WD 1TB Or Seagate 1.5TB ?

[truckid]

Hi,

Following on from my earlier post, I had decided on the WD10EADS. However I read around OEM warranties and how Manufacturers won't honour them and decided to avoid OEM drives altogether. This bought the price of the WD 1TB drive closer to the Seagate 1.5TB.



1. Western Digital WD10EADS 1TB + ICy Box IB-390 £94 + £25 - 3 year Warranty
2. Seagate 1.5TB Barracuda ST31500341AS + ICy Box IB-390 £130 +£25 - 5 year warranty


I'd prefer to go for the Seagate as it gives me a massive 1.5TB capacity, along with a 5 year warranty, but the question is, will the ST31500341AS stay cool in the Icy Box enclosure ?

I've seen that it already runs fairly warm at 45c and reading the sticky thread about safe tempertures, this seems abit on the high side.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Sea ... 032-7.html


Mitigating that, the drive will be used as a backup HDD, and will be switched off when not in use (more often than not). I have seen that Seagate have pulled it off in their Seagate 1.5TB FreeAgent Xtreme (possibly using the same drive ?) but I just prefer the IcyBox enclosure.



Would I be OK going for the Seagate 1.5TB or should I play it safe with the Western Digital WD10EADS (but I want the 1.5TB one!).

thanks

[andyb]

The 1.5TB Seagates dont run that hot, they are about the same as the 1TB model, and my fingers were not distressed - although I cant tell you the actual temp.


Andy

[samuelmorris]

I had no trouble getting an RMA from WD, and the Greenpower drives seem quiet. The results from most Seagate drives noise-wise are less than impressive, and during seek, my older 250GB Seagate is actually significantly louder than a 36.7GB Raptor, if you can believe that.

[Nick Geraedts]

How about we ask another question... do you need 1.5TB? Just on the basis of noise and power consumption (from which heat follows), the WD is the clear winner. You'll also save a few quid over the "brand new and shiny" 1.5TB drives.

[LobStoR]

Just on the basis of noise and power consumption (from which heat follows), the WD is the clear winner.

One additional minor consideration could be watts/gigabyte - not important for truckid's original question, but worth considering under different circumstances (example: RAID array).

Example (wattage figures are best guess from factory specified non-idle power requirements, your mileage may vary):
5 watts (average) for 1.0 terabyte = 5.0 watt/terabyte
8 watts (average) for 1.5 terabyte = 5.3 watt/terabyte (5% difference)
9 watts (average) for 1.5 terabyte = 6.0 watt/terabyte (16% difference)

While at first it may seem like the WD green uses up to ~44% less power (9 vs 5), realistically it may use only ~5% less power (5.3 vs 5.0) to accomplish the same end result (# terabytes of storage). Also, note that running an additional 4 watts 24/7 at $0.15 per kilowatt hour costs $5.26 per year, so the difference from a "low power" drive is very marginal. I am just trying to get you to think outside of the box so that you aren't misled by any company's "green" computing figures (many "green" products are pure marketing).

Another good reason to buy the WD drive is that their error rates are among "enterprise class" products, compared to Seagate's "consumer grade" error rates (1 error per 1x10^14 bits read on the Seagate, vs 1x10^15 on the WD - ten times less errors on the WD). This may not mean much to you if you aren't running a server farm, but it is a testament to the standard of quality that WD holds their product to.

All that being said, my vote goes to WD for low noise and low error rates.

[LobStoR]

One additional minor consideration could be watts/gigabyte - not important for truckid's original question, but worth considering under different circumstances (example: RAID array).

Example (wattage figures are best guess from factory specified non-idle power requirements, your mileage may vary):
5 watts (average) for 1.0 terabyte = 5.0 watt/terabyte
8 watts (average) for 1.5 terabyte = 5.3 watt/terabyte (5% difference)
9 watts (average) for 1.5 terabyte = 6.0 watt/terabyte (16% difference)

While at first it may seem like the WD green uses up to ~44% less power (9 vs 5), realistically it may use only ~5% less power (5.3 vs 5.0) to accomplish the same end result (# terabytes of storage). Also, note that running an additional 4 watts 24/7 at $0.15 per kilowatt hour costs $5.26 per year, so the difference from a "low power" drive is very marginal. I am just trying to get you to think outside of the box so that you aren't misled by any company's "green" computing figures (many "green" products are pure marketing).

Another good reason to buy the WD drive is that their error rates are among "enterprise class" products, compared to Seagate's "consumer grade" error rates (1 error per 1x10^14 bits read on the Seagate, vs 1x10^15 on the WD - ten times less errors on the WD). This may not mean much to you if you aren't running a server farm, but it is a testament to the standard of quality that WD holds their product to.

All that being said, my vote goes to WD for low noise and low error rates.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#Reliability_terms
http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/supp ... 07013d.pdf
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/librar ... 701229.pdf

[bgiddins]

One additional minor consideration could be watts/gigabyte - not important for truckid's original question, but worth considering under different circumstances (example: RAID array).

Can't wait for a 1.5TB WD GP drive - it will certainly level the playing field. You're spot on about the watts/terabyte calculation if you're buying multiple drives.

[FartingBob]

Users are reporting unusually high rates or failure and errors with teh seagate 1.5TB's. Until its resolved i would avoid them.
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15837

[Ch0z3n]

Another good reason to buy the WD drive is that their error rates are among "enterprise class" products, compared to Seagate's "consumer grade" error rates (1 error per 1x10^14 bits read on the Seagate, vs 1x10^15 on the WD - ten times less errors on the WD). This may not mean much to you if you aren't running a server farm, but it is a testament to the standard of quality that WD holds their product to.

All that being said, my vote goes to WD for low noise and low error rates.

You really just did that didn't you? Why are you comparing Enterprise disks to non-Enterprise disks? That's kind of like saying my 7200rpm hard drive is faster than your 5400rpm hard drive.

I have heard a lot of issues with WD's high capacity drives too, I think it is just problem with larger drives in general, not specific to any company.

Seagate ES.2 1TB MTBF: 1.2 million hours.
WD RE3 1TB MTBF: 1.2 million hours.

[jaganath]

You really just did that didn't you? Why are you comparing Enterprise disks to non-Enterprise disks?

RTFM. those error rates refer to the WD10EAC/DS and ST31000333AS, which are both consumer-class drives. looks like an apples to apples comparison to me.