Most Reliable 1 TB HDD

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rhinehart.17

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I am building a small home server to run my music, movies and backups over the network.
After having two drives go out recently I want to make sure I don't buy a cheap drive that is likely to go out after 3 months. When I read reviews for drives, it seems like just about every drive I see has a tons of people saying the drive died after a few months... etc.

I plan to get two 1 TB drives and have the data saved on both drives just to be safe, however I still want to have quality drives that are not likely to die.

Any suggestions?
There are a lot of drives for around $100, then there are many for about $160 but I don't see what makes them more expensive. Are they more reliable or likely to last longer, or should I stick with a $100 drive. Also, which brands do you have the best experience with?
 
First off, whatever you do, do not base your purchase decision on newegg reviews. Many of us think their harddrive reviews are flawed because newegg often packs them poorly, so their "results" may be skewed.

In no particular order, three known reliable 1TB drive manufacturers are Western Digital, Samsung F1 and F2 drives and the current Hitachi 1TB. Not sure which is the most reliable though.

I own three Samsung F1's, two recent Hitachi 1tb's and a few larger Western Digitals and they haven't given me a problem yet.

The Seagate 7200.11 drives have been plagued with problems. From what little i've read the newer seagate 7200.12 doesn't seem that much better (i may be wrong about the 7200.12).
 
Factors under your influence have more impact on the life expectancy of a given drive than manufacturer quality variables:

1. Who you buy the drive from/how they ship it
2. The quality of the power you supply to the drive
3. Keeping it in a normal operating temperature range

Many folks on this board report their drives failing in the first 90 days here because they were not shipped properly. Newegg's bubble wrap and peanuts do not adequately protect hard drives in shipping.

Many HDD makers offer drives badged as "enterprise" versions. The makers assert that they are better and offer longer warranties on such drives. Samsung offers a 7(!) year warranty on their RAID class drives, Seagate's Barracuda ES and WD's Caviar RE drives are at five years. Hitachi's UltraStar 7K1000 drives are five year as well.

For years, I've been saying that there is little difference in reliability between the hard drive makers. While that is still true mechanically, Seagate's wonky firmware has caused a lot of problems in a broad range of environments.

Will you be building a RAID array with these drives or using another method of keeping the data on both drives?
 
I have been considering RAID but I think I will be going with Windows Home Server and just have everything duplicated. Do you have any experience with this?

This will give me much more expandability and should work better with the server that I am building. Are there any major downsides to this?

It sounds like I should stay away from newegg for hard drives. I had no clue about their shipping. Is there any place in particular that is good for buying drives?
 
ZipZoomFly and HyperMicro, although HyperMicro's selection is terrible. Retail boxed drives are another option, sometimes BestBuy, Fry's, and the like can have good deals in their ads.
 
rhinehart.17 said:
It sounds like I should stay away from newegg for hard drives. I had no clue about their shipping. Is there any place in particular that is good for buying drives?
Click to expand...

I wasn't impressed with the packing from Ewiz. They shipped it in small box with foam on both ends and just bubble wrap on the top and bottom. From I've read even that was still better than Newegg's packing.
 
aldamon said:
I wasn't impressed with the packing from Ewiz. They shipped it in small box with foam on both ends and just bubble wrap on the top and bottom. From I've read even that was still better than Newegg's packing.
Click to expand...
How much foam? Did the bubble wrap on top and bottom allow the drive to slide around?
 
alot of time if they pack with peanuts the drives can make their way to the outer edges of the box with shipping, better off to use the static bag with bubbles, some foam wrap and some paper or something that will make your item stay in the middle of the box

that and packing peanuts tend to have loads of static when you unpack, but ive had great luck with the WD Black 1tb drives, but on the other hand it isnt like 10 years ago now i see very very few failed drives, 10 years ago we had maxtor issues, fujitsu issues, IBM deathstar issues, currently i only seen a common issue with some seagate firmware
 
is that the e7k1000 you have, sjetski71?! I am thinking of getting a couple of those.
 
Samsung F1 1TB is one of the most popular picks. I'm running a Samsung F2 EcoGreen 1TB, runs great too.
 
DougLite said:
How much foam? Did the bubble wrap on top and bottom allow the drive to slide around?
Click to expand...

The box was barely bigger than the drive, 1/4" foam was on the top and bottom of the drive, and it was wrapped in a single layer of that pink bubble wrap, which was supposedly how it was protected on the ends. That's it. Could have been protected better for its trip from CA to NC, but certainly not floating around in a box like I've read about Newegg.

ewizhdd.jpg
 
I'd put my money on the Samsung F1 1TB drives.

I have 13 of them personally, no problems with any of em, and a friend of mine has bought 70+ since they were released, with very low failure rates (he builds storage/backup systems for several buisnesses).
 
Running a program called Spinright once a month and keeping track of the number of newly found bad sectors can be a really good indicator of just how much longer the drive is going to last. But if your running spinright once a month you wont be letting any bad sectors propigate, which in itself is going to prolong the lifespan of the drive.

That said, at $80, its a bit steep. A free solution would just be to look at the drives SMART data from time to time. It'l tell you bluntly how its doing.

