What's everyone's favorite 1TB drive?

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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Magic
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What's everyone's favorite 1TB drive?

Post by Magic » Thu Dec 25, 2008 11:46 pm

Is there a consensus as to what the best one terabyte drive is when taking into account noise, performance, and cost?

Thanks

bgiddins
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Post by bgiddins » Fri Dec 26, 2008 12:23 am

I think I'm yet to hear my WD 1TB WD10EADS drives... I enabled AAM on them anyway. They're very cool running, but I primarily use them as bulk storage anyway.

AuraAllan
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Post by AuraAllan » Fri Dec 26, 2008 1:11 am

+1 for the WD10EADS.

Its a very quiet cool-running drive.

tehfire
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Post by tehfire » Fri Dec 26, 2008 5:41 am

I really love my Spinpoint F1 1GB. It's not as quiet as the GP drives and there is a slight high-pitched whine, but the whine is very quiet and when soft-mounted seeks are almost unhearable. Its performance is miles above the GP drive, though. So I'd go with GP if you wanted absolute silence, and the F1 if you wanted more speed.

ekerazha
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Post by ekerazha » Fri Dec 26, 2008 8:02 am

What about the NEW Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1 TB? The new version (there's also an older version of the 7200.11 1 TB) uses the same 375 GB platters of the Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 GB, but it should have 1 less platter.

Vicotnik
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Post by Vicotnik » Fri Dec 26, 2008 10:45 am

I vote for the three platter version of the WD10EACS. It's cheap, quiet and power efficient.

Lawrence Lee
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Post by Lawrence Lee » Fri Dec 26, 2008 11:18 am

F1 is better than the 7200.11 when it comes to vibration, otherwise they are about the same. Neither can touch the WD GPs though.

Arvo
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Post by Arvo » Fri Dec 26, 2008 12:12 pm

Reading NewEgg reviews, there are no 1TB disks to buy safely - too much problems with all of these. WD disks are better, Seagate ones worst.

bgiddins
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Post by bgiddins » Fri Dec 26, 2008 1:40 pm

Vicotnik wrote:I vote for the three platter version of the WD10EACS. It's cheap, quiet and power efficient.
Which is basically the same as the WD10EADS, but with 16MB of cache instead of 32MB.

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Post by Wibla » Fri Dec 26, 2008 1:42 pm

Arvo wrote:Reading NewEgg reviews, there are no 1TB disks to buy safely - too much problems with all of these. WD disks are better, Seagate ones worst.
According to my personal experience, Seagate is noisy but generally reliable, WD drives die alot, and Samsung have proved pretty decent so far. newegg reviews are an indicator at best.

KnightRT
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Post by KnightRT » Sat Dec 27, 2008 12:01 am

Five 1 TB WD10EACs in a a RAID-5 array, all purchased at different times, all running in near silence 24/7 for months without a hitch. FWIW.

warriorpoet
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Post by warriorpoet » Sat Dec 27, 2008 11:51 am

Wibla wrote:
Arvo wrote:Reading NewEgg reviews, there are no 1TB disks to buy safely - too much problems with all of these. WD disks are better, Seagate ones worst.
According to my personal experience, Seagate is noisy but generally reliable, WD drives die alot, and Samsung have proved pretty decent so far. newegg reviews are an indicator at best.
I've had 3 Seagates, 8 WDs and 5 Samsungs. Seagates were all loud seekers, but quiet-ish at idle; 5 WDs died (yes, 5), but they were much cheaper (deals +rebates) and relatively quiet both in spin and seek, All 5 Samsungs have been quiet and reliable, with the least offensive seek noise (though slightly louder than the WD) and quieter spin-up than the Seagates.

I went Samsung for my 1Tb in an external enclosure, and it's nigh inaudible at idle, audible at full-spin and fairly quiet seek.

I am considering more Seagate drives for my recording machine, though they will be 2.5"ers and enclosed to kill the dreaded click.

