Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

[Wizard]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

Prefer not on ebay. Better to get yours via B&M store, just in case if you have bad drive.

And 1TB is too much to lose in all in one basket. Get 4 500GB SATA drives.

BTW, Hitachi is good one to go at any rate if you can get them locally.

Cheers, Wizard

[EGuevarae]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

I'm running two WD extracted from free MyBooks,one WD500-AAVS and a WD3200-AAKS. No problems so far and it has been like a year. Why free?, well they come from an "I dare you to open this enclosure without leaving a trace. if you can, the drive is yours". After I got the 320gb one, the guy said "I can't believe it. Do it again, and if you fail, you'll return the 320 and pay for the this 500, which I would keep." That day I walked away with two new WDs. No noise, no problems, fast drives, powered (still...) by a Dynex ultra-crappy PSU.
Before that I liked to use Maxtors, but lately they became noisy and I was planning to start looking for a drive when the MyBook guy appeared in my way. For laptops I use Hitachis

[KeriJane]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

Hello.

Having gone through dozens of drives here with Video Editing, system builds, upgrades and repairs, I've noticed a few things, so if anyone is interested, here's my 2¢ worth

1- There are no "Good" or "Bad" major Brands. All models from all brands have a (very low) Failure Rate. There have been specific bad Models such as the Deathstars, Seagate 7200.11s, etc... but they get corrected or replaced by better models quickly after the weaknesses are found.

2- I personally feel that the most common cause of Hard Drive failure is excess Ripple from the Power Supply. Other common causes are rough handling when running, excess heat or excess vibration. Surprisingly, bungee cord mounting the drive to reduce noise can allow the drive to resonate internally and damage itself. (oops)

3- Nowdays we have a great selection of excellent hard drives with differing characteristics.
Obviously, it's important to select an appropriate one for the intended use.
You can get a drive engineered especially for use in RAID arrays. Or one with modified error correcting for use in DVRs.
The "Green" drives excel inside external enclosures with poor ventilation. Even SSDs are evolving rapidly.

A good arrangement might be Raptors and Caviar Blacks for the speedy system drive and maybe for a scratch drive, and the slower, cooler Green or Eco Drives for storage.

4- Drive Interfaces have come a long way too. IDE and SCSI are on the way out with SATA taking over. While the new interfaces superior speed cannot be exploited due to the limitations of the drive mechanics, I've noticed more reliable, consistent operation with a few exceptions that are probably due to the newness of the standard. These will be overcome quickly, and sooner or later someone is going to figure out how to exploit the speed potential.

5- External Drive Interfaces are at a turning point right now. USB2.0 is just too slow for large transfers.
Even Firewire 400 is much faster which is peculiar because USB2.0 is (fraudulently) rated for "up to" 480mbps while FW400 honestly does "only" 400mbps.
So what's going to be next? eSATA has got off to a horrible start with all kinds of incompatibilities and the inconvenience of having to re-start the computer to attach a drive in many cases.
Still, the big number "Up to 3gbps" sells eSATA over its best competitor, FireWire 800.
Firewire 800 at "only" 800mbps is faster than most hard drives sustained transfer rate and is a joy to use. It "Just Works" like FW400 does but gets no respect outside of planet Apple.
Now they're talking about USB3.0 with speeds "Up to" 5gbps. Hopefully it isn't a rating system like USB2.0.

And to think that my first hard drive was that gigantic, heavy "MFM-RLL" thing in my secondhand PS2 model 60.

Have Fun!
Keri

[Krankshaft]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

I went with a Seagate 1 tb HDD got it for around 99 bucks.

I recently found a computer speciality store locally where I can pick up OEM units. They're a small chain located throughout the country called
Microcenter.

They had Hitachi Deathstars, WDs, and Seagates.

This was my main PC and I couldn't wait for shipment so I had to go locally.

Thanks for the heads up PC the WD 500gb was still under warranty until 2010 actually I was suprised it had such a long warranty. They will be sending me a replacement unit.

Chkdsk /f saved my bacon on this one I will be buying an external HDD to back up my important data.

As for bad caps these failures happened on separate boxes one of the boxes PSUs was a completely recapped Antec SP.

I think the HDD is the most archaic component in modern computer technology today. Magnetic media was okay in the 80s and 90s but I think it's beginning to show it's age. The hard drive being a mechanical device and having moving parts (like the platters turning at 7200 RPM), the tolerance of the read heads, etc. Things are bound to fail.

As Keri also said the speed limitations of this mechanical device have been realized. I can't wait till solid state storage gets less expensive.

