Seagate or WD Green for storage and gaming

[antef]

Hi, I'm looking to get a 2 or 3 TB drive for document storage, media streaming, and games. I decided against WD Black despite the better warranty due it being nearly double the cost of the Seagate ($132 vs $70). So right now I'm having trouble deciding between the Seagate ST2000DM001 and the WD Green WD20EZRX. Here are the considerations:

1. The Seagate appears less reliable, so many more reports of dead drives but also seems to be bought more frequently than the WD Greens. My current drive I've had for 6 years and the WDs seem more likely to deliver that, although not guaranteed of course. I can't even find confirmation that Seagate's warranty is 2 years on their site, which doesn't speak well to their customer service.
2. The WD Green is 5400 RPM, but I'm really not worried about game install or load times, most hard drives aren't that fast and I doubt I would notice a big difference. I'm also not too worried about the frequent head parking causing reliability issues since I read they increased the park time at some point and the drive will be used mostly for storage with just a couple gaming sessions a week.
3. What I'm still not sure about is in-game hitching. I have a 3 GB video card and 16 GB of RAM so you'd think everything could always be loaded into memory, but I'm not sure how many game engines use all the memory at their disposal. Could I actually see pausing/hitching in-game with the WD Green, even with 16 GB RAM and a 64-bit game? I mostly play FPS, adventure, or light strategy games.

I was leaning towards the Green because I figured the differences in speed are probably very minimal and it seems more reliable, but maybe the Seagate's problems are over-stated and would perform better in-game. If gaming is fine either way I'd rather go with the drive that is more likely to last 5 years.

Thanks for any input.

 

[futurefields]

wd black 5 year warranty thats why i got mine

was gonna get the seagate but the 1 year warranty seemed bad

wd green is not good for gaming slow seek times

 

[Ketchup]

I really don't think you want the green. You think it is going to be a "little" slow but I don't think you will be prepared for just how slow it is, especially in games, and they have a quicker spin-down time (due to inactivity) than almost any other drive.

Out of the two, I would get the Seagate. They make a fast drive for the money, and you will find negatives about any brand if you look hard enough.

If you would extend your choices, I might also suggest a WD Blue. They are about the same speed as the SG, if you trust the brand more.

 

[tweakboy]

Stay away from seagate. WD , or buffalo and LaCie ,, porsche pown

 

[smitbret]

Seagate

I have 4 of them in my server and they have been going strong for almost 2 years without a hitch. I also have a 2TB WD Green that is in the same server. The Seagates are actually quieter, run about 3 degrees warmer and run rings around the WD Green with average transfer speeds between 148-160MB/s.

 

[PliotronX]

I am normally biased towards WD but the Green is the worst line they offer. Slow + unreliable = get the Seagate.

 

[antef]

Thanks for the opinions. I will steer clear of the Green if you say it really is that slow. I figured all hard drives are slow enough that the difference would be negligible, but I will trust those who have direct experience with them.

ketchup79, have you used Greens yourself or are you going by benchmarks? I found some people saying the difference between all the drives is minimal so it was hard to find clear evidence of one or the other. You're right that you'll find bad reviews of any drive - the Seagates seemed to have more negative reviews, but also many more reviews overall. I passed on the Blue because I want 2 TB but don't want to have two drives, not sure why they don't make a 2 TB version.

Is the Seagate warranty really 1 year, or 2? Newegg says 2 but I can't verify that on Seagate's site anywhere. I know the WD Black's warranty is nice, but that benefit declines in value when the drive is nearly twice the cost. A 1 year warranty though might be a deal-breaker.

 

[antef]

Also, this drive really will be just for games, documents, and media streaming, everything else is on the SSD. Not sure if that affects the opinions - when we're talking speed, we're just talking about file transfers to and off the disk and game load times, as well as in-game loading if that happens very much.

 

[Ketchup]

I got a 1 TB green when my parent's old hard drive died. It was a good price on the Walmart website, so we took the option since I could pick it up while I was there (they live in another state). It is noticeably slower than it should be. Not terrible slow, but would be enough to bug me. They don't use it too much (mainly just media/data storage and email) so it works out ok in that case.