I will never buy another WD, Raptor or otherwise. Ever.

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Post by josephclemente » Sat Dec 27, 2008 12:07 pm

I've been buying almost all WD drives. They've been reliable enough that now I've got a stack of perfectly working drives I'm not sure what to do with.

I'll definitely keep buying WD.

warriorpoet
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Post by warriorpoet » Sat Dec 27, 2008 12:28 pm

josephclemente wrote:I've been buying almost all WD drives. They've been reliable enough that now I've got a stack of perfectly working drives I'm not sure what to do with.

I'll definitely keep buying WD.
Most people have better luck with 'em. I seem to only get junk drives (with the occasional exception).

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me 5 times-- well I'm pretty stupid :P

tbessie
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Post by tbessie » Sat Dec 27, 2008 1:45 pm

I almost always use Hitachi's, probably because I almost always used IBM's before they sold that division to Hitachi. :-)

I've never had any of the 10 or so Hitachi drives (both laptop and desktop) fail on me over 6 years or so of use. They seem to offer the best performance, but are not very geared towards being quiet, from everything I've read. They're also a bit more expensive, from my experience.

Why hasn't anyone else here mentioned Hitachi's?

- Tim

whiic
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Post by whiic » Sun Dec 28, 2008 4:47 am

tbessie: "Why hasn't anyone else here mentioned Hitachi's?"

You answered it yourself: not very geared towards being quiet

I have two Hitachis, 7K250 and 7K400. They are old, thus have quite little to do with current Hitachi products. They used to be the best performers, and Hitachi still manages to introduce drives that perform best at their rpm category. Their noise have also become less demonic than it used to be... well, back then all HDD except Samsung used to sound like banshees or passenger jets. Since Hitachi was among those who didn't stubbornly stick to ball-bearings (*cough* WD *cough*) Hitachi belong to latter category with it's broadband hissing. Actually, it was among one of the most broadband. Maxtors used to make more humming noise. (I don't have much experience with that era Seagates.)

Anyway, they've gotten better in both idle and seek... and power consumption. They've always been good at power consumption per platter (at a given rpm), but they also have used lower densities and thus requiring more platters than competition. This is especially true for their 5-platter flagships. This lower density does make head tracking easier and reduce settling time. (Seek access time is faster because, write access requires more precise settling. With low densities and proven technology, write access times are almost the same as read access times.)

With 7K1000.B (and identical(?) E7K1000) revision and reduction in number of platters from 5 to 3 platters Hitachi does have something that combines top desktop performance with lower noise levels and power consumption. So, I guess Hitachi can be compared to for example 1TB WD Black edition (which is also a very good performer). I would bet on Hitachi for slightly higher performance. Tough choice, though. Samsung F1 would likely be equally tough comparison as F1 has high performance (almost as high as Black) combined with awesome acoustics.

Performance comparison here:
StorageReview Performance Database

5400rpm GreenPower (4-platter variant here, but 3-platter variant is trailing as well but behind a smaller margin to 7200rpm drives) and 7200rpm Seagate trails the rest of the bunch... 5400rpm WD being undoubtedly the quietest... and Seagate being undoubtedly the noisiest (due to lack of AAM) of the bunch. Pretty ironic. Seagate has truely lost it in desktop sector. :p
Last edited by whiic on Sun Dec 28, 2008 7:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

Matija
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Post by Matija » Sun Dec 28, 2008 5:51 am

I'm getting low on disk space and I have no idea what to buy.

WD GP drives are quiet, but they might suicide, and they're not exactly stellar performers.

Seagate is out, however tempting their 1.5 TB drive might be. IMHO, their last good drive was the Barracuda IV.

People have had issues with Samsungs, especially 1 TB ones.

Hitachi drives are power hogs and aren't so quiet.

