New HDD purchase - very confused

jimmyzaas · Post by **jimmyzaas** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 4:12 pm

I plan on getting a 300GB SATA hard drive (no bigger, no smaller) and were considering the following

1. Western Digital Cavier SE WD3200JD
2. Maxtor Diamondmax 10 6L300S0/6V300F0
3. Seagate 7200.9 ST3300622AS

The purchase should be based on reliability first. Then based on noise. Then based on operating temperatures (how hot the drive will run).

From reading on forums, I receive mixed messages on all three.

1. The western digital drive. New ones uses FDB. Some claim they are unreliable and produces a whiny noise while others say it's very quiet. I would like to know from a WD3200JD Cavier SE user first hand how loud the drive really is. This is because the review on Storagereviews.com indicated it was more quiet than a seagate 7200.8. Not enough data was available to determine it's reliability?

2. Maxtor. Although I don't own a Nforce 4 board yet. I might soon. These appear to have serious issues with Nforce 4 and 3 boards. There is a firmware patch out. But I rather not deal with such hassles. Not so sure about how loud 300GB models are.. but some claim lower capacity models are quieter than Western Digital drives.

3. Seagate. Some claim this hard drive uses 2 160GB platters. Others claim it uses 3x100GB platters. 250GB users found their drives to be more quiet than 7200.8 series. However 7200.8 drives seemed to have a very high failure rate also. Is it safe to get a 7200.9? Also, the 300GB model is a whopping $30 more than the competition.

Some general conclusions I have accumulated on the net.

Reliability: Seagate > Maxtor > WD ? (best to worst)
Noise: WD > Maxtor > Seagate ? (loudest to quietest)
Temp: Seagate > Maxtor > WD ? (hottest to coolest)

Although I've been a maxtor user for 5 years now (and without problems), I am really leaning towards getting a Western Digital WD3200JD mainly due to its price and capacity. It doesn't have NCQ but it doesn't matter because it doesn't make much of a difference anyway.

Is this a bad choice? Is the WD really that loud? Is WD really that unreliable? Should I dish out the extra $30 and get a more reliable drive like seagate? or should I just pray next gen boards will not encounter problems with the Maxtor drive and get that instead?

Any advice is welcome preferably if you happen to own one of the above drives.

acaurora · Post by **acaurora** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 4:28 pm

Just my 2 cents worth:

Maxtors, in all of my experience, tend to run rather hot. All of the TWO maxtors I've had ran warmer than the Seagates that I've had (2). They can churn out a lot of performance, though. WD is still not a bad choice.

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 6:11 pm

I have not heard of any reliability problems with WD drives, and especially not for WD drives made in recent years. If I thought there were any reliability problems, I would not have bought them for my system because I also rate reliability over noise.

Although I can't hear my WD drives during idle or seeks (the twin WD drives are about 3 feet from my ears), I did use a superior mounting method, and AcoustiPack standard for the case damping.
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=10450

I noticed that you are not considering Samsung drives, probably for the same reason that I did not, although they may have fixed their reliability problems by now.

jimmyzaas · Post by **jimmyzaas** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 6:38 pm

Thanks for your responses. I just kept getting ideas from people and friends that WD isn't reliable anymore.. but those people probably don't have sufficient airflow across their drives.

Yea, Samsung drives are not on my list because 1) no 300GB model available 2) lots of problems regarding them posted online. Then again, I found alot of posts regarding dead 7200.8 Seagates.

m0002a wrote:Although I can't hear my WD drives during idle or seeks (the twin WD drives are about 3 feet from my ears), I did use a superior mounting method, and AcoustiPack standard for the case damping.

Do you have any idea how they sound without the superior mounting? Does it sound the same as the sound file posted on the WD 250GB SPCR review?[/quote]

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 6:53 pm

jimmyzaas wrote:Do you have any idea how they sound without the superior mounting? Does it sound the same as the sound file posted on the WD 250GB SPCR review?

No, I don't know how they sound hard mounted. But others have suggested that the newer WD’s are fairly quiet. Not many people on this forum use a completely hard mounting system for drives anymore. I would think that any kind of rubber grommet mounting system would be adequate, even if not completely optimal.

Keep in mind that my 2 drives are theoretically 3db louder than if I had just one drive.

Devonavar · Post by **Devonavar** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 1:25 am

1. There is no reliable way of judging drive reliability short of examining return records. For reasons that should be obvious, these records are not public. Anecdotal evidence strongly reflects the biases of the reader base of whatever site you are reading. Things get blown out of proportion on the internet. Generally, I've found that anecdotal reports of problems often (not always, but often) say more about the market share of a product than its reliability. StorageReview's user feedback system makes an attempt, but it still suffers because it is based on anecdotal evidence (and there is potential for abuse).

