So which is the top 1TB drive?

[toslat]

I am looking to buy a 1TB 7200RPM HDD to be used as a primary drive and, with all the new units with 500GB/platter around, was wondering which was the current drive of choice.

Drives have been looking at:
- Seagate 7200.12 ST31000528AS
- WD Caviar Black WD1001FALS
- Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ

Other suggestions are welcome.

I am not considering SSDs

Thanx

 

[Emulex]

so far i've had the best luck with the caviar in non-raid mode.

don't use the consumer non-raid drives with a raid controller; bad mojo will happen eventually.

i've had the samsung and seagate suck a nut (timeout error a few times) before i started scrubbing them. and indeed they failed raids several times before i took my own best judgement ; they are now JBOD.

 

[Massive Overkill]

Here is what I get on my Seagate 1 TB 7200.12 using 64K File Allocation Unit Size and the drive is partition-aligned.

http://img.photobucket.com/alb...verkill/720012_1TB.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/alb...erkill/720012_1TB2.jpg

 

[Zap]

The Seagate 7200.12 and Samsung F3 have highest density platters. I would lean towards the Samsung right now as Seagate has had a lot of quality issues in the past year.

Alternately, go for the slower WD Black as it has a longer warranty.

If going RAID, definately the WD Black. Search for "wdtler" and you'll find a utility that can basically turn the WD Black into a "Raid Edition" drive which won't time out or drop off RAID arrays (or less likely to).

 

[Vageetasjn]

I ordered a 7200.12 1TB two weeks ago and it was a dud. BIOS wouldn't recognize it. So I ordered the samsung f3 and it seems pretty good so far.

Another personal anecdote: I've had at least one samsung HD in my comp since 2004 and not one has died.

 

[yh125d]

The samsung two platter raid edition thingy prob knocks out the WD RE3 out of top spot, but theres also the new hitachi two platter drive to consider


Either way I think any of the common 3 or less platter 1TB drives will all be very fast and the margin of difference between models probably isn't groundbreaking

 

[alyarb]

samsung has my full attention when it comes to large drives also. you only need to glance at newegg reviews to see that both seagate and WD ship far, far too many DOA units.

 

[toslat]

Thanks. Seems I would be going withe the Samsung unit.

Any pros with going with 2 x 500GB (non RAID) v single 1TB disk?

 

[capeconsultant]

I am going to go with the new WD 1TB. It has some great new features. 32MB cache, dual actuators, FAST!

 

[toslat]

Originally posted by: capeconsultant
I am going to go with the new WD 1TB. It has some great new features. 32MB cache, dual actuators, FAST!

new? I thot the WD unit had been around for a while.

 

[MODEL3]

Originally posted by: toslat

Originally posted by: capeconsultant
I am going to go with the new WD 1TB. It has some great new features. 32MB cache, dual actuators, FAST!

new? I thot the WD unit had been around for a while.

I am not sure but i think the WD1001FALS (32MB, 106 MB/s, 6Heads/3disks ) model is 1 year in the market already.

Maybe WD is planning to launch a 4Heads/2disks version in the coming months (WD1001FASS, (64MB, 138 MB/s, 4Heads/2disks )

 

[capeconsultant]

AH, I may have been confused. It may be the 2TB version that is new. I went ahead and order the 1TB anyways. I hope it is super fast! I thought the price was good! The 2TB is $299, WOW. The 1TB has the same new tech though and I think it will be an awesome drive.

Dave

 

[ChaiBabbaChai]

if you look at Xbitlabs tests ( http://www.xbitlabs.com/articl...-roundup_11.html#sect0 ), the Samsung F1 DT and F1 RAID are not great, and terrible at some things. Sure they are fastest at copying onto themselves, but not a large gap between WD RE3 or Black. Regardless, WD's 1TB Black and RE3 both take the cake for all-around best.

Newegg reviews are a bad gauge. Newegg handles their stuff too roughly, and that is what causes a lot of DOAs.

Seagate's drives are really no good. Terrible latency.

 

[Elixer]

Originally posted by: ChaiBabbaChai
Newegg reviews are a bad gauge. Newegg handles their stuff too roughly, and that is what causes a lot of DOAs.

Seagate's drives are really no good. Terrible latency.

I would say, that newegg doesn't pack the drive as they should, and the shipper could care less about it, so that is a bad combo to have. If the egg would pack things like Dell or even ZZF, they would have less RMAs IMO.