 

[StinkyPinky]

IMO the Green drives are trash and should be avoided. I'd choose the seagate without a doubt, but I second the WD Blue if you can find one at a decent price.

Not 100% sure the Blue offer 3TB drives however.

 

[Charlie98]

I have 4 Seagate drives in service, all .12 or better, and they have been 100%... I wouldn't hesitate to buy one.

I studiously avoid the 'Green' drives, I don't see any real benefit in my circumstance, even in my HTPC (I have 2 Seagates and a WD Red in there.)

 

[antef]

Thanks guys...it's frustrating they don't offer Blue in 2 TB. They have Green at the low-end and Black at the high-end, not sure why they don't offer a 2 TB "mainstream" drive.

Many of you have said Green is pretty bad and to be avoided. It doesn't seem like reliability is the chief complaint with them though, so is it mostly about the speed? I'm trying to understand how it impacts games - if the loading screen stays up a second longer, that's not a big deal. If the loading screen stays up 5 seconds longer and pauses in-game if new textures are fetched (although it seems an engine shouldn't do this when it has 16 GB of RAM available to it), then that would matter more. Could you expect an experience like that playing a game on a Green drive?

 

[futurefields]

PS4 and XB1 HDD's are 5400rpm I believe, so I really dont know

I heard that it affects engines that stream things on the fly, but if they are streaming from RAM, im not sure why it would

and I heard streaming always comes from RAM, not the HD

the HDD always goes to RAM first before the CPU and GPU get it I think

heck man, i dont really know, i just heard buy 7200rpm so I always have

 

[ArisVer]

I am normally biased towards WD but the Green is the worst line they offer. Slow + unreliable = get the Seagate.

Slow, yes. Unreliable, NO.

 

[Cerb]

Do not get the Green, or any Seagate or Hitachi/Toshiba equivalent. It's not just the 5400 RPM, but the rest of the aggressive power saving, that makes it S-L-O-W. Back when they were among the few options for a quiet large drive, I liked them, but today there are better choices even for that.

"NAS drives," like the WD Red, are fine, and 5400 RPM, but usually no cheaper than the faster 7200 RPM models.

I heard that it affects engines that stream things on the fly, but if they are streaming from RAM, im not sure why it would

The PS3 and XB360 had to stream from storage, to use less RAM. PCs don't, so the first time comes from the HDD, then from RAM (so long as you have enough RAM to not need to evict it).

WD and Seagate both have 1yr warranties on retail drives, and 2yr warranties on OEM (bare) drives, for the mainstream ones.

 

[bigboxes]

I don't care about slow. I care about reliable. I just threw away a 2TB WD Green HDD that was out of warranty. It totally sucked. If I hadn't backed up my files it would have been exponentially worse.

 

[mikeymikec]

I don't care about slow. I care about reliable. I just threw away a 2TB WD Green HDD that was out of warranty. It totally sucked. If I hadn't backed up my files it would have been exponentially worse.

You had one drive fail so the product line is unreliable?

In that case, there isn't (and hasn't ever have been) a single reliable HDD product line.

@ OP

AFAIK Seagate drives have a one year warranty, versus the WD Black's 5. AFAIK the WD Black performs better as well; that's been my impression from reviews in the last few years (or back when HDD reviews were common). I also found this review through techpowerup.com:

http://www.play3r.net/reviews/storage-reviews/western-digital-black-2tb-review/

It outperforms an SG SSHD apparently.

 

[VirtualLarry]

WD and Seagate both have 1yr warranties on retail drives, and 2yr warranties on OEM (bare) drives, for the mainstream ones.

You sure about that? Seems strange that they would offer shorter warranties on the (more expensive!) retail-box models. That being said, I thought that they were both two years. External HDDs are a different matter entirely, those are 1 year, I believe.

I know that Newegg was advertising a 3 year warranty on the Toshiba 3TB retail-boxed HDDs.

Likewise, Seagate's 7200 RPM Hybrid HDDs are 3 years.

