I need more drive space. What brand/drive is good these days?

[Handruin]

My criteria:
7200 RPM
2TB or higher

Seems like the 4TB drives are too costly right now, so I'm likely looking between 2TB-3TB for a drive. I don't even know what brand is good any more. In the price per GB itemization I'm seeing several Seagate drives are less expensive. I've been less than impressed with them in the past, but I don't see what options I have. They also have several models in the 3TB range in a good price/GB value. What spindle-based drives are other people buying right now (if anything)?

http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/internal-hard-drive/#t=7200&s=2000000,2500000,3000000,4000000&sort=a5

 

[Clocker]

Newegg has 2TB Samsungs. The choices aren't great nowadays and I can't claim to be up on the news but I hear the least bashing of Samsung, anyway.

 

[Handruin]

Newegg has 2TB Samsungs. The choices aren't great nowadays and I can't claim to be up on the news but I hear the least bashing of Samsung, anyway.

If Samsung offered a 2TB drive at 7200 RPM I'd jump on it, but they only have 5400 RPM drives. :-( It's probably fine at 5400RPM, but I was hoping for a drive with a little more speed.

 

[timwhit]

I bought a couple of these in July. I just use them for mass storage so I'm not worried about the speed.

 

[Clocker]

I replaced my 7200 Samsungs with a 5400 RPM WD EARS and I can't feel the difference. On a file server I am betting the difference would be less noticeable. Maybe check the transfer rate specs on the drives and see if it comes through in the numbers. http://www.storagereview.com/samsung_spinpoint_f4eg_review_hd204ui

 

[Mercutio]

I replaced my 7200 Samsungs with a 5400 RPM WD EARS and I can't feel the difference. On a file server I am betting the difference would be less noticeable.

Any Green/Eco-friendly badged drive from WD or Seagate has been deliberately crippled to not work properly as part of an array. The drives won't respond to controller commands in a timely fashion and are then marked as missing by the controller. Samsung and Hitachi drives don't have that defect, but of course those drives are not being manufactured any longer. The Seagate/WD 5400rpm drives are being positioned for cheap bulk media or backup storage; the big two don't want to cannibalize sales of more expensive models for more sophisticated needs.

I've been buying these. Carefully watching Newegg and Amazon, I've found them as low as $130.

 

[ddrueding]

I think that is the same one I've been buying. Merc has my spare at the moment, so I can't check.

 

[Mercutio]

Yes, that is the one you sent me.

 

[Handruin]

I replaced my 7200 Samsungs with a 5400 RPM WD EARS and I can't feel the difference. On a file server I am betting the difference would be less noticeable. Maybe check the transfer rate specs on the drives and see if it comes through in the numbers. http://www.storagereview.com/samsung_spinpoint_f4eg_review_hd204ui

I'll have to give more thought on buying a couple of these drives but the more I'm thinking about it, I want to get a slightly larger drive.

Any Green/Eco-friendly badged drive from WD or Seagate has been deliberately crippled to not work properly as part of an array. The drives won't respond to controller commands in a timely fashion and are then marked as missing by the controller. Samsung and Hitachi drives don't have that defect, but of course those drives are not being manufactured any longer. The Seagate/WD 5400rpm drives are being positioned for cheap bulk media or backup storage; the big two don't want to cannibalize sales of more expensive models for more sophisticated needs.

I've been buying these. Carefully watching Newegg and Amazon, I've found them as low as $130.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm aware of the issues with using consumer SATA drives in arrays and the dropouts from TLER/CCTL. This intended purpose of these drives is just for my desktop setup that is not using a raid controller. My two samsung 1TB drives are 99% full and I want to upgrade them to possibly two 2TB or two 3TB. I don't want to spin more spindles in this machine, so the two 1TB Samsung drives will go into my NAS as a RAID 1 or for some other purpose.

 

[Clocker]

Any Green/Eco-friendly badged drive from WD or Seagate has been deliberately crippled to not work properly as part of an array. The drives won't respond to controller commands in a timely fashion and are then marked as missing by the controller. Samsung and Hitachi drives don't have that defect, but of course those drives are not being manufactured any longer. The Seagate/WD 5400rpm drives are being positioned for cheap bulk media or backup storage; the big two don't want to cannibalize sales of more expensive models for more sophisticated needs.

I've been buying these. Carefully watching Newegg and Amazon, I've found them as low as $130.