Thanks for all the info.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

I'm with Wizard.
- Drives 750Gb and over have a higher failure rate [that's consistent with complaints from a number of sources including here] and that's just too much to loose in one chunk.

I talked to someone that runs a server farm not too long back and they had begun installing 1Tb drives in place of their older 250 & 500 GB drives several months before. He claimed that over the same time period the servers with the the new 1Tb drives have drive failures 3x more often than the servers with the old used 250 & 500 GB drives left in.

You can kind of see that comparing the 500GB thru 1Tb WD Blacks on Newegg.
Those drives each have enough reviews to consider it somewhat accurate.
Considering the shear number of reviews, most of the reviews are in the first month and they are the same model line, I think a 4-8% difference is significant.

500Gb [555 reviews 91% +4 and +5]
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136320

640Gb [618 reviews 92% +4 and +5]
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136319

750Gb [230 reviews 84% +4 and +5]
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136283

1Tb [1101 reviews 87% +4 and +5]]
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136284

I also think the 1Tb reviews are -slightly- inflated by reviewers that are simply jazzed about finally having a 1Tb drive.

Thanks but I'll wait a few years for 750GB/1Tb drives.
-
At the present rate of growth of my data pool [Not counting the media server.] I'll probably exceed the capacity of a 250Gb drive about year 2012.
- Which is about when their warranties start running out anyway.
.

[EGuevarae]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

Hello.

Having gone through dozens of drives here with Video Editing, system builds, upgrades and repairs, I've noticed a few things, so if anyone is interested, here's my 2¢ worth

1- There are no "Good" or "Bad" major Brands. All models from all brands have a (very low) Failure Rate. There have been specific bad Models such as the Deathstars, Seagate 7200.11s, etc... but they get corrected or replaced by better models quickly after the weaknesses are found.

2- I personally feel that the most common cause of Hard Drive failure is excess Ripple from the Power Supply. Other common causes are rough handling when running, excess heat or excess vibration. Surprisingly, bungee cord mounting the drive to reduce noise can allow the drive to resonate internally and damage itself. (oops)

3- Nowdays we have a great selection of excellent hard drives with differing characteristics.
Obviously, it's important to select an appropriate one for the intended use.
You can get a drive engineered especially for use in RAID arrays. Or one with modified error correcting for use in DVRs.
The "Green" drives excel inside external enclosures with poor ventilation. Even SSDs are evolving rapidly.

A good arrangement might be Raptors and Caviar Blacks for the speedy system drive and maybe for a scratch drive, and the slower, cooler Green or Eco Drives for storage.

4- Drive Interfaces have come a long way too. IDE and SCSI are on the way out with SATA taking over. While the new interfaces superior speed cannot be exploited due to the limitations of the drive mechanics, I've noticed more reliable, consistent operation with a few exceptions that are probably due to the newness of the standard. These will be overcome quickly, and sooner or later someone is going to figure out how to exploit the speed potential.

5- External Drive Interfaces are at a turning point right now. USB2.0 is just too slow for large transfers.
Even Firewire 400 is much faster which is peculiar because USB2.0 is (fraudulently) rated for "up to" 480mbps while FW400 honestly does "only" 400mbps.
So what's going to be next? eSATA has got off to a horrible start with all kinds of incompatibilities and the inconvenience of having to re-start the computer to attach a drive in many cases.
Still, the big number "Up to 3gbps" sells eSATA over its best competitor, FireWire 800.
Firewire 800 at "only" 800mbps is faster than most hard drives sustained transfer rate and is a joy to use. It "Just Works" like FW400 does but gets no respect outside of planet Apple.
Now they're talking about USB3.0 with speeds "Up to" 5gbps. Hopefully it isn't a rating system like USB2.0.

And to think that my first hard drive was that gigantic, heavy "MFM-RLL" thing in my secondhand PS2 model 60.

Have Fun!
Keri

Simply excellent, Keri. The vast majority of the HDD failures not related to "direct hits" (drops to case or hdd itself) I have memory of from my days as a Tech Support Staff member were closely related to a PSU failure. The HDDs have so "simple" electronics that a little surge/ripple can kill them (no fuses or other protection), plates spinning at more than 7000 revs and a high density (I too fear for more than 500gb in one single shot) in a hot , enclosed environment, and PSUs that are either overpriced or as crappy as they can be (as the ones used in countries like Mexico, where I used to do that kind of job) are a dangerous/explosive mix.

