WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

[shovenose]

OK, I want to spend $45 on a hard drive.
I found either:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136074
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822145299

I personally would get teh 320GB because what's the point of an extra 160GB of capacity if it's a shitty drive, (I'm a WD Fanboy) but I'm also tempted by extra storage for $0.00 more...

Opinions?

[dood]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

Save up a few more pennies and get the WD 500 gb - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136073

From your two choices, though, I'd stick with WD.

[shovenose]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

This is for a Pentium 4 computer... an awesome one, but a P4 nontheless, so I really don't want to spend too much. So I want to stick to either of those two choices

So right now we're at WD: 2
Hitachi: 0

[kc8adu]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

i dont see all that many hitachi deaths anymore.more western digital and seagate than anything.market share.best capacity,specs,warrenty would be how i choose.
dont forget poor handeling by newegg.

[Toasty]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

WD Black RE3 series. (Enterprise level drive - great for RAID)

http://discountechnology.com/Products/SATA?search=re3

New pulls. Bought 4, five months ago and not one hitch.

[dood]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

i dont see all that many hitachi deaths anymore.more western digital and seagate than anything.market share.best capacity,specs,warrenty would be how i choose.
dont forget poor handeling by newegg.

My last few OEM drives from Newegg have been packaged quite well. In their own cardboard box, with the right sized plastic inserts for the drive.

One thing I always have problems with when ordering drives is the "well, the next size up is only a few $$ more.... oh, but the next size up from that is only another few $$". Next thing you know, I'm buying a 750gb drive for a customer that has 20gb used on their current drive

For our IDE replacement drives here at work, I was buying WD 80gb drives. Then, they dropped the price of the 160gb drives so that their either the same price, or sometimes even cheaper. So now, our replacements are all 160gb drives. Kind of rediculous, when the original 40gb drives were fine from a free space standpoint... But hey, the new 7200rpm drives with decent cache are MUCH faster than the old 40gb 5400rpm WD drives they're replacing.

[mariushm]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

http://promotions.newegg.com/NEemail...x-landing.aspx

You must subscribe to receive their deals, otherwise the codes won't reduce the price (as far as I know, can't buy from Newegg personally)

Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s HDD -Bare Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...22148374-L014B

$64.99
Your Price: $49.99
With Promo Code
EMCJKJB22

Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB Notebook Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ate-_-22148374

$64.99
Your Price: $49.99
With Promo Code
EMCJKJB52

[c_hegge]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

Of the two mentioned go with the WD. I still call hitachi HDDs deathstars, and I still see them fail early.

[Uranium-235]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

I can say that-I re-built two computers for a client of mine, he decided to get two hitachi drives, one died within a month

I've had two WD 320 blues die on me (one DOA, doesn't count, one a customers), but thats out of like, 30 or so WD drives i've used so far

go for that WD black mentioned, black is slightly faster then blues, but not as expensive as the RE series

[shovenose]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

OK I'll stick with the WD 320
Thanks guys.
And I'm still curious if you still see bad Hitachi drives because one of the people at work swears by them (the good way, LOL)

[Toasty]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

go for that WD black mentioned, black is slightly faster then blues, but not as expensive as the RE series

The black RE3 I mentioned is $49 with the remainder of the factory warranty on it. (5 years)

[kc8adu]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

i have a few 1 platter 1tb hitachi's in service here.
they were extras from a mass replacement by one of my clients.they replaced 300+ drives.
the old ones were a mix of seagate and wd 160gb.there were about 50 that i told them to scrap due to reallocated sectors and current pending count.
so far no failures in 8 months on the hitachi's.

[shovenose]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

Would I see a significant benefit going from a Caviar Blue to a Caviar Black on a Pentium 4 computer?

[c_hegge]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

And I'm still curious if you still see bad Hitachi drives because one of the people at work swears by them (the good way, LOL)

No, I don't, but that's because there's hardly any in service around here. They've all died and been replaced with seagates and WDs.

[brethin]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

Would I see a significant benefit going from a Caviar Blue to a Caviar Black on a Pentium 4 computer?

Unlikelly, but the Black is better quality drive than the Blue.

[shovenose]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

Better quality? huh? That's the first I've heard of that...
I know speedwise it's Green-->Blue-->Black-->RE-->Raptor...
But I didn't know quality was different

[c_hegge]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

There's a reason why the blacks have a 5 year warranty, while the blues only have 3 years

[mariushm]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

IMHO the difference is pretty much only in price.

As the Google's hdd failure study showed ( ) if the drive survives the first 3 months, chances are it will work just great for up to 2 years, after that it's pretty much an 8% average failure rates.




So even a 3 year warranty is enough - if a drive will fail, it will fail before 3 years and you pretty much replace the drives anyway in 5 years - 5 years ago I had 80-200GB drives, now I have 1 x 1 TB drive and 2 x 2 TB drives in my system.

Slightly offtopic... interestingly enough, they also showed that statistically, at the beginning the drives have more chance of dying if they're cold. If they survive the first months, they pretty much don't care as long as the drives are at less than 45C - more than this and the failure rates goes up a lot:





Oh and an interesting conclusion... once you get a smart error (reallocation etc) they say drives tend to fall within 60 days (increased errors and so on up to complete death)...

Back on topic...

As far as I know Blue series have a different "profile" in firmware, they're tuned a bit more silent in the detriment of performance.

Also, from the specs I read, they usually have more platters and lower data density compared to Black drives so the transfer speeds are not as great as black series drives.

[NxB]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

I have had no problems with Hitachi 1TB drives. Replaced many a WD blue. Go for the black, its probably the best made drive from the 3.

I really have nothing good to say about new seagate or WD. When you buy a drive, check other people's failure rates. If every 3rd comment is drive died in a month you have your answer.

The deathstar thing was long ago.

[c_hegge]

Re: WD 320GB or Hitachi 500GB

IMO, hitachi are still deathstars to this day. We tied them at work and half of them died within a year.