Are there any good 2tb+ drives out there without the high failure rates?

losttech

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 9, 2004
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130
I have been looking at upgrading my hard drive to at least 2tb most likely not going SSD due to cost so looking at 7200rpm drives.
I game mostly so that will be its main use the OS and gaming.

All the ones I look at now all seem to have massive failure rates are there any good ones that are not failing on such a massive scale?
I have been out of the loop on hardware for awhile so not sure whats going on with the drives lately.

Would really like links to specific drives that are good and not having these issues.

Thanks for any help.
 
WD RE4 (s) are pretty solid. There's quite a few of them for sale on ebay with either WD or seller warranties that are carrying over. Example: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Western-Dig...-Hard-Drive-/111729485671?hash=item1a0398a767

I purchased one about a month ago from a different seller for right around the same price. I haven't had any issues with it so far (backup source / lots of writes), but it has only been a month so take it for what it's worth.
 
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these have around the same failure rates as VD Reds but worse failure rates then HGSTs. Those HGSTs are expensive though. These toshibas are dirt cheap for the quality. I just bought 8 of these with no DOAs. I haven't burned them in yet because i have limited ports and was having issues getting the program to run consistently in my set up but my norco case comes in tomorrow so i'll be burner them in this week.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149396

I recommend getting an SSD for OS and programs and keep stuff that isn't used a lot on the HDD. I'll hope to be using some sort of NVMe drive to replace my current SSD and run a RAID 0 or 10 on my desk top of HDDs and back up to my NAS that i am building. I tried RAID 0 of 6 drives and WHOA!!! was that sucker fast. It out passed my Sandisk Extreme Pro in reads and rights! Sequential of course but thats all I really need it for. I am using it to back up, games, hold stuff to load into SSD/RAM, and so on. All that is mostly sequential reads if properly defraged. I was pushing 500-1100MBps :D The CPU usage wasn't that bad either surprisingly. I bet its because its none IO intensive.

I'll be doing a RAID 10 if I can because I want the redundancy. I learned I guess in the past, oh who knows how long, that concurrent reads exist now in RAIDs rofl. So with 6 Drives in RAID 10 you get to 6x read and 3x write compared to a single drive vs RAID 0 with 6x read and 6x write. I care more about the reads then the writes so redundancy is worth it. In the past controller didn't have concurrent reads so RAID 10 of 6 drives acted like 3 drives. This also works for RAID 1. You get 2x read and 1x write. I guess I was running off 2 decade old info at first -_-
 
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Those HGSTs are expensive though.

One of the HGST models praised by BackBlaze is only $60 on NewEgg. Quoted from their post:

The HGST 2TB drives we have running have been exceptional. After 4+ years of service their cumulative failure rate is just 1.9%. If you’re interested in a 2TB drive, the HGST drive, model HDS722020ALA330, has been an all-star performer for us and they are still available on Amazon for $56.43.

I looked on Amazon but only found used drives w/that model number. NewEgg has them new though: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA5AD2U46781
 
One of the HGST models praised by BackBlaze is only $60 on NewEgg. Quoted from their post:

The HGST 2TB drives we have running have been exceptional. After 4+ years of service their cumulative failure rate is just 1.9%. If you’re interested in a 2TB drive, the HGST drive, model HDS722020ALA330, has been an all-star performer for us and they are still available on Amazon for $56.43.

I looked on Amazon but only found used drives w/that model number. NewEgg has them new though: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA5AD2U46781

oh your looking at 2TB not 3/4TB. I was thinking of another thread sorry.
 
I have a few 3TB Toshiba drives that run great, 3TB is a good price point to look at.
 
Currently, my Samsungs are the only brand that haven't failed on me.
I bought 3 three years ago and they have been running 24/7 since.
I haven't used the HGST drives, and I can't vouch for the newer Samsungs since I don't know if they are the same quality now as they were then.
 
I have a few 3TB Toshiba drives that run great, 3TB is a good price point to look at.

3TB drives from ALL manufacturers seem iffy unless you can specifically get one from a friend.. IE someone who works for a large distributor or the company itself as they seem to have various models and problems and iffy components and what not. To be safe I would just go with the OLD HGST model or if you know a guy who can get you a ST2000DM001-1CH164-S1Exxxxx drives which also seems to be a rare exception with seagates.. I keep saying a friend as the sellers wont sort out the good drives you want and you need someone to spend time to look at the drives and the firmware used and the serial numbers etc to make sure you can get the drive you want. Seagate and WDC have various models all using the same model numbers but comes in 4, 6 or 8 cylinder engines running on 2, 3 or 4 wheels.... Really pisses you off when your drive has 4 cylinders and 3 wheels when you wanted a drive with 8 cylinders and 2 wheels. ..

The 4TB models seems to be higher speced or quality parts as they seem to have few problems compared to the 2 and 3 TB drives for some reason..
 
