Is there any reliable >2TB HDD these days?

[AndroAsc]

Times are bad in this post-flood Seagate/WD duopoly world.

Does anyone have any recommendations for *RELIABLE* HDD that have > 2 TB capacity?

The old Samsung F4 series which were extremely reliable is now gone, since Seagate has bought it over.

The current series of Seagate Green Drives suffer from excessive spinning down, which will cause it to suffer a premature death in the intermediate future... and the reduction of warranty of these drives means that getting a Seagate Green Drive is almost going to cause a problem in a few years time.

I'm assuming that the WD Green Drives suffer from the same problem as the Seagate ones.

I've not used Hitachi drives a lot, but it now seems that they are going to be phased out soon, with the WD buyover.

The only drive that I can think of that has decent reliability is the WD Black series, but those are prohibitively expensive.

Does anyone have recommendations for a reliable >2TB capacity drive these days?

 

[Golgatha]

IMO no. Sorry. Hoping things change before my Samsung F3 and F4 drives give out, or that SSD capacity and pricing gets to the point we can just completely be rid of mechanical HDDs.

My one exception might be the RE4 line of WD HDDs, but they are quite expensive for the capacity offered.

 

[AndroAsc]

Are there any firmware updates that fixes the excessive start/stop count in WD or Seagate green drives?

 

[Bill Brasky]

I know the WD's had problems with spinning down and the variable speed but I thought the seagates didn't have that issue. Maybe I thought wrong.

 

[Golgatha]

Are there any firmware updates that fixes the excessive start/stop count in WD or Seagate green drives?

Not really, but you can turn off the power saving features within Windows to minimize these effects. I have a centralized server in my home for my data files and I turn off all the HDD power saving features. Most of the research I've seen regarding mechanical HDDs shows it makes no difference or can even make your HDDs last longer if you disable the power saving features. Just keep those platters spinning!

 

[Golgatha]

Here's my take on the HDD reliability situation. Personally, I have 4 copies of my data and one of those copies is always off-site. Buying a "reliable" HDD isn't really the right mindset and is a piss poor replacement for having multiple backups. You should expect HDDs to eventually fail and be prepared for this event. Also, I intentionally try to break any new HDD I buy within the first month of ownership. I figure if it passes a barrage of writing data to it constantly, multiple long formats, and generally torturing it for a month; then it's probably good for the duration of its warranty period.

For me, reliability wasn't much of an issue in the past, as I always replaced the drives before their warranty was up due to my need for more and more storage capacity. I've kinda hit a plateau lately for the size of my storage needs, and I have the luxury of time and resources available to not have to immediately resell the old drive before putting the new one into production.

 

[Fjodor2001]

This HD duopoly really sucks. Not only did the two worst HD manufacturers take over. The inventions have also totally stopped. We should be having 6 TB drives by now... reliable ones...

 

[Fjodor2001]

One thing more. What happens when one HD manufacturer buys another one? For example when Seagate bought Samsung's HD unit, does Seagate keep the Samsung factories "as is"? Or do they "Seagatify" those factories, and apply Seagate manufacturing techniques and policies in the Samsung factories?

 

[birthdaymonkey]

I have five 2TB green drives (2 F4, 2 WD, 1 Hitachi) and haven't had issues with any of them. If you go WD, you can turn off the head parking "feature" using a DOS boot disk and the wdidle3 utility. I did this because the clicking was driving me nuts.

 

[survey_sez]

i have had excellent performance from several re4 drives (2 used in raid0) for a few years. there specified reliability and user feedback is excellent. i have no experience with green drives but in general user feedback seems very poor.

 

[Engineer]

I know the WD's had problems with spinning down and the variable speed but I thought the seagates didn't have that issue. Maybe I thought wrong.

There is no variable speed on any of the drives. Intellipower (or whatever) was a clever marketing ploy meaning "slower than 7,200" but not variable. Never has been.

As to the OP's question, I wonder the same. Seems that the 2TB and greater drives have failed at a much higher rate.

That said, I have two Hitachi 2TB 5400 drives that have been running for about 1.5 years but they would not run in a RAID 1 configuration without one dropping out and being rebuilt often. I finally broke them up and they have been fine since.

 

[bryanl]

There is no variable speed on any of the drives. Intellipower (or whatever) was a clever marketing ploy meaning "slower than 7,200" but not variable. Never has been.

What about the 4500 RPM idle mode for some Hitachi drives?

 

[Engineer]

What about the 4500 RPM idle mode for some Hitachi drives?

If that's available now, then it must be new. The Intellipower marketing ploy of WD and the other green drives was just that, a marketing ploy. I'll read about the Hitachi stuff.