[Krankshaft]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

I'm going to get an external 3.5 HDD case and backup all of my data on the new 500 gb I'm getting from WD.

I'm not getting caught with my pants down again.

I honestly didn't need 1tb but it was only 20 bucks more so I couldn't resist.

We'll see how long this HDD lasts.

I wish XP pro had drive mirroring like I have on my server. Then I wouldn't be worried at all.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

A RAID card is the way to go with that.
I at least mirror-RAID everything now. [Well, except the freakin' movies...]
.
Get a good card though. I like Promise or 3Ware depending on what it is.
Avoid the VIA and SI based cards.
.

[bgavin]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

Does somebody have first-hand knowledge about using RAID on WinXP and the various Intel ICHxx chipsets?

I've heard various stories about the striping being handled by Windows, etc.
Anybody have the facts? Is it entirely done by the Intel hardware and Matrix Storage Manager drivers?

[KeriJane]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

Does somebody have first-hand knowledge about using RAID on WinXP and the various Intel ICHxx chipsets?

I've heard various stories about the striping being handled by Windows, etc.
Anybody have the facts? Is it entirely done by the Intel hardware and Matrix Storage Manager drivers?

Hi bgavin.

As a Video Editor, I have some experience with RAID under both Windows XP and Vista.
My advice, for what it is worth:

DON'T use the RAID that is built into your Chipset. (such as Intel Matrix)
This is often referred to as "Software RAID" because it uses your CPU to manage the RAID array.
Using Intel Matrix RAID0 under Vista, I noticed a large performance DROP even though Vista rated the Disk performance as Higher.
XP with it's lower overhead isn't as bad, but RAID 1 on Intel Matrix under XP often slows down a bunch. That particular user was much, much happier to return to plain "IDE Mode" (no RAID or AHCI).
By the way, both of these systems were on Intel DP35DP boards with P35/ICH9R chipsets and Core2Duo CPUs.
My previous "Old" XP system was a i975/ICH7R board with Core2Duo e6600.

Other "Software Raid" solutions such as the cheap PCI RAID cards aren't any better than Intel Matrix... they still load down your CPU with disk management tasks. One nice bonus though, some of them can "Hot Swap" an eSATA drive while Intel Matrix requires a system restart.

DO purchase a high priced "Hardware RAID" card such as those made by Promise, HighPoint, etc. Yes, they are expensive.
But, they contain a separate Processor dedicated to managing the RAID array. This is how you will realize an improvement in performance.
My HighPoint RocketRaid card set to RAID0 was the only way I found to make Vista run at all well.

If Intel Matrix or nVidia, or Via, or anyone else could make inexpensive RAID solutions that were "Just as Good" as Hardware RAID, Promise and HighPoint would be out of business. But they aren't are they?

If you are using XP on any form of RAID, you will need a Floppy Drive to load the Drivers during the Installation of XP.
If you have no onboard Floppy, XP is very fussy about what kind of USB Floppy drive you can use.
It seems that only a few USB floppy Drive controller chips are compatible with XP's Installer program. After finding out the hard way that expensive Sony 2x USB floppy drives don't work (among others), I discovered that a Dynex brand USB floppy Drive from Best Buy does work OK.
And no, there is no good, easy way to migrate an existing XP installation to and from a RAID array. You have to start from a fresh Install, which is probably a good idea anyway.
Vista does allow switching to and from RAID but it breaks the Activation. Ugh.

Basically, Speed=Money.

Have Fun,
Keri

PS. Nowdays I use a Mac Pro with Software Raid on the Storage, no RAID on the System Drives and an external Firewire 800 drive with Hardware Raid0. It works out much better than Windows XP or Vista ever did.
Speed really DOES = Money!

[momaka]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

I recently found a computer speciality store locally where I can pick up OEM units. They're a small chain located throughout the country called
Microcenter.

There's one 5 minutes away from my house. Sometimes they have better prices than what you can find online. And then there's the bargain bin where you can get customer returns for cheap (though I probably wouldn't get a hard drive from there - prices in the store are allready low enough).
Definitely a good place.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

Does somebody have first-hand knowledge about using RAID on WinXP and the various Intel ICHxx chipsets?

I've heard various stories about the striping being handled by Windows, etc.
Anybody have the facts? Is it entirely done by the Intel hardware and Matrix Storage Manager drivers?