2. Storagereview's noise testing is, to put it bluntly, misleading and unrealistic. Their measurements are taken from a distance of either 15mm or 3mm depending on when the review was published. Unless you use your drives within an inch of your ears, this information doesn't tell you anything about how the drive will sound when you have it installed. Also, because almost all desktop drives are within ~4dBA, the quality of the noise (and the volume of the seeks) tends to be the biggest factor in determining which drives sound quietest, not objective measurements.

3. Only the 80/160 GB Seagates have 160GB platters. Check this page from TechReport for details about platter sizes in specific models.

4. This is the first I've heard about Samsungs being unreliable. Every account I've read has praised them as being exceptionally. Could you provide links? I'm very interested to hear what's going wrong.

JimX · Post by **JimX** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 3:52 am

My experience:
WD are quite reliable and fairly quiet. I have 5 working 24/7, 2 of them more than a year.
My new Radio Shack infrared temp thingie says that Seagates run warmer than WD.
New WD (Oct-Nov 05) often report wrong temps.
I have 2 external Maxtors for 1,5 year. One of them died.
My cousin had 3 Maxtor drives for 2 years and 2 died. All from electronics.

Bluefront found this:
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/sto ... power.html . It says a lot about power consumption and heat.

cmcquistion · Post by **cmcquistion** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 5:35 am

I've used well over 100 Samsung drives, in the last three years. I have never had a SINGLE failure in that time.

Of all the drives you're considering, I would recommend scrapping all of them and buying a 250 GB Samsung. They are quieter than all of those, they come with a 3 year warranty, standard, and in my experience, are very reliable.

Samsung has a 300 GB and 400 GB version coming, but they aren't available, yet, and I have no idea how long it will be, before they are. The 250 GB drives are very reasonably priced, though. Only about $100.

Le_Gritche · Post by **Le_Gritche** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 6:53 am

Devonavar wrote:1. There is no reliable way of judging drive reliability short of examining return records. For reasons that should be obvious, these records are not public.

Well, then you should look Hard drives return rates on this hardware news site. It's a belgian/french website, and they belong to the same company as a big and well established online shop. Look at the thread in this forum about Power Supply return rate if you want more details about references, sample and time of the survey.
I will quote the results for the lazy people :

Here are the so much awaited results:

- Western Digital : 1.02%
- Hitachi : 1.16%
- Maxtor : 1.44%
- Seagate : 1.57%

The big surprise is that Seagate moved from the first to the last place. The 5 year warranty isn't a proof of a better reliability at least on short term. Western Digital has beneficiated from these changes whereas Hitachi remained in good position.

My idea about Seagate's bad results, is that buyers were unhappy with SATA seek noise (due to the lack of AAM), when their expectations were high thanks to Seagate long established reputation of silent HDDs in PATA. But that's just a guess.

jimmyzaas · Post by **jimmyzaas** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 10:06 am

I really don't know where I got the impression Samsung is unreliable. I think some of them came from this site? On another note, wasn't newer Samsung drives whiny and noisier?

Anyway, I really dont want anything less than 300GB, and 400GB is out of my budget. my philosophy was to get a drive near double capacity of my current 160GB maxtor. 250GB simply does not cut it.

I think you guys have a point. What if only those who had problems with a single drive posted on forums, while countless hundreds, thousands are happy with what they got and did not. That would certainly give newbie buyers the wrong impression. For example, 7200.8 DOA problems.. certainly there are a large number that did not have that problem.

Devonavar · Post by **Devonavar** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 10:54 am

jimmyzaas wrote:I really don't know where I got the impression Samsung is unreliable. I think some of them came from this site? On another note, wasn't newer Samsung drives whiny and noisier?

On the samples I've seen, only the seeks are louder, but some people disagree with me on that point.