3TB drives from ALL manufacturers seem iffy unless you can specifically get one from a friend.. IE someone who works for a large distributor or the company itself as they seem to have various models and problems and iffy components and what not. To be safe I would just go with the OLD HGST model or if you know a guy who can get you a ST2000DM001-1CH164-S1Exxxxx drives which also seems to be a rare exception with seagates.. I keep saying a friend as the sellers wont sort out the good drives you want and you need someone to spend time to look at the drives and the firmware used and the serial numbers etc to make sure you can get the drive you want. Seagate and WDC have various models all using the same model numbers but comes in 4, 6 or 8 cylinder engines running on 2, 3 or 4 wheels.... Really pisses you off when your drive has 4 cylinders and 3 wheels when you wanted a drive with 8 cylinders and 2 wheels. ..

The 4TB models seems to be higher speced or quality parts as they seem to have few problems compared to the 2 and 3 TB drives for some reason..

you keep saying this but i dont see any evidence for this. You or someone else (too lazy to check the thread) were saying that the 3TB Toshibas were inferior to the 4TB and used not the same tech, which according to their own specs are identical except that they have smaller cache. They both use TMR and PMR even though you or that other person said they didn't use TMR heads.
 
Check out the WD RAID Edition (RE), they are like the Black line but with TLER. Those are all I ever buy for spinners.
 
Check out the WD RAID Edition (RE), they are like the Black line but with TLER. Those are all I ever buy for spinners.

oh my apologizes I always thought those REs were REDs and people either typo-ed or they had two abbreviations.

disregard my ignorance above then but i do bet those are pricier then the REDs and Toshiba's.
 
There are very cheap SSDs nowadays, there are no reasons to avoid them.
 
One of the HGST models praised by BackBlaze is only $60 on NewEgg. Quoted from their post:

The HGST 2TB drives we have running have been exceptional. After 4+ years of service their cumulative failure rate is just 1.9%. If you’re interested in a 2TB drive, the HGST drive, model HDS722020ALA330, has been an all-star performer for us and they are still available on Amazon for $56.43.

I looked on Amazon but only found used drives w/that model number. NewEgg has them new though: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA5AD2U46781
Note that this is an OEM drive from GoHardDrive & has a 1-year dealer warranty.

That said I have 3x 7k3000s from GHD & would do it again.
 
You or someone else (too lazy to check the thread) were saying that the 3TB Toshibas were inferior to the 4TB and used not the same tech, which according to their own specs are identical except that they have smaller cache.

There are two different kinds of 3TB Toshiba drives. The first one has OEM model number starting with D..., e.g. DT01ACA300. These drives use 3-platter design bought from HGST, and are manufactured on ex-HGST Chinese factory. The second one has OEM model number starting with M..., e.g. MD03ACA300V. These are 4-platter drives manufactured on Toshiba's own factory in Philippines, and their design seems to be derived from Toshiba's pre-HGST 3.5" 2TB drives such as MK2002TSKB.

The specs of these two 3TB Toshibas might be similar, but they have different designs and are different drives. It's natural to expect different reliability.

All 4TB/5TB Toshibas so far have OEM model number starting with M... and are made in Philippines. So if you compare them with DT... 3TB Toshibas, they are different. If you compare them with M... 3TB Toshibas, they are similar.
 
so whats the model number of these 4TB because the 3TB version of this is the DT ones.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...569&cm_re=toshiba_4_TB-_-22-149-569-_-Product

Any source showing the manufacture model number?

Whoever it was still was inaccurate in the fact that they both still used the TMR heads. The original issue was the lack of TMR heads but I found them stating that they do use those heads. Made in different places meaning different quality is beyond what I know or have access to but I know they use the same technology at least, which was a major contention from that one person said...whoever that was. I really can't remember and nor does it really matter.
 
so whats the model number of these 4TB because the 3TB version of this is the DT ones.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...569&cm_re=toshiba_4_TB-_-22-149-569-_-Product
Any source showing the manufacture model number?

PH3400U-1I72 is MD04ACA400 drive packaged for US retail. It is a 5-platter drive made in Philippines. I don't know why Toshiba relabels their drives using those PH... numbers for US retail, making it difficult to identify the drive. The real model number is mentioned, for example, in Amazon reviews. Also it is trivial to identify the drives visually: HGST-based drives (DT...) are visually identical to HGST drives, and look like this:
http://i2.rozetka.ua/goods/1793/record_1793639.jpg
Drives that use Toshiba's own design (M...) look like this:
http://sd.citilink.ru/items/8020/963312/images/963312_v01_m.jpg
 
PH3400U-1I72 is MD04ACA400 drive packaged for US retail. It is a 5-platter drive made in Philippines. I don't know why Toshiba relabels their drives using those PH... numbers for US retail, making it difficult to identify the drive. The real model number is mentioned, for example, in Amazon reviews. Also it is trivial to identify the drives visually: HGST-based drives (DT...) are visually identical to HGST drives, and look like this:
http://i2.rozetka.ua/goods/1793/record_1793639.jpg
Drives that use Toshiba's own design (M...) look like this:
http://sd.citilink.ru/items/8020/963312/images/963312_v01_m.jpg

thanks
 
I recently bought 6 HGST 2TB drives that were used off of Ebay for less than $20 each. They seems to be nice drives. The mfg date on them is from 2012.

I did a full format on every single one of them before putting them into use. They haven't given me any problems so far.

I also have a WD 3TB Purple that I have been using as a storage drive for around a year now.

Steer clear of pretty much anything Seagate.
 
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