I agree with what KeriJane said with one modification.
Promise [and I think highpoint, I haven't used Highpoint but in reading it seems to work the same way as Promise's cards] still aren't -true- hardware RAID, they are sort of a hybrid between hardware and software RAID. On them the card does most of the work but some is still off loaded to the OS and CPU.
Promise is MUCH MUCH better than the Intel ICH, Via, or Silicon Image Chipsets though because those have the OS and CPU doing nearly everything.

3Ware is true hardware RAID where the card does everything.

Promise does have an advantage over true hardware RAID in that the Array information is stored on the hard drives themselves instead of in a firmware chip. When the system fires up Promise RAID cards look on the drive and load the Array information from there. Because of that, if the card sh*ts itself you can move your Array to about any other Promise card without losing a thing. The replacement card doesn't even have to be the same model as long as it supports the drives you are using. It's even easier if the two [dead and replacement] Promise cards use the same driver and most of Promises drivers support a number of their cards.
That said, I've been using -used- Promise cards since 1998 and I have yet to have a single one fail [or even be DOA].

I use Promise for arrays of 2 to 4 drives and 3Ware if it's over 4 drives.
That's mostly because of availability and $$ for the various size cards.

.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

If you want to take data integrity to the extreme, here's how to:

Using 4 identical drives set up the array to mirror 3 of them [RAID 1] and set the 4th to be a hot-spare.
In order to lose anything you'd have to have ALL THREE drives in the mirror fail in a time frame less than what it takes to rebuild the data onto the hot spare after the first failure.

.

[bgavin]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

If Intel Matrix or nVidia, or Via, or anyone else could make inexpensive RAID solutions that were "Just as Good" as Hardware RAID, Promise and HighPoint would be out of business. But they aren't are they?

I agree entirely with your assessment of software RAID. I just wanted to see if there was a differing opinion (none). Personally, I won't use software RAID under any circumstances. Hardware or nothing.

The XP/floppy disk problem is easily rectified with the addition of a line in TXTSETUP.SIF:

USB\VID_054C&PID_002C = "usbstor"

This provides USB floppy support for Sony external USB floppy drives.
These are readily available, and of good quality.
I carry one at all times.

I have no use for a Mac.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

WD Green Power drives, mainly the 500 GB AAKS and AACS ones, fail with clicking noise (recalibration issue)

Western Digital HDDs seemed to commonly fail with the dreaded click of death.

At least ones with a manufacture date in the period of between 1995 and 1998.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

I have a 2007 Western Digital WD5000JS SATA HDD that came from another PC, sitting around and the behavior is BIZARRE!

The Windows Vista installation fails, usually an error message about "unable to relaunch the deployment engine"

But it randomly gets past that, then on reboot, Windows gives a data integrity checking error message in text on a black screen instead of Windows Vista telling you it's loading files.

Only sometimes will it even get past the first error message!

And when connected as a secondary HDD, when I run the Windows format tool, it usually displays "Windows is unable to complete the format.".

But sometimes, it formats without an error.

Or when it appears to have completed a format, when Chkdsk is being ran, Chkdsk always gives an error.

Including Chkdsk falsely claiming insufficient free space and claims it's aborting.

Oh and Windows usually thinks there's clusters that are in use when they're not, thus, always showing some space used!

And the HDD looked OK when checked with MHDD!

WTF is this strange stuff about?

Is this a firmware virus? LOL.

[MixMasta]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

You need to run a long smart test on it. You can download a boot cd iso from western digital to do this.

[KeriJane]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

Hi RJARRRPCGP

You might not want to condemn the drive just yet.

Try it in a know good computer as a secondary drive. If it works OK in another system, the problem could easily be unstable power from the PSU that this drive might be particularly sensitive to.
Or any one of a gazillion other things most likely related to BadCaps in the PSU or on the motherboard.

I've had the unstable windows install thing a few times and it's usually memory errors that can be brought about by badcaps or even just voltage or timing settings.

Of course if it's all cruddy in another system, then it's probably those Pesky Drive Gremlins that escaped the from the Ghostbusters awhile back.

Have Fun,
Keri

[EGuevarae]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

Of course if it's all cruddy in another system, then it's probably those Pesky Drive Gremlins that escaped the from the Ghostbusters awhile back.

Keri

[bgavin]

Re: Hard Drive Brand Recommendation

Don't guess.

Download and burn Memtest86+. v2.11 is the current version.
Run it 24 hours.
Any errors indicates memory or other hardware problems.

Once clean, run the WD extensive tests against the drive.
Preferably, backup the data and do the Write Zeros formatting to the disk.
Any errors, toss the disk.

Hardware is too cheap to keep flaky components in place.
Toss 'em.