3TB storage options: Seagate Barracuda, WD Green or Hitachi 3K5000?

grambo

[H]ard|Gawd
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Apr 10, 2011
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Hi

One of my 4.5 year old 7200.11 1TB drives seems to be failing/have failed and I need to replace it. Luckily I only lost 4 days of data since last back-up. 3TB drives are down to $59CAD/TB while 2TB is $50CAD/TB, so I think 3TB is the best way to go, 4TB is still too expensive per TB. Drive is only used for storage of mp3, movies, temp install files, scratch etc. and is powered on 24/7 in my home PC (I do sleep hard drives after 30min though). Options are:

Hitachi 5K3000 5400rpm SATA 3 32mb cache - $159, might be OOS/EOL not sure yet
WD Green 3TB 5400rpm SATA 3 64mb cache WD30EZRX - $159
Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200rpm SATA 3 64mb cache - $159

Speed is not an issue as 99% of the use on my storage drives is sequential read/write, and frankly I like how 5400rpm drives are cooler by a few degrees. The Hitachi seems to be EOL and hard to find, which sucks because I've been very happy with the one I have. Haven't heard much about the WD 3TB, and I'm hesitant on Seagate as they are the only brand I've had issues with in recent years (500GB 7200.10 a few years back now my 7200.11).

My current setup:

SSD for OS/apps/games
Seagate 7200.11 1TB (failed)
Hitachi 3K5000 3TB

Then in an eSATA enclosure I have another 7200.11 1TB + 5K3000 which I use SyncToy to back-up to on a weekly basis. My plan is to replace the broken 7200.11 in my tower and eventually replace the one in the eSATA enclosure (with the same drive that I buy to put in the tower) when I either need to back-up more than 1TB to it, or it fails.

Thanks, tried searching but couldn't find threads with google or forum search (3TB is hard to search for).
 
I suggest you go to Best Buy / Futureshop and pick up t he 3TB Barracuda that comes with the 5 year warranty.
 
Cheap Barracuda has one year warranty.

What about WD30EURS AV-GP. it has a 3 years warranty.
 
Cheap Barracuda has one year warranty.

What about WD30EURS AV-GP. it has a 3 years warranty.

The AV series drives are not intended for PCs at all. Rather, they are intended for broadcast-grade professional video storage devices and certain set-top DVR boxes.
 
The AV series drives are not intended for PCs at all. Rather, they are intended for broadcast-grade professional video storage devices and certain set-top DVR boxes.

Well, the regular GP are not intended for what we use them either (24/7), those actually are.
 
I got a Seagate ST3000DM001 3TB last month, failed on me in 3 days. Should probably stay away from these 1 year warranty Seagates.
 
I got a Seagate ST3000DM001 3TB last month, failed on me in 3 days.

You will see that from all manufacturers. I certainly have at work where I have purchased 100s of drives. I believe it has more to do with the abuse the drive goes through in shipping than manufacturer quality. Was the drive packed well?
 
You will see that from all manufacturers. I certainly have at work where I have purchased 100s of drives. I believe it has more to do with the abuse the drive goes through in shipping than manufacturer quality. Was the drive packed well?

It was packed in a huge cardboard box with slots for 24 hard drives with foam and packing material completely filling the box. It worked really well, very fast drive, until it started to drop out and back in.

Eventually with this drive connected, computers would freeze at the bios and go no where. With USB it would freeze Windows Explorer and Computer Management until the drive was disconnected. This is a video I made of it, you can it making dodgy noises at about 1:05 and 1:32: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AClZ4QjXYHE
 
You will see that from all manufacturers. I certainly have at work where I have purchased 100s of drives. I believe it has more to do with the abuse the drive goes through in shipping than manufacturer quality. Was the drive packed well?

It's also luck of the draw; sometimes even enterprise drives will fail early. :eek: A few months back I had a brand new Cheetah 15k.7 die 3 days after the server was added to the domain. Probably two weeks total life from time of delivery...

mupet0000: since it was in a large box made for 24 drives, did you have any other Seagates you bought with that one drive? if so, how are they holding up?
 
No but the box also had some LAN cards and RAM in it, I only needed the one drive. They could have used a much smaller box.
 
I got a Seagate ST3000DM001 3TB last month, failed on me in 3 days. Should probably stay away from these 1 year warranty Seagates.

I have one of these that I ran Bart stuff test on for 3 days. It ran super cool and is doing fine. It is way faster than a 1tb WD black. If a company is going to warranty a drive for a year, it makes more since to believe they expect most of them to last that long, else they are planing to lose a lot of money. And they can turn around and charge you extra for a five year warranty, even if they have no real reason to believe the one year drive won't last that long. I have a bunch of one year drives that are still going well passed a year.

Sometimes drives just die early.
 
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drive warranties are WORTHLESS in terms of keeping your data safe. every model of hard drive ever made has died before the warranty was up for someone. rely on REDUNDANCY, NOT WARRANTY. personally i just get whats cheapest and out of at least 2 dozen drives ive had over the last 4 or 5 years ive had a single samsung f4 2tb die, out of 6 of that model. and most people will tell you that those were pretty reliable drives. so really just get whats most economical for you, and then somehow back up whatever is important. and ive had samsung, seagate, hitachi, WD, and one maxtor, in 2.5/3.5" and 5400/7200rpm, new and used.

EDIT: oh and right now im moving to a bunch of external 3TB seagate goflex desk drives for $130USD each from costco. seem ok to me so far. wish i could open them up without destroying the enclosures though. :/
 
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I suggest you go to Best Buy / Futureshop and pick up t he 3TB Barracuda that comes with the 5 year warranty.

Thanks, are the 5 year Barracuda's different drives than the 1 year, or just retail packaging and a longer warranty? I think the 7200.11 1TB that failed me is still in warranty, so I'm about to find out how Seagate's process works.

I found the 3TB Seagate with 5 year warranty for $179 on Best Buy's Canadian website (http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product...spx?path=8455be89e91195e23326643414ca16aben02) which is +$20 from the 1 year warranty.

Cheap Barracuda has one year warranty.

What about WD30EURS AV-GP. it has a 3 years warranty.

Can't seem to find that drive from my regular suppliers (NCIX, Memory Express, Directcanada.com etc.) and do not want to order out of the US due to shipping/taxes/warranty issues.

There was a thread recently on the same subject.
I suggest you take a look: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1700273

Thanks, that was an eye opening read. It seems the state of the consumer HDD market has regressed significantly in recent years. The floods might have played a part in it, but we are now looking at shorter warranties, less choices, less reliability and not much increase in performance.

This is the first failure I've had in at least 10 years, so I am not writing off Seagate, but also not happy about having to pay more for extra warranty, and I really don't need 7200rpm for this purpose. Might try the WD green.
 
drive warranties are WORTHLESS in terms of keeping your data safe. every model of hard drive ever made has died before the warranty was up for someone. rely on REDUNDANCY, NOT WARRANTY. personally i just get whats cheapest and out of at least 2 dozen drives ive had over the last 4 or 5 years ive had a single samsung f4 2tb die, out of 6 of that model. and most people will tell you that those were pretty reliable drives. so really just get whats most economical for you, and then somehow back up whatever is important. and ive had samsung, seagate, hitachi, WD, and one maxtor, in 2.5/3.5" and 5400/7200rpm.

EDIT: oh and right now im moving to a bunch of external 3TB seagate goflex desk drives for $130USD each from costco. seem ok to me so far. wish i could open them up without destroying the enclosures though. :/

Good point. I do have redundancy (back-up to drives in eSATA enclosure), I'm more looking at it from the perspective of manufacturer's reducing warranty periods as an indication of potentially lower build quality/reduced lifespan.

The 1 year Seagate warranty is one thing, but the stupid 8 hour/day power on guideline is ridiculous.
 
pretty sure my seagates have 2 year warranties. wheres this 8hr limit you speak of? ive never heard of that. also right now im just using mine to back up my internal drives so really they run for like a couple hours a week. still using the 2tb f4s as my primary internal drives but im looking to move those to 3TB when i find a deal. i did see some 4tb seagate goflex desks on sale for $150usd like a month ago on slickdeals, but was too slow to jump on it. idk if thats something that might pop up again in a few months or just a crazy price mistake, but its sorta what im hoping i can hold out for.
 
I have the Seagate - made a chirping sound when i first bought it, but after a firmware update, the head parking noise is no more

The speed of this drive is almost last gen SSD like, 200+mb a second in the fastest areas!
backing up my OS SSD drive onto this is a pleasure - 140GB filled in 9-10 mins with Shadow Protect

Runs a bit warmer than the other Samsung 1 and 2TB I have here
 
The speed of this drive is almost last gen SSD like, 200+mb a second in the fastest areas!

Remember that is for large sequential transfers only. For small or random reads or writes any SSD is 10X to 100X faster than the hard drive.
 
Can't seem to find that drive from my regular suppliers (NCIX, Memory Express, Directcanada.com etc.) and do not want to order out of the US due to shipping/taxes/warranty issues.

NCX has it @ 175 per drive
 
pretty sure my seagates have 2 year warranties. wheres this 8hr limit you speak of? ive never heard of that. also right now im just using mine to back up my internal drives so really they run for like a couple hours a week. still using the 2tb f4s as my primary internal drives but im looking to move those to 3TB when i find a deal. i did see some 4tb seagate goflex desks on sale for $150usd like a month ago on slickdeals, but was too slow to jump on it. idk if thats something that might pop up again in a few months or just a crazy price mistake, but its sorta what im hoping i can hold out for.

The 8 hour day/2400 power on hour data comes from here: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1700273 and here http://www.seagate.com/files/docs/pdf/whitepaper/mb538-drive-selection-guide-us.pdf. Seems insane for Seagate to consider 3.5inch drives as not being able to be powered on 24/7, even in home use, so they recommend 8hx5d and give no MTBF figure for the Barracuda line. I actually see no reference to the 2400 hours in that PDF now that I've reviewed it again, I'm assuming one of the posters took the 8h x 5d figure and took that to mean ~300 days a year = 2400 hours (1 year warranty period).

For me, I'm just going to watch for sales on 3TB drives and buy whichever one I can get for $130ish. I have zero intention of paying more for enterprise level drives for my use case.
 
Look for the pdf specific to the Barracuda line, the 2400h number is in there.
 
Ordered a WD 3TB Green WD30EZRX as they went on sale for $149CAD at NCIX last night. Thought about trying one of the new Red drives but for my use (not in a NAS/RAID) the premium isn't worth it. I'll use the WDidle tool to turn idle parking to 300s. Was not feeling confident about the Seagate, at least the WD has 2 year warranty.

Searched around for another 5K3000 without any luck.
 
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