Edit: I stand corrected in that Hitachi does indeed seem to have a variable speed drive (at least 2 speed) now although it seems to be just for idle purposes and not reading/writing. I guess it makes the drive lower power and can spin up a tad quicker than from a dead stop. Not sure it has a great benefit other than the less than 1 watt savings. Have the others finally followed? Not that I know of.

 

[Husky55]

In addition to reliability I am also looking for prices. For 3 TB the prices and reliability vary greatly. I have delayed as much as I could, but I do need a few 3 TB drives for my server. I could not swear to their reliability since I just bought them but Anandtech had a review on the Seagate ST3000DM001 that seemed to summarize the situation, i.e. warranty is shortened etc..Seagate is doing away with 5400 rpm drive and so on.

I bought a couple of external usb Seagate 3 TB and removed the enclosure and the internal drive is the ST3000DM001. Installed in my server they seem to be faster than my WD 3 TB 5400 drive and just as cool. So I am happy so far.

 

[vshah]

have been using samsung f4s for 2 years in my WHS box, no issues.

 

[Fjive]

Based on the feedback from a few owners, I've got myself a Hitachi 7k3000 2TB last week. Its fast and quiet, I know its too soon to talk about reliability but I hope it lives up to the reputation!

 

[kernelc]

Hi,
WD Green series reliability tend to suffer due to too much aggressive head parking behaviour. As the head attuator should last a large, but finite number of times (~100.000) in some circumstance the drive can break due to head attuator wearing.

This is rarely a problem with desktop machines, but with server and/or machines that are active 24/24h, it can be a real problem.

Officially, WD claim that for these 24h machines you should buy the WB Black or, better said, WD RE series. Anyway, I have a server with 4x1 TB WD Green disks that runs since two years ago with not problem so far, save for the break of the first disk (but it was not related to the head attuator, rather to bad sectors).

In the end, I really think that you should be prepared for a disk breakage as HDs are very fragile things. A 2-way RAID1 can be a good simple solution, but I suggest you to backup your most important data on external storage also.

Regards.

 

[Zap]

Only over 2TB drives I have are a pair of 3TB Hitachi 5400RPM. Strangely they did not work on the Intel SATA controllers, but work great running off the motherboard's extra Marvell controller. I have no explanation for that one.

One thing more. What happens when one HD manufacturer buys another one? For example when Seagate bought Samsung's HD unit, does Seagate keep the Samsung factories "as is"? Or do they "Seagatify" those factories, and apply Seagate manufacturing techniques and policies in the Samsung factories?

Well, I think there are already reports that people buying Samsung drives have gotten rebadged Seagates.

 

[tweakboy]

Times are bad in this post-flood Seagate/WD duopoly world.

Does anyone have any recommendations for *RELIABLE* HDD that have > 2 TB capacity?

The old Samsung F4 series which were extremely reliable is now gone, since Seagate has bought it over.

The current series of Seagate Green Drives suffer from excessive spinning down, which will cause it to suffer a premature death in the intermediate future... and the reduction of warranty of these drives means that getting a Seagate Green Drive is almost going to cause a problem in a few years time.

I'm assuming that the WD Green Drives suffer from the same problem as the Seagate ones.

I've not used Hitachi drives a lot, but it now seems that they are going to be phased out soon, with the WD buyover.

The only drive that I can think of that has decent reliability is the WD Black series, but those are prohibitively expensive.

Does anyone have recommendations for a reliable >2TB capacity drive these days?

WD and Samsung drives will be reliable, and live until your next upgrade and continue living. as long as its security mounted on case and you dont bump case ,,,,,,,,,,, safely,

I got a old WDC and its 60000 hours of operation and still going. F4 series is great. The only disadvantages are Defrag will take a longer time. You can efven get the Tt iCage , and once its in there its safe. plus they are fast..., my F4 320 single platters gets close to 150Mbps ,,,,,, I dont know how fast exactly the F4 2TG is...

 

[0roo0roo]

Not really, but you can turn off the power saving features within Windows to minimize these effects. I have a centralized server in my home for my data files and I turn off all the HDD power saving features. Most of the research I've seen regarding mechanical HDDs shows it makes no difference or can even make your HDDs last longer if you disable the power saving features. Just keep those platters spinning!

don't think thats true
http://www.storagereview.com/how_st...ern_digital_2tb_caviar_green_wd20ears_wdidle3

i did it on an eads drive, the WD30EZR i'll do later, i hate booting to dos.

and yea gotta love greenwash. save a few watts but early grave = way more wasteful than anything else.