Yes..that's why I was recommending the 5400RPM Samsung. My point in mentioning the WD drive was only because that's the only 5400 drive I did a comparison to, although I think one or two of my Sammy's in my WHS are 5400.

But that's just my opinion, of course. Nothing really to back it up other than light usage.

 

[Mercutio]

Just so we're clear, I was addressing Clocker there, not Handruin.

 

[Handruin]

If I went with the 3TB Seagate drive (or any 3TB drive for that matter), how can I confirm if the SATA controller on my motherboard will work properly? My motherboard (Gigabyte P55M-UD4) . It has the Intel P55 chipset (5 x SATA 3Gb) and another gigabyte 2-port SATA 2 chipset. I do not intend to boot from the drive. Do I only need to partition it as GPT and go on with my life?

 

[Chewy509]

As long as you have the latest Intel drivers for the ICH, then you are fine (as long as you don't want to boot from it). (IIRC, 4K sector support was added with the ICH9 with a particular driver set).

PS. ICH9 was the ICH chipset with the X38/X48 series chipsets. When I was looking for a 2TB or 3TB drive for my system (X38/ICH9 based) I had the same question about 4K sector support. While it won't boot from it (BIOS limitation not chipset), I can use them as storage drives quite easily.

 

[Handruin]

Any Green/Eco-friendly badged drive from WD or Seagate has been deliberately crippled to not work properly as part of an array. The drives won't respond to controller commands in a timely fashion and are then marked as missing by the controller. Samsung and Hitachi drives don't have that defect, but of course those drives are not being manufactured any longer. The Seagate/WD 5400rpm drives are being positioned for cheap bulk media or backup storage; the big two don't want to cannibalize sales of more expensive models for more sophisticated needs.

I've been buying these. Carefully watching Newegg and Amazon, I've found them as low as $130.

Looks like they've come down a little below $130 ($128.99) at Amazon with Prime shipping. Newegg is still $149, so I'm going to order a pair of them from amazon. Thanks for the tip on watching the pricing. I'm only mentioning the price because you said you buy them also.

 

[timwhit]

Seems like a good deal for a 3TB disk. Let us know if they fail.

 

[Mercutio]

Amazon had those Seagate drives down to $110 earlier in the week.

 

[Handruin]

Seems like a good deal for a 3TB disk. Let us know if they fail.

I know I'm taking a chance. I'll give feedback if I have any issues with them.

 

[Handruin]

Amazon had those Seagate drives down to $110 earlier in the week.

Where the hell were you earlier in the week with this information? Oh well I need the space now. I can't wait any longer.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm fairly certain they'll be that cheap again soon.

 

[LunarMist]

They were 139 in the store. Now when will Seagate add a fourth platter?

 

[Handruin]

I'm fairly certain they'll be that cheap again soon.

Oh well. I won't need them at that point. :???:

 

[Handruin]

After buying hard drives from newegg over the years I've never been impressed with their shipping packaging. Amazon seems to know what's up with protecting and shipping hard drives. It may not be perfect, but I find this more than acceptable. Now I have to wait for the to warm up to room temp before I can do anything with them.

 

[Clocker]

Hypermicro always did a suuuuper job packing. Not sure if they are still around though.

 

[Handruin]

Hypermicro always did a suuuuper job packing. Not sure if they are still around though.

That's where I bought my Quantum Atlas 10K & 10KII SCSI drives from years ago! I still have them in my basement somewhere. A huge 9.1GB/18GB haha No SCSI controller to speak of, so they're as good as dead.

 

[Mercutio]

Amazon DOES do an awesome job with drive packaging.
On the other hand, I got a box today that probably could've been used as a coffin for a five year old and all it had in it were three power supplies and a metric assload of those little air-filled bags they use.

 

[Clocker]

That's where I bought my Quantum Atlas 10K & 10KII SCSI drives from years ago! I still have them in my basement somewhere. A huge 9.1GB/18GB haha No SCSI controller to speak of, so they're as good as dead.

LOL. Oh, the days. I had two Atlas 10K IIs plus a Cheetah X15-36LP, plugged into my 29160 SCSI card, which was plugged into my Tyan Tiger MPX with Dual Athlon XP 1700's modded into MPs (with the lead pencil trick so I could run SMP) and overclocked to 2100+ speeds. All packed inside my Fong Kai FK-320 that I stripped and repainted with a hammered silver finish. It was quite a heater. I was putting up some pretty good F@H numbers back then.

