• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Quality 2tb or 3tb drive for HTPC

killerz298

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 22, 2006
Messages
66
My friend is building a HTPC and is looking for a good quality 2tb or preferably 3tb storage drive to keep his media. What is his best option for a drive these days? The STAY3000102 (which I heard contains a ST3000DM001 drive) is really cheap at $129.99 but the reviews on this model are poor with many reports of data corruption and drive failure. Seagate released a new model for $140.00, the STBV3000100, but there are no reviews. What drive are you guys recommending these days or should he go with multiple smaller drives? He is also trying to keep cost down but not if it means a drive that will fail.
 
I recommend hitachi 5k3000. Although its not like I have had thousands of these for 5 years so that I can say anything scientific of the reliability of these..

He is also trying to keep cost down but not if it means a drive that will fail.

One has to remember that drives from all manufacturers have expected annual failure rates of 1% or so for the first 5 years of usage and higher after that.

or should he go with multiple smaller drives?

That would use a lot more power, cost more and have a higher chance of failure. Although you would loose less due to the smaller size..
 
I've had best luck with Hitachi Deskstar 2 TB 3.5-Inch CoolSpin RPM SATA III 6Gbps 32 MB Cache Internal Hard Drive 0F12117
 
Hrm... so it seems the Hitachi drives run the same price for 2tb as the Seagate for 3.
 
Hitachis. All my drives are either Hitachi 3tb or Samsungs (pre-bought out) 2tb in my fileservers. I got lucky and was able to buy almost 40 of those 3TB drives a few days after the flooding (when they were on sale for $110-ish).

I'm sitting on almost 200TB of home server storage now. :D
 
And I'm sure you filled it with purchased items :rolleyes:

PS, that would be over 11,000 17GB Blu-Ray rips.

It's not *all* Blu-Ray rips. They are ummm ...linux isos. =)

The truth is, less than 25% of that are what you think they are.
 
I ordered 5 of the Hitachi 7k2000 2tb drives from Amazon for $109.99 ea last week (still at that price):

http://www.amazon.com/Hitachi-Deskstar-7200RPM-Internal-0S02861/dp/B003S6ID20/

The box says they are SATAIII drives with 64MB cache even though the product page indicates they are 32MB / SATA 2. OS indicates they are "HDS72302".

Would have preferred to get the Hitachi 5k3000 or 7k3000 3TB drives, but those are a lot more expensive at the moment.
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
FWIW, I have at least 6 x 3TB coolspin + 6 x Seagate 3TB 7200rpm drives.
I have had 1 of each fail within 1 year.
FWIW, I also have 6 Seagate 2TB 5900rpm drives, and had 1 of these fail also.
None of these were DOA, and all originally had good SMART readings.
I know this is not statistically valid sample, but that 1% number from the manufacturers is simply not credible.

My recommendation is to use RAID 0 even if this means compromising on a 2TB drive - assuming, of course, you don't want to recover all your media from "other" sources, and that $$ budget allows.
ALSO - beware of warranty length - especially Seagate - online 3TB Seagate = 1 year, 5 year for the ones I bought at Micro Center last week (Best Buy also has 5 year).
 
Back
Top