Edit: Newegg claims 2 years for retail-boxed Seagate 2TB 7200 RPM?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148910&ignorebbr=1

 

[mikeymikec]

http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp

I can't find anything that officially states the warranty on specific Seagate products; Amazon on one hand reckons 2 years for a ST250DM000, a Seagate page says this:

http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/warranty-and-replacements/oem-warranty/

Newegg and another UK supplier agreed with Amazon's figure.

 

[Chicken76]

The WD Greens are not that bad, reliability wise, provided you modify the unreasonably short default autopark timer. See this thread: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hacking-wd-greens-and-reds-with-wdidle3-exe.18171/

For your usage scenario, I'd suggest a 7200rpm drive. If you're on a tight budget, a WD Blue shoould do it.

But, no matter what brand and model you choose, backup, backup and then backup some more. Don't leave important data on a single drive, no matter how reliable that drive is.

 

[MountainKing]

I've had good luck from my 1tb green used over 4+years and my 3tb green going into 2 years. Pretty reliable for me. I can post crystal disk info data of needed.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I've always thought of the wd black line as a mainstream drive and with a 5 year warranty why would you settle for less? Their rma process is smooth as well so if something goes wrong wd handles the rma fast and they ship 2nd day air so you receive the replacement in a timely manner. With that said I use a mix of wd, Seagate and hitachi however I've stuck to making all of my new hd purchases either blacks or veloraptors.

 

[mikeymikec]

I've always thought of the wd black line as a mainstream drive and with a 5 year warranty why would you settle for less?

Yup, I feel like they set the bar for what I regard to be 'decent' in terms of HDDs (particularly with regard to performance), the 5 year warranty was the reason why I used to buy Seagate drives.

The only niggle I have with WD is that I've seen a 5 year warranty drive fail in 6 months (just one of those things, it happens), but then the drive it's replaced with only has a 6 month warranty. I can't help but feel short-changed in that scenario.

 

[Charlie98]

The only niggle I have with WD is that I've seen a 5 year warranty drive fail in 6 months (just one of those things, it happens), but then the drive it's replaced with only has a 6 month warranty. I can't help but feel short-changed in that scenario.

I feel the same way about SSDs...

Which is why my normal reply is: Buy whichever 7200RPM drive is on sale in whatever size you need, unless you just have some sort of weird application or you just sleep better at night with a 5-year warranty.

FWIW, in my one unit in-depth highly technical review... I have a 500GB Green in AV recording... it has something like 20000 hours on it and has been 100%. But. It writes 24/7, never rests (head parks,) and I don't access it on a regular basis. It IS noisy as hell... the unit is in my master closet, and on a quiet night (the dog isn't snoring...) I can hear it writing when I'm in bed... 20' away, through 2 doorways, around the corner up on a shelf.

My experience would seem to favor the Green drives, but besides this specific application (which, in WD land, has become the Purple drive) I don't quite trust the Green tech in everyday use and don't intend to ever buy another one.

 

[antef]

Thanks for the responses. I passed on the WD Black due to it being $50-60 more and loud. The warranty is nice but you're paying so much extra for it.

I would not feel like changing the park timer on the Green, so I am still concerned about reliability with the default timer (not sure if it's 8 or 30 sec on new drives by default).

I guess I could consider a Seagate Hybrid drive, the price is in between the normal Seagate and a WD Black, and the warranty is 3 years. My initial impression was the extra cost would not be worth it for games and document storage.

With Cerb's and others' comments I do believe the Green is a slow drive, but again, I'm just not sure how much real-world impact it will have on game load and install times. Given that the drive's only other purpose is storage and we've pretty much ruled out in-game streaming as being much of a concern, game install and load times is the only place speed will affect me much. I haven't found enough data to suggest whether I'm looking at a couple second or 30+ sec difference for those things.

I would agree there's no reason not to get the faster 7200 RPM drive if price is nearly the same, except for I still don't trust Seagate as much as WD from what I'm reading. Maybe it would be fine, but there are so many more bad reports of them on Newegg.

Also, I've read about the "chirp" noise when the Seagate parks its head...is this still an issue? Any current ST2000DM001 owners who could speak to that?