 

[Handruin]

Seems like a good deal for a 3TB disk. Let us know if they fail.

About 7 minutes give or take a couple. :dunno:

 

[timwhit]

About 7 minutes give or take a couple. :dunno:

View attachment 543

View attachment 544

That's awesome. Maybe you should buy the 2TB Samsung drives before they are all gone.

 

[Handruin]

That's awesome. Maybe you should buy the 2TB Samsung drives before they are all gone.

Maybe... I turned my PC on in the morning and the drive was working again. I didn't spend much time debugging last night because it was late. The drive powered on and I was running a few benchmarks on it. During one of the HD Tune scan tests the drive disconnected from my SATA controller (or so it seems). It's possible the cable isn't good. I dug it out of a parts bin because I couldn't find any more in my supply of parts. I'm also using the port on the SATA controller that is considered RAID. This might be the supplemental controller that comes with my motherboard vs the Intel SATA controller. That's a possible cause of my issues.

I did a bunch of file copies to the drive this morning and it was running fine. I left it running with a scan disk to see what happens by the time I get home. This is the first of the two drives. I haven't powered on the second one yet.

 

[Handruin]

Looks like these exact same drives are down to $89.99 each!

(I ordered two more)

 

[timwhit]

Looks like these exact same drives are down to $89.99 each!

(I ordered two more)

That's very cheap. What happened with the first set you bought? Are they all still working?

 

[Handruin]

That's very cheap. What happened with the first set you bought? Are they all still working?

The one drive that showed errors has not done that since the first day. I'm wondering if it had some issue with my SATA controller and the benchmark tool I used. I've copied hundreds of GBs of test data to and from the drive and I've not seen any more of those errors. I've done full disk scans on it with no bad sectors. I'm not sure what to make of the original errors.

 

[CougTek]

Looks like these exact same drives are down to $89.99 each!

I can also get them for 89.99$CDN at a local store during the week-end. If they weren't Seagate's, I would be tempted.

 

[Mercutio]

I guess it's worth pointing out, for those who would like to buy 4TB drives, that it's vastly cheaper for some reason to tear them out of Hitachi Touro enclosures than anything else at the moment. I've gotten those for as little as $175 and the Seagate equivalent for as little as $185.

 

[LunarMist]

I guess it's worth pointing out, for those who would like to buy 4TB drives, that it's vastly cheaper for some reason to tear them out of Hitachi Touro enclosures than anything else at the moment. I've gotten those for as little as $175 and the Seagate equivalent for as little as $185.

The retail 4GB Hitachi drives are $189 at the moment, so it is hardly worth destroying stuff and voiding a warranty.

 

[CougTek]

The retail 4GB Hitachi drives are $189 at the moment, so it is hardly worth destroying stuff and voiding a warranty.

Oh wow, another funny butchered link by Mooner. I never get tired of following those.

 

[LunarMist]

Oh wow, another funny butchered link by Mooner. I never get tired of following those.

Well obviously something is not right. :cursin: I don't know why it keeps happening to me.
It works when I use the 3rd party link, but on some forums they flame on you for doing so.
Prehaps I should type the link UBB code manually as I did before the software was updated.

 

[Mercutio]

The retail 4GB Hitachi drives are $189 at the moment, so it is hardly worth destroying stuff and voiding a warranty.

I guess that depends entirely on whether or not you value the warranty more than having a decent internal drive. Since the transformers in external 3.5" drives usually suck and die in fairly short order, I don't mind ripping one open to put the drive someplace I know it will be safe.

 

[Adcadet]

Why not just wait until the transformer dies then pull the drive? Do they kill the drive too?

 

[Mercutio]

I had to order eight 3TB drives today.
Something interesting that I noticed that between Amazon and third party sellers, the pricing on those drives varied by as much as $60, with drives sold directly by Amazon swinging by as much as $30. Amazon was out of stock on the drives no fewer than four times today and at one point there was not a single 3TB 7200rpm internal Seagate drive available on the whole site. I got my eight drives for $101 apiece, so I have my fingers crossed that we've finally seen the last of the inflated Fall of '11 pricing.

Mostly I am just marveling at how well Amazon's inventory tracking and logistics work.