High capacity 2.5 inch drives?

RedWagnum

RedWagnum

Gawd
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Mar 30, 2007
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I am going to build a new rig soon and have been looking at cases. I've noticed that more and more manufacturers are reducing the 3.5" bays and increasing the 2.5" bays. So I was thinking of replacing my three 1TB drives with 1 or 2 3TB drives of the 2.5" flavor. After doing some quick research it seems only Seagate makes > 1TB 2.5" drives. What's up with that? I've never had good luck with Seagate drives so that isn't an option for me. Anyone else seen WD or HGST (or Toshiba) 2.5" drives in the 2TB to 4TB range? Or is using laptop drives in a desktop system a bad idea? The system will be "on" pretty much 24/7 but set to sleep when not active.
 
wd and Samsung make em too but the big problem ive seen is they are all 5400rpm. it might not be that big of a deal depending on use. afaik Seagate drives are fine. yes they had problems but that was years ago and every manufacturer had had their own issues. try one you might be pleasantly surprised.
ps: my Seagate 500GB 7200 sata2 is ~8 years old, no probs yet.
 
I swapped my steam storage over to 2x2.5" 2tb samsungs in R0.. works great. Using 4in1(5.25") drive cages.. 2.5" saves space in the case, runs cooler, less power usage, and makes it easy to swap drives if needed. I don't notice a considerable difference in loading speed compared to the 2TB WD Blacks that were in there before.
 
pendragon1 said:
wd and Samsung make em too but the big problem ive seen is they are all 5400rpm. it might not be that big of a deal depending on use. afaik Seagate drives are fine. yes they had problems but that was years ago and every manufacturer had had their own issues. try one you might be pleasantly surprised.
ps: my Seagate 500GB 7200 sata2 is ~8 years old, no probs yet.
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Hmmm... I looked at the WD site and could only find 1TB 2.5" drives and on the Samsung site they don't even list ANY HDDs anymore. A quick Newegg search doesn't find any Samsung 2.5" spinners either. Me thinks Samsung has gotten out of the HDD biz? IDK. Although all the spinners I have now are 7200RPM the slower speed of the 2.5" drives won't bother me too much since they will be used for mass storage.

Used to swear by Seagates back in the '90s - early 2000s. Was working in an environment where we had about 500 desktops to maintain, mostly Packard Bells and Zeniths, later Compaqs, HPs and Dells. WD drives were dropping like flies in a DDT factory but the Seagates were running strong. Don't think I EVER replaced an IBM/HGST (well, other than the "DeathStar" debacle!) In more recent years the tide has changed at least for my personal systems. Most of the Seagates I've had have crapped out on me whereas I've only had one WD die. Might give Seagate another try if I decide to do 2.5" drives.
 
Samsung's HDD business was gobbled up by Seagate, so I guess I should have said that Seagate does make a 9mm 2TB 2.5" :)
I've shucked a number of these from portable Seagate Expansion 2TB drives and they're all working fine 24/7/365, no SMART errors, etc.
 
WhoBeDaPlaya said:
While I detest Seagate's 3.5" drives, their 2.5" drives have been rock solid for me.

Samsung does make a 9mm 2TB 2.5" :
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Spinpoint-2-5-Inch-Internal-ST2000LM003/dp/B00MPWYLHO
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Who makes it? "Samsung Seagate Spinpoint M9T 2TB 2.5-Inch SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache Internal Hard Drive(ST2000LM003)" Samsung or Seagate?? And right below it is a newer model Seagate with 128MB cache for $3 less (ST2000LM015).

Based on what I am seeing it looks like the Sammys are NOS. I certainly could be wrong! But the fact that the Samsung site no longer shows any HDDs makes me thing that are no longer making them.

EDIT: Looks like WhoBeDaPlaya replied while I was replying. So that is a transition drive. It's looking like if I want anything larger than 1TB in a 2.5" form factor it will have to be a Seagate .
 
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Technically Samsung, in the same way that some of WD's and Toshiba's HDDs are made by Hitachi (even though parts of HGST got bought by WD and Toshiba)
 
I have been running 20 of the shucked 9mm seagate 2.5's in a big z2 array for over a year. Only had one go bad right off the bat.

I pulled them out of seagate backup plus slim enclosures.
 
RedWagnum said:
A quick Newegg search doesn't find any Samsung 2.5" spinners either. Me thinks Samsung has gotten out of the HDD biz? IDK. Although all the spinners I have now are 7200RPM the slower speed of the 2.5" drives won't bother me too much since they will be used for mass storage.
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funny 'cause me and Chas can find them. ok that's good cause most are 5400 rippms. here, I tick the boxes for you most are Seagate but there are a couple tosh's and a few wd's: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...deId=1&bop=And&Page=1&PageSize=36&order=PRICE
 
Can't stand Seagate 3.5 drives as I can count on them dying either at the 1 year mark or a day later. I have been rocking a WD 1TB 2.5 for a while and it's rock solid. I don't think I would use a 5400 for a storage drive though.
 
Seagate 3.5" drives are fine now. People hold onto grudges forever it seems. All Manufactures have problem drives. Everyone needs to just let it all go. Seagate is fine. Shit people. Wake the hell up.

Ok, I am better now.
 
jordan12 said:
Seagate 3.5" drives are fine now. People hold onto grudges forever it seems. All Manufactures have problem drives. Everyone needs to just let it all go. Seagate is fine. Shit people. Wake the hell up.

Ok, I am better now.
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When you lose data on multiple Seagate HDDs, and none in WDs over a few years (granted, this is just anecdotal) and then years later read stats like on BackBlaze's blog about the higher failure rates of Seagate & Toshiba compared to WD, and then HGST shows all of them up with even lower failure rates... let's just say I'm only buying HGST these days. Until the next batch of drive stats comes out that may change my mind.

At large scale purchases it may make sense to buy cheaper drives, as they can be swapped in by support personnel and software then does the rest of the work, but for personal use I prefer more expensive, but less prone to failure drives.
 
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WD is alright - at least their 4TB and 8TB (Ultrastar He8 in disguise) drives. The 3TBs and 6TBs look pretty terrible in BackBlaze's stats.
 
I'm waiting for the Seagate 4-5TB 2.5" Baracude compute to become in stock, so far few if any sell them in Europe. I assume February until mass availability which should reduce the price too as they are at 47Eur/TB.
Plan to pick up 2 or 4 of them, to replace old 1TB WD greens from 2008 and 4TB HGST's that will be redeployed to a secondary backup system.
Shame they have a two year warranty only, but if they fall below 40Eur/TB I can live with that and just keep one spare at home.
Going with full 2.5" drives only from here on, main rig is SSD only for a year. I like the quiet operation, low power usage and low vibrations of the 2.5" spindles. New Fujitsu TX1330M2 came with 8x2.5" which I do plan to fill next year.

Edit: when picking up 2.5" drives, especially from cheap external enclosures, be aware they may be SMR drives. http://www.storagereview.com/what_is_shingled_magnetic_recording_smr
The 2-5TB Seagate Compute drives should not be SMR but plain PMR but I could not verify it in any review, if anyone has more info would appreciate it.
Edit: SMR is PMR but with caveeats, depending on firmware. Necessary evil for high capacity platters though until HAMR sometime in 2018.
 
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GoD_tattoo said:
I don't think I would use a 5400 for a storage drive though.
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Why not? The latency is not that much higher. It's still fast enough to stream HD videos and music files. Might make a little difference on a large database. But for a single user desktop PC it really shouldn't matter much.
 
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