. Intelli-5400 on SATA 300 would have acceptable performance for average media transfers and playback- it would ramp up to 7200 if required...
 
killadoob said:
There is no ways they would make a drive that rivals the raptor, would be rather stupid :)

Again it depends if this drive is for storage then your wasting your money on a performance drive.
Click to expand...

Read some reviews. All the ones I've read show they are on par most of the time.
 
I really see no reason for concern buying Seagate. If you get a Baracuda 7200.11 series drive that is affected just flash the firmware when you install the drive, simple as that. People that "know about" the firmware bug are blowing this out of proportion, just flash the frigging drive.

The newer Seagate 7200.12 drives do not suffer from the same bug.

I'm not a Seagate fanboy, i like Seagate just as much as WD. Truth be told I currently have 2x Seagate & 2x WD drives in my box.
 
Budza said:
Hedging your bets?:p
Click to expand...

lol :D

As time goes by I just buy what I reckon is best at the time.

1x 160GB WD Caviar SE 7200rpm, WD1600JD-40GBB2, 7 Jan 2005, first 7200rpm drives I purchased for big bucks, it had a identical twin that died last year one week after the warranty expired, go figure.

1x 500GB WD Caviar SE 7200rpm, WD5000AAJS-22TKA0, 1 Oct 2007

1x 250GB Seagate Baracuda 7200.10, ST3250310AS, 8 Feb 2008, came with a new pc bundle.

1x 500GB Seagate Baracuda 7200.11, ST3500320AS, 22 Mar 2008

Dates listed are manufacturing dates.
 
Last edited:
ponder said:
1x 500GB Seagate Baracuda 7200.11, ST3500320AS, 22 Mar 2008
Click to expand...

This one have the faulty firmware? I bought one about 3 months after this, so could have been manufactured at the same time...

Haven't had any problems, but would like to get FW up to date if needed.
 
Budza said:
This one have the faulty firmware? I bought one about 3 months after this, so could have been manufactured at the same time...

Haven't had any problems, but would like to get FW up to date if needed.
Click to expand...

YES, that drive had faulty firmware but has been flashed. Check your firmware version. Firmware SD15, SD16, SD17, SD18, SD19 are affected.

The dates I quoted are manufacture dates and not purchase dates.

I would strongly advice you to update your firmware if your drive is affected. It will fail without any warning when it does.

On the label of the drive it has a "Date Code: xxxx", what is yours?
I will decipher it for you to manufacturing date.
 
Last edited:
killadoob said:
Dude i do not see why you should stay away from seagate, they had a bad batch of hdd's and everything is back on track.

What are you going to use the drives for? I would buy the one without intellipower but thats just me :). 5 years is 2 years longer then 3 :p
Click to expand...

Hi All
Just to let you know that I did some stats on the Seagate drives we purchased and sold in January February and March up until last week Saturday.

The failure rate we experiencing is actually not that high and in fact has been much lower than we expected,all these drives have not even made the 1% failure rate which is our tolerance level on returns.

250gb Purchased xxxxx units sold xxxxx units Returned for RMA 6 units
320gb Purchased xxxxx units sold xxxxx units Returned for RMA 9 units
500gb Purchased xxxxx units sold xxxxx units Returned for RMA 11 units
750gb Purchased xxxx units sold xxxx units Returned for RMA 1 units
1.0TB Purchased xxxx units sold xxxx units Returned for RMA 2 units
1.5TB Purchased xxx units sold xxx units Returned for RMA 0 units

These figures are from our system as at 3:10pm this afternoon
Actual Qty's have been removed due to sensitive information
xxxxx denotes item > 3000 units
xxxx denotes item > 1500 units
xxx denotes item > 200 units
 
Last edited:
Esquire said:
Hi All
500gb Purchased xxxxx units sold xxxxx units Returned for RMA 11 units
Click to expand...


The whole hornets nest is around the 1/2GB drives, Seagate fixed the problem already months ago. If you think your drive is bricked then goto seagate's support site and put the serial number of your drive in. It will tell you if there was a problem with your drives firmware. It was noobs flashing firmware for drives unaffected that compounded the issue so check first.
 
Drake2007 said:
I see alot of failed WD drives. Good luck and keep backups
Click to expand...

Have used Seagate for years now - NO failures to date.
Have sold Seagate for a while now - NO comebacks...

Like the posts go around that Seagate is bad, there will also be Western Digital drives that failed. Seagate possibly had a bad batch but everything is under control now it seems. And with Seagate, you get the 3-year warranty which is not bad...

I would stay away from HDD's that doesn't have the years experience on the market. But always make backups of your stuff... Don't think one can ONLY rely on a HDD...
 
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