However, my biggest issue with all above-mentioned drives is - Sony. HD-DVD is dead because Sony bought its death, so BR writers are stupidly expensive, and only time will tell how good BR discs are for backup purposes. I have a huge collection of music that I've re-ripped to FLAC (screw you, mp3, it's the 21st century), and my collection of RAWs is also rapidly increasing. The safest (and cheapest) thing is to keep everything on HDDs... Except that you can't even make an optimal choice when it comes to hard drives.

Blah.

Tamas
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Post by Tamas » Sun Dec 28, 2008 6:31 am

Matija wrote:I'm getting low on disk space and I have no idea what to buy.

WD GP drives are quiet, but they might suicide, and they're not exactly stellar performers.

Seagate is out, however tempting their 1.5 TB drive might be. IMHO, their last good drive was the Barracuda IV.
WD Green Power drives not suicide hdds, my friends and I also using several of these drives without any problem. The only problem reported so far is the too agressive factory setup (Head Load / Unload energy saving feature), but I haven't heard about drive deaths because of this, and this feature can be switched off easily.
Matija wrote: Hitachi drives are power hogs and aren't so quiet.
Blah.
It's too bad, my best ever quiet harddrive was a Hitachi T7K500 with exceptionaly low vibration. (AAM/APM also configurabe on Hitachi drives)

Power consumption: Hitachi 2.5" drives usually the most energy efficient drives compared to the same capacity other brands.

-The newest Hitachi 7K1000B just consumes 0,1W more power at idle than a 1TB Green Power: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hit ... 017-9.html

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Post by Matija » Sun Dec 28, 2008 7:18 am

I have a pair of T7K500 drives in RAID-1 and I'm very happy with them.

Thanks for the link to the newest Hitachi, I haven't noticed that one before. The first version really was a power hog. But I'm almost certain I can't find the B revision here.

whiic
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Post by whiic » Sun Dec 28, 2008 8:35 am

AARGH! Reading that Tom's Hardware review makes me pissed off. Why on earth do idortz like them receive the newest hardware to review and most viewers for their review? I mean, they're total amateurs. They don't even consider disabling AAM before performing server workload tests... WTF?! Even noobs know better.

And then they talk about some bullsh*t that with 7K1000.B, Hitachi finally offers other capacity points in the same model line as their flagship. Bull. 7K1000 had 1000GB and 750GB.

In conclusion, they say that WD is best suited for servers and workstations (do workstation resemble servers more than regular desktop computers?)... due to IO and random access time measurements. Well, noe schitt. Of course all the drives weren't in the same AAM mode. Also it's stupid as f*ck to have separate IO and random access tests as they are inversely related to each other, two sides of one coin.

So all Black won was synthetic random access time test and even that it won because AAM. 7K1000.B won real-life tests despite being on silent mode during testing!

In the end, they refused to conclude the review with a winner or even conclude it as a tie. Even though 1TB Seagate totally sucked diarrheous ass, they belittled it's shortcomings and turned it into something positive by mentioning 1.5TB (not reviewed) and ASSUMING it's better. Seagate is usually a winner in assumptions because so many review sites love them. In some of the most ridiculous cases, after a review, they throw all test results in junk jar and conclude that they recommend Seagate because of 5-year-warranty.

GreenPower's power consumption in that review is quite high. Maybe it is with head loaded? Well, it's actually a fair comparison this way, as 7K1000.B has it's heads loaded and spinning at 7200rpm. Pretty darn impressive economy of that Hitachi. It practically matches 5400rpm competition (though it's probably the 4-platter variant of GreenPower). That, or Tom's Hardware botched taking the measurements when drive was idle, or mixed test results with each other in their notebook.

And as if it's not enough to do random IO and random access time tests (which are inversely related to each other) Tom does power consumption and drive temperature tests. Drive temperature difference to ambient temperature and power consumption are directly proportional. If you increase power consumption by 20%, you increase heat generation by 20% and if ambient temperature and airflow speed, direction and HDD heat transfer surfaