What Brands Are you Guys Buying?

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BecauseScience

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 9, 2005
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With Samsung sold to Seagate and Hitachi sold to Western Digital my two favorite manufacturers are gone. I had great experiences with Seagate until the 7200.11 1.5TB debacle. Seagate lied and jerked me around for months. RMA's kept coming back with the same problem. The firmware "fix" didn't fix everything. They never did admit that the disks were defective. I lost close to 100 hours rebuilding machine after machine until I woke up and replaced the disks with Samsungs. The thought of dealing with Seagate again makes my stomach turn.

Western Digital... I don't care for TLER gimping and the last time I researched their RMA people said they had a habit of sending replacements that were different drive model. I saw a lot of complaints about RMA turnaround time too.

Who are you guys buying from and why? I'm hoping to get some insight from your reasoning.
 
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Western Digital. I have a decent track record as far as failure rates go with them. But when I do RMA. There is 0 hassle and prompt turn around
I been on a Samsung beinge recently and those drives are performing fine. I dunno if that will change with them selling to Seagate. I've had problems with Seagate, as well as other people I know.
I also have yet to experiece their RMA process.
 
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WD. The only times I've had to RMA a drive with them, I just did an advance RMA on their website. Very easy, and they sent me a brand new drive (not refurbished) in replacement.
 
At work, now mostly hitachi. At home whichever is cheapest from hitachi, samsung or WDC.

Notice: I did not mention Seagate. Far too many RMAs at work with Seagate drives.
 
Went from longtime Seagate, to WD. They just seem to me to last longer. I have a drive thats a fire victim, and still running strong!
 
WD because they are lasting the longest and their RMA process and turn-around time has bee SPOT-ON each time!
 
WD for desktop-class drives, Seagate for nearline and enterprise-class drives.

Both are great at 2.5" laptop-class and portable drives.
 
Whoever's the cheapest. My stuff's backed up, and I can return the drive locally if it dies, so what do I care?
 
Hitachi for hardware RAID media storage, at least until WD screws up their firmware....
 
TeeJayHoward said:
Whoever's the cheapest. My stuff's backed up, and I can return the drive locally if it dies, so what do I care?
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What retailer are you buying from to get such service?

OldSchool said:
Hitachi for hardware RAID media storage, at least until WD screws up their firmware....
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Good point there. My problems with WD were firmware gimping and RMA reputation. From the comments so far it sounds like WD's RMA service is fine. Hitachi seems like the better option as long as their firmware remains ungimped.
 
WD period...Seagate requires 20 bucks to do an advanced RMA..WD simply holds some funds until they get the bad one back, then all that comes back available..

Why buy from anyone else?
 
kristof said:
With Samsung sold to Seagate and Hitachi sold to Western Digital my two favorite manufacturers are gone.
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You are joking right? Both deals have not closed and are currently receiving antitrust scrutiny both in the US and Europe.

Bottom line, no reason you cannot buy those brands today. They are operating as completely separate entities at this point as required pre-closing.
 
Western Digital for HDDs only. I trust them over any brand I've ever used.

for my SSDs i went OCZ at the time for the performance.
 
I've bought mostly WD over the last decade. Though lately I've purchased a lot of Samsung drives, they seem to have a slight quality(subjective) and performance per dollar edge on WD for the past 2-3 years.

I have 2 machines with raid-1 pairs of F3 1TB drives, and a newish FreeBSD/ZFS file server with 10 F4 2TB drives. My previous file server had mostly WD greens in it of various sizes, though it also had some Seagate 1.5TBs that I got from Dell very cheap.

With Seagate buying Samsung, I'm not optimistic about Seagate managing to keep Samsung's advantages. So I'll probably be switching back to WD for the next file server in a year or 3. But I'll wait and see how it goes.

A huge advantage WD has had for 10+ years is that it is very easy to RMA their drives, at least in the USA. Just fill out a web form providing your contact info and a CC #. They send you a replacement, and if you send back the broken drive inside 30 days, there's no charge. And they'll also sell you a discounted shipping label as part of the process. I don't believe any of the other manufacturers have matched their streamlined RMA process.
 
TeeJayHoward said:
Best Buy.
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They allow to return disks 3 years after purchase? Although don't they have meticulously high prices. Every time I have looked for a computer part at Best Buy I ended up leaving the store amazed that anyone would pay that much for X.
 
drescherjm said:
They allow to return disks 3 years after purchase? Although don't they have meticulously high prices. Every time I have looked for a computer part at Best Buy I ended up leaving the store amazed that anyone would pay that much for X.
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Cheaper than NewEgg or Amazon the last two times I've bought there. And their return policy isn't 3 years long, but if you raise a big enough fuss, they'll give ya what you want just to get rid of ya.
 
Hitachi now, but may get a Samsung. For performance I would still get a WD black.
 
I've purchased about 50 WD drives over the years for myself and others. Only had 3 go bad but they were 4-5 years past their warranties, so no complaint here. RMA'd one for a friend and it went 100% hassle free.

Recently, I purchased 2 Hitachi drives and I'm liking them.

For SSD's, I went with an OCZ Vertex 3 with no problems, yet. (knock on silicon).

As for the rest, Seagate can kiss my ass. I have no opinion about Toshiba, Fujitsu or Samsung.

Conner and Micropolis - R.I.P.
 
I'm still buying only Samsung and Hitachi, time will tell if that remains true after both are sold to new owners.
 
They are all shitty and breaky. Whatever you buy, buy another different one.
 
pjkenned said:
You are joking right? Both deals have not closed and are currently receiving antitrust scrutiny both in the US and Europe.

Bottom line, no reason you cannot buy those brands today. They are operating as completely separate entities at this point as required pre-closing.
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The fact that I asked the question should tell you that I have little confidence in government (US or Europe) to protect us from a duopoly.

I like to plan for the worst case. If either or both are blocked on competitive grounds I'll be happy but for now I'm assuming they're a done deal.

bAMtan2 said:
They are all shitty and breaky. Whatever you buy, buy another different one.
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Which is exactly why I never mentioned drive failures in my original post.

I assume that some of my drives will fail. Period. That's why my choice of manufacturer is so heavily dependent on the quality of RMA service.

My problem with Seagate isn't that they had a bum disk. Every manufacturer cranks out a turd once in a while. What I find unacceptable is that way the situation was handled.
 
kristof said:
...I have little confidence in government (US or Europe) to protect us from a duopoly.
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What do we need government protection from? I haven't been attacked by any hard drive companies, and I don't anticipate them going on the offensive in the future. Of course, they could probably build some major machine guns if they really wanted to...
 
john4200 said:
What do we need government protection from? I haven't been attacked by any hard drive companies, and I don't anticipate them going on the offensive in the future. Of course, they could probably build some major machine guns if they really wanted to...
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Many of these companies do manufacture things for the military, it really wouldn't surprise me if these two did.

Seagate sniper rifles and WD ballistic missiles. :D

Let's just hope OCZ doesn't or we'll be in a world of hurt! :eek:
 
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i cant wait for a newegg coupon: buy 50 drives, get one gun. shoot one bullet through all 50 drives, get 500 drives.
 
kristof said:
I assume that some of my drives will fail. Period. That's why my choice of manufacturer is so heavily dependent on the quality of RMA service.
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At work where we have sent back 20 to 30 disks since 2008, I find that WDC's RMAs are a little better than Seagate in that sometimes with WDC you will get a larger drive in return. Other than that there is not a big deal of difference. Seagate you ship to Texas while WDC you ship to California. Both manufacturers will take drives back without an error code (although I usually have one since a failing drive run thorough badblocks for a few days will generally set off some SMART threshold) . In all cases we have received a different drive back than the one I have shipped out. I have never been so lucky as to receive a new drive back from either manufacturer.
 
kristof said:
The fact that I asked the question should tell you that I have little confidence in government (US or Europe) to protect us from a duopoly.

I like to plan for the worst case. If either or both are blocked on competitive grounds I'll be happy but for now I'm assuming they're a done deal.
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I actually think they will let the deals go through (and I have done drive manufacturer M&A in the past few years), although the real wildcard is Toshiba because you cannot survive on 1/4th the scale of your next competitor in that market.

As far as buying today, both Seagate and WD have great RMA processes. I like WD advance replacement, but I have had one drive take three weeks to arrive even with that option. Still, not a big deal either way.

The original question was what are people buying. Since the deals are not closed, and will not be for a few months (e.g. we will be around 4TB drives by then), all four are still viable options.
 
I was hardcore Seagate fanboy until the whole 7200.11 fiasco, although I never did encounter the problem itself, I did stray away from their drives. I gave WD a try, and now, every HD (if not SSD) in my house is running WD, with the exception of 1 drive still using Seagate, but that drive dates back to the 7200.9 or 7200.10 era... Even for my external storage, I trust WD to back up my data and not lose it.

I've always been tempted with flirting with Samsung and/or Hitachi but I never really gave them a try. It's funny because I remember a few years back, Samsung and Hitachi were no were as good as the Seagates and WD of that time. Now, the tides have changes and everyone seem to be raving about them. Perhaps, it's time I give them a try.
 
As a home user, I've found WD to have a great RMA process. That's the good news. The bad news is that I had to use WD's RMA process twice in one year... once for the original 74 GB Raptor that died after 3 years of use and 11 months later when the recertified replacement died. This time they sent a 150GB VR to replace the failed Raptor. Recertified, of course.

In lieu of using the replacment VR, I put an 80 GB Intel X-25M in place of the HD (for my OS drive.)

All the while, in the same environment, I had a 320GB Samsung that consistently ran about 8*C cooler than the Raptor.. and still runs great 4 years into its life. I now need to expand and am looking for another drive.. and after much consideration, I'll be adding another Samsung to my rack.. a 2TB drive this time. That being said, I still gave WD a hard look before deciding. But the cooler temps and similar performance of the Samsung won me over.
 
Like others here I used to be a total Seagate fan before the 7200.11 scandal. It was more or less the only brand I bought. I bought a whole bunch of 7200.11s and got burned badly. I think I had like 6 out of 9 of them go bad on me within the first 6 months with a complete loss of data on several of them. Then I see a 2TB Seagate LP on sale for $70 and I just can't resist. I figure maybe I've had so many Seagate failures at this point that it actually makes it less likely that I will have another. Within a few months my shiny new Seagate LP dies as well, but in a less dramatic fashion than the 7200.11s. It died gradually enough that I didn't lose any data.

I found the Seagate RMA process to be very painless even though I did it over the phone instead of online. I don't think there was a category online that matched my problem. I paid the $20 for the advanced replacement and it all went smoothly. I had the drive in just a couple of days. And [knock on wood] that refurb replacement drive has been working like a charm for 4-6 months now. Keep in mind that the $20 fee includes return shipping and a box with approved packing materials. So it's really less than a $10 fee for the Advanced Replacment and well worth it. Note also that if the refurbed drive that arrives is also bad (not all that unlikely) they will eat the shipping costs in both directions again for no additional charge. Even though the Seagate RMA process is not as good as Western Digital's because it costs an additional $10 it's still better than Hitachi or Samsung which don't allow for cross shipping. But with Hitachi and especially with Samsung you are a lot less likely to need to RMA the drive in the first place.

I bought a couple of 2TB Samsung drives about 6-8 months ago and they are running flawlessly. Not a hint of a problem. They are slow, but I am of the opinion that Samsung is/was the most reliable HDD vendor. Their RMA process supposedly is even worse than HItachi but it seems like it is pretty rare that you actually need it. I had some bad experiences with 160 gig Samsung drives a long time ago, but it seems like they really got their act together as far as reliability goes. If reliability is your first priority and speed isn't that important to you I would highly recommend getting a Sammy drive while you still can.

I bought four 2TB WD Caviar Blacks in the past year and they are all purring along nicely. Although I recently had some weird speed glitches that I am currently looking into where copying from one drive to another seems to be slower than expected. For speed *and* reliability and the best warranty service if something does go wrong I would recommend WD Caviar Blacks in a heartbeat. Not the Greens, just the Blacks. For the speed of the Green you may as well get a much more reliable Samsung. I'm not sure why the Blacks are so much more reliable. Maybe higher end parts. I am just waiting for them to release a 3TB Black before I buy more. I am definitely a satisfied customer.

I have one Hitachi drive. a 1TB (7K1000?) which I bought when it first came out. I have been using it as my system drive for all this time and it has been incredibly reliable. Not even the slightest glitch. And it survived a trip in a backpack from one side of the world to the other and back. So my personal experience with Hitachi has been superb, but I have read about a lot of horror stories from others on the intertubes.They seem to be considerably more reliable than Seagate, but less reliable than WD Blacks or Samsung. They probably have about the same reliability as a WD Green drive.

In terms of speed: WD Black -> Hitachi 7200 -> Seagate 7200 -> Samsung 5400
In terms of reliability: Samsung -> WD Black -> Hitachi -> WD Green -> -> -> Seagate.

Samsung also tends to have the quietest drives. I remember that was the main reason I bought the 160 gig drives at the time. For building a quiet computer. Samsung is the slowest drive (they don't even make full capacity 7200 rpm drives anymore), but it's also quiet, cheap, and very reliable.

If you do end up buying a Seagate drive then I recommend two products: FlexRaid and GetDataBack. I just finished using GetDataBack to recover a NTFS partition with a corrupted $MFT (master file table) and it worked like a charm. FlexRaid allows you to do frequent backups with only a fraction of the disk space required to do true backups (via the magic of parity). It's sort of like Raid 5.
 
what's this TLER issue with WD drives?
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You should not use them in parity raid (raid5 / raid6) because instead of timing out in a few seconds when the drive finds an unreadable sector it may try to recover the sector for a very long time causing HW raid and fake raid to fail the drive out of the array when it could have easily repaired the situation (using the parity) if the drive would have just returned an error quickly.

Does it effect Velocirators?
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Yes. As far as I know it effects most (if not all) current non raid edition WDC drives. Of course the same goes for Seagate. Read the threads about this.
 
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