I must say that the last 80GB Samsung (from their new model line) to pass through my hands was louder and more whiny than the other 80 GB models I've heard.

biatche · Post by **biatche** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 5:58 pm

Le_Gritche wrote:
Devonavar wrote:1. There is no reliable way of judging drive reliability short of examining return records. For reasons that should be obvious, these records are not public.
Well, then you should look Hard drives return rates on this hardware news site. It's a belgian/french website, and they belong to the same company as a big and well established online shop. Look at the thread in this forum about Power Supply return rate if you want more details about references, sample and time of the survey.
I will quote the results for the lazy people :
Here are the so much awaited results:

- Western Digital : 1.02%
- Hitachi : 1.16%
- Maxtor : 1.44%
- Seagate : 1.57%

The big surprise is that Seagate moved from the first to the last place. The 5 year warranty isn't a proof of a better reliability at least on short term. Western Digital has beneficiated from these changes whereas Hitachi remained in good position.
My idea about Seagate's bad results, is that buyers were unhappy with SATA seek noise (due to the lack of AAM), when their expectations were high thanks to Seagate long established reputation of silent HDDs in PATA. But that's just a guess.

oh man, i got some 7200.8, i've been pretty happy with seagate till now, no issues so far.

so now that it's in last place... what are u seagate fans gonna buy? more seagate? or follow the charts?

share your response quick, im gonna need a new disk soon

biatche · Post by **biatche** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 6:50 pm

are the 7200.9's safe? anyone have bad experience with them?

stukovx · Post by **stukovx** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 7:18 pm

i bought a seagate 160gb 7200.9 and its garbage. The vibrational noise makes my raptor seem silent.

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 7:26 pm

Devonavar wrote:4. This is the first I've heard about Samsungs being unreliable. Every account I've read has praised them as being exceptionally. Could you provide links? I'm very interested to hear what's going wrong.

About one and half years ago on this forum, there was a lot of discussion about the reliability of Samsung drives. Here is one such link, but there are other threads also:
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewto ... viewresult

I don't know if the previous complaints were statistically significant, and it appears (again from anecdotal reports) that reliability has greatly improved in recent Samsung drives.

However, I also believe that the previously believed superiority of Samsung drives with respect to lower noise and/or lower vibration over certain other drive brands is no longer true, or is so small that it is insignificant.

Liam · Post by **Liam** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 5:37 pm

I strongly recommend you avoid the seagate 7200.9s, at least in my experience.

I've currently got one of the new 300GB 16MB SATA 7200.9 drives and while it is dead silent at idle, the seeks are very loud. I'm coming from a WD800JB. It is so frickin loud I can barely sleep with my PC on.

I'm in the process of RMAing at the moment for a WD2500KS.

jimmyzaas · Post by **jimmyzaas** » Fri Feb 03, 2006 10:38 pm

Thanks. I'm think I've made up my mind to get a WD3200JD now..

They got no NCQ, no 300MBps, no 16 mb cache.. but they are supposed to run cool and quiet and reliable.. maybe..

Unless Samsung 300GB drive comes out next week in a local store, I think I'm just gonna get a Western Digital based on the responses here.

inspired traveler · Post by **inspired traveler** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 3:13 pm

Here are the so much awaited results:

- Western Digital : 1.02%
- Hitachi : 1.16%
- Maxtor : 1.44%
- Seagate : 1.57%

Statistics can be deceiving. The above data gives the impression that Seagate is the worse drive - but think about it - Seagate has the 5 year warranty while some of the other manufacturers have got 2-3 years - so of course Seagate will have the higher percentage of returns.
And with only 0.55% plus from the nr 1 in the list WD - that convince me - Seagate owns!

An additional supportive fact is that drives are even more at risk at year 4 and year 5 compared to e.g. year 2 and 3.

Go Seagate!

(and that comes from a Maxtor owner)
(I'm happy with my Maxtor, but just mentioning it so no one think I already was a Seagate fan).

Ps. But from today - I am a Seagate fan =)

Note:

"Recently, WD sells many hard drives with a relatively short warranty of one year included in the retail price, but they offer the customer the option of purchasing a longer (two- or three-year) warranty on their web site. "
Source: Wikipedia.org Western Digital

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 4:12 pm

inspired traveler wrote:Statistics can be deceiving. The above data gives the impression that Seagate is the worse drive - but think about it - Seagate has the 5 year warranty while some of the other manufacturers have got 2-3 years - so of course Seagate will have the higher percentage of returns.
And with only 0.55% plus from the nr 1 in the list WD - that convince me - Seagate owns!

An additional supportive fact is that drives are even more at risk at year 4 and year 5 compared to e.g. year 2 and 3.

Go Seagate!

(and that comes from a Maxtor owner)
(I'm happy with my Maxtor, but just mentioning it so no one think I already was a Seagate fan).

Ps. But from today - I am a Seagate fan =)

I think you should read the article carefully. According to the text of the article, the statistics are from:

"... a major French online sales shop [retailer].

Hard drives included here were sold during the first half 2005. They have been in use for 6 months to one year and returned to the shop after sale services. Sometime the merchandise is directly returned to the manufacturer but it only represents a minority of return during the first year of warranty."