In terms of longevity purly from a hardware perspective the server based hard drives are usually built a little better then the consumer grade ones. With that said, I've yet to see a single Caviar Green 1TB fail on the 6 that I've used/sold (keeping in mind they are only 5400 RPM drives).

But if you really want to keep your stuff absolutly safe on one source you simply wont be served by magnetic media, your best bet is a flash drive. Patriot is offering a 10 year warrenty on theirs which says pretty well everything I can say about the technology.
 
Are you using the drives just as backup to your servers storage, or are you going to be streaming right off them?
 
Samsung and Hitachi are the only 1TB's worth buying if your priority is reliability. E7K1000 on Hitachi side, if you can get it. F1 for Samsung.
 
If you don't mind Amazon shipping times (unless you have a Prime account), order your drives from Amazon. They ship it very well.
 
timme said:
Samsung F1 1TB is one of the most popular picks. I'm running a Samsung F2 EcoGreen 1TB, runs great too.
Click to expand...

Whenever a Sammy F1 1TB goes on sale at newegg, I buy one. In fact, I should be receiving one in 2 days. Only six more to upgrade my array, lol.
 
Uhhh aren't drives rated to like 5G's when not powered on? I think a i remember the seagate baracuda 5's being advertised they could be hit by a hockey player and still work afterwards...

Yup seagate still lists it, I know ups is bad but 350g's???

Shockproof – Operating up to 68 G
Shockproof – in sleep: up to 350 G
Click to expand...
 
Unhappy_mage is much better at the math than I am, but a fall on to concrete from about 18 inches is roughly 350G's by the manufacturer definition. How much the impacted surface deforms, the angle the drive hits at, how far it falls, and other factors influence the impact of a fall on a drive.
 
I've had two Seagate 1TB drives in my WHS for 6 months with no issues.

I agree about Amazon, my drives arrived very well packaged.
 
There are some guidelines you can follow in making your decision,

- as a matter of design, a cool running drive may be more reliable than a hotter running one, all other design factors being equal. A lot of people have had good luck with the WD Green drives as a result.

- simply on the basis of manufacturer financials, a drive with a long, long warranty may well be held to higher levels of durability. Look for a five year warranty or longer. This coincides with many of the enterprise or "raid edition" drives others mentioned. They seem about as reliable as the green drives, but trading a higher cost for better performance.

I own many drives in both categories. If they do not fall into one of these two (e.g. a hot 7200rpm drive with a 3 year warranty) then I stay away.
 
So many people bitch about UPS shipping, I want to take a drive I know is working, package it exactly how they would and throw it around like UPS would... then take it out and test it.

I hear so many stories about Newegg's shipping with HDD's but I've only had 1 DOA in maybe 40-50 drives I've bought from them over the past 5-6 years.
 
Please keep it on topic; the OP's request was for TB drives.

Shipping issues is a different thread. Shipping issues about anything other than HD's is for a different forum.
 
BlindedByScience said:
Please keep it on topic; the OP's request was for TB drives.

Shipping issues is a different thread. Shipping issues about anything other than HD's is for a different forum.
Click to expand...

No, OP was requesting 1TB drives that "are not likely to die." Shipping issues play a large part in that.
 
aldamon said:
No, OP was requesting 1TB drives that "are not likely to die." Shipping issues play a large part in that.
Click to expand...

Agreed, I think discussion about the manner in which drives are shipped in plays a large role in long-term reliability, and is a natural evolution of the topic at hand.
 
rhinehart.17 said:
I'm going to be streaming straight from the drives. This server will be mainly for media and backups.

I was thinking of getting two Samsung F1's from zipzoomfly for $74
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10007194&prodlist=froogle

There seem to be good reviews on this drive everywhere. Any thoughts
Click to expand...
I like my pair of 750GB F1s. For straight media streaming, you may want to check out the EcoGreen F2. 5400RPM is just fine for media streaming, and the single platter version of the EcoGreen is the coolest running and quietest drive SPCR has ever tested.
 
BlindedByScience said:
Please keep it on topic; the OP's request was for TB drives.

Shipping issues is a different thread. Shipping issues about anything other than HD's is for a different forum.
Click to expand...

You deleted a lot of posts that were actually on topic and very informative... The discussion was about a good hard drive and where to get one. Shipping is a very big part of that. If I want to buy a reliable hard drive I want to know who does a poor job packaging the drive so it doesn't come DOA. Deleting the posts was unnecessary
 
Seems like this forum has sided with WD, Samsung, and Hitachi a lot. I've heard about the recent issue with the Seagate 1TB drives. I've always known Seagate to be a good, reputable company but maybe not in the 1TB+ department.

What's the warranties like with the Samsungs and Hitachi(s)? I couldn't find any data on their warranties. I know WD and Seagate has 5-year warranties which is a HUGE selling point for me.
 
WD Caviar Black is five year. Caviar Blue and Green are three year.
Seagate is no longer across the board five year. Barracuda LP is only two year, 7200.12 is three year, Barracuda ES is five year.
Hitachi is three year for Deskstar drives, except the E series that are five year.
Samsung is three year, except for their RAID Class drives that are seven(!) year.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Seagate-Lower-Warranty-Time-From-5-to-3-Years-99912.shtml
http://achsyd1.achieva.com.au/cgi-bin/estore/news_20081215.html
 
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