I swear, UPS drops/rough handles the boxes, just so they would get more business , since they ship it out with them again, and again and...


As for the OP's question, I like WD better at this point, and they handle RMAs better than sammy.

Seagate needs to get its act together, and get better products out.

 

[Emulex]

because newegg has a warehouse. ZZF drop ships from real distributors like most resellers. Dell can push 50K orders in an hour through 1 distributor on a normal day.

newegg is just not on the same level as the big boys.

 

[ChaiBabbaChai]

Originally posted by: Emulex
because newegg has a warehouse. ZZF drop ships from real distributors like most resellers. Dell can push 50K orders in an hour through 1 distributor on a normal day.

newegg is just not on the same level as the big boys.

Huh? I'm not saying I'm an expert, but I have worked at a distributor which served the West Coast of the US and it WAS a warehouse... So I'm not sure what you are saying here other than that if ZZF has different 20 distributors, the load is spread across those 20. Also, newegg is no mom & pop shop and they have several warehouses.

 

[Emulex]

i'm saying 99% of the time ZZF and dell drop ship from distributors, not their own warehouses on common goods.

newegg uses their own warehouses mostly.

One example is the egg buys the 20-pack bulk drives and break them down to sell. There is more margin obviously if you take a pallet of 20 BULK than oem or retail.

dell does warehouse some items; but trust me they do a CARP load of distributor purchasing since it costs alot less to just shoot a document over and bill you than have to actually stock inventory.

 

[Idontcare]

It's not on your list and its a 3platter 1TB drive, but the Hitachi 1TB 3-platter drives are really inexpensive and the three I have work great, I can't discern any practical difference between them in non-raid versus my raid-0 raptor-x array. They can be found as cheap as $65 after MIR from time to time, $75 w/o MIR. Price/performance is tough to beat.

 

[ChaiBabbaChai]

Emulex - The confusing part was when you said DELL can do 50K orders/hour through 1 distributor on average. I don't see the relevance there. DELL gets HDDs shipped to their assembly line factory and then they ship out the computer, twice shipped; just like newegg orders pallets of HDDs in bulk and ships them out to customers. Newegg and DELL should have similar DOA rates, all else being equal.

Idontcare - has a good point, which I figured anybody smart enough to look at the xbitlabs tests would find for themselves.

 

[toslat]

From the xbitlabs review, the performance of the 32MB E7K100 looked ok, while the 16MB 7k1000.B was inconsistent. Unfortunately, it is the latter that can be had for cheap.

 

[FSH42NA]

Lately, Newegg seems to have finally got their hard drive packing system fixed. Order a couple of drives from them last week. When I opened the box (grimacing at what I might see), I was pleasantly surprised to find each drive wrapped in bubble wrap and placed in separate box of it's own. These 2 boxes were then in the larger shipping box surrounded in a sea of peanuts. Doesn't seem to be isolated as I've heard others report the same.

 

[Massive Overkill]

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1445158

 

[capeconsultant]

I will be VERY interested to see how mine is packed. When I sell drives on ebay, I pack them 20 times better than some I have received from various places.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: toslat
From the xbitlabs review, the performance of the 32MB E7K100 looked ok, while the 16MB 7k1000.B was inconsistent. Unfortunately, it is the latter that can be had for cheap.

Yeah its priced low for a reason naturally, just I rather like the reasons for the hitachi being priced low versus the reasons the seagate drives are priced low

At any rate all I was trying to communicate is that even though the drive is cheap and lower performing in comparison to the much more expensive $/GB 1TB drives, its absolute performance does not leave me for want. And this comes from comparing it in everyday use to the performance of my raid-0 raptor x (not top of the line either but not garbage by any means).

 

[ChaiBabbaChai]

Originally posted by: FSH42NA
Lately, Newegg seems to have finally got their hard drive packing system fixed. Order a couple of drives from them last week. When I opened the box (grimacing at what I might see), I was pleasantly surprised to find each drive wrapped in bubble wrap and placed in separate box of it's own. These 2 boxes were then in the larger shipping box surrounded in a sea of peanuts. Doesn't seem to be isolated as I've heard others report the same.

I'm pretty sure cardboard doesn't absorb much shock. Why don't they just use more bubble wrap? Cheap-asses? What's more expensive a cardboard box or a few ft^2 of bubble wrap?