What that means is that these are drives that were returned only during the first year, since they only included those sold in the first 6 months of 2005. Some drives that fail are returned directly to the manufacturer and not included in these statistics (since they were compiled by the retailer).

So I guess you are a WD fan now, right?

inspired traveler · Post by **inspired traveler** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 4:49 pm

Point taken m0002a. I think you're right about what you say in the above post.

My argumet about that specific list of data fails.

Although, since it was one retailer's data - we should be open for more data from other sources also.

I hope someone felt inspired by the arguments though - and I hope they come to use in the future.

m0002a s right.

Solid work m0002a!

jimmyzaas · Post by **jimmyzaas** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 3:24 pm

Well. I finally broke down and got it. My first Western Digital drive: WD3200JD.

My initial impressions is that the drive is very quiet. I'd have to say the seeks are as quiet as my maxtor diamondmax 9 with AAM on. I didn't even touch AAM on the WD yet!

I can't really comment on the idle noise because my crap is housed in THE TANK SX1030 case.. that SOB is way too loud.

My only concern is that the WD is made in Thailand. Seriously freaky. Maybe that's why both my maxtors (made in singapore) lasted so long.

Propaganda13 · Post by **Propaganda13** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 7:09 pm

inspired traveler wrote:
Here are the so much awaited results:

- Western Digital : 1.02%
- Hitachi : 1.16%
- Maxtor : 1.44%
- Seagate : 1.57%
Statistics can be deceiving. The above data gives the impression that Seagate is the worse drive - but think about it - Seagate has the 5 year warranty while some of the other manufacturers have got 2-3 years - so of course Seagate will have the higher percentage of returns.
And with only 0.55% plus from the nr 1 in the list WD - that convince me - Seagate owns!

An additional supportive fact is that drives are even more at risk at year 4 and year 5 compared to e.g. year 2 and 3.

Go Seagate!

(and that comes from a Maxtor owner)
(I'm happy with my Maxtor, but just mentioning it so no one think I already was a Seagate fan).

Ps. But from today - I am a Seagate fan =)

Statistics can be deceiving. Seagate has only had their 5 year warranty since July 2004, so they haven't even reached 2 years yet on those drives.
From personal experience, reliability is a coin-flip. By the time, you find out a drive is reliable that drive is probably "outdated". Everyone under the sun (sites and people) loved the IBM Deathstars. It wasn't until 9-12 months later that they started dropping like flies. I had purchased one about 6 months after they initially came out. Glowing reviews by everyone before I bought one. I bought a Samsung P80 (I believe 2 years ago, I'd have to doublecheck) and have been impressed with it. I have read reviews by others that there have implied that quality has fluctuated during this time. Next drive will probably be a WD or Samsung, but don't hold me to that. Just remember, always have multiple backups of everything.

switchgear · Post by **switchgear** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 9:14 am

I have the same question about reliability. My problem is that I had 4 WD failures (all were 120 gb pata 7200rpm bought at different time periods), and I am worried about buying from them again. I bought two 120gb drives from them and within a year both started making lots of noise, soon after one died. The only drive that lasted the longest was an old 120GB from them with the 5 year warranty. The drives had one drive space between each drive with 2 x 80 mm 35 cmf fans on one side and 120 mm 70 cfm fan on the other side for cooling. The average temperature for these drives was about 35 C. My computer is always on and there is always drive activity. I also bought a Seagate 200 GB pata 7200 a few years ago and I have no problems with that, and it is dead silent. My only concern is reliability.

jasonb885 · Post by **jasonb885** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 10:28 am

switchgear wrote:I have the same question about reliability. My problem is that I had 4 WD failures (all were 120 gb pata 7200rpm bought at different time periods), and I am worried about buying from them again.....

It's useful to note that WD doesn't manufacture its drives, but has others fab them. Never quite know what you're going to get.

quikkie · Post by **quikkie** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 12:14 pm

My personal experience of WD drives is positive, my suspended 2500KS is just audible when defragging the disk, otherwise I can't hear it. When hard mounted (with Antecs grommets) I could hear it seek over the noise of the ordinary nforce4 and ATi cooling at full speed. I haven't yet tried using AAM.

switchgear · Post by **switchgear** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 2:38 pm

What about their raid series of drives (WD3200SD)? The only negative thing I see is that they are not recommended for desktop use because of the time-limited error recovery. Has anyone used these drives in an non raid environment, and have you encountered any errors or problems with the "time-limited error recovery"?

New HDD purchase - very confused

New HDD purchase - very confused

WD reliability?

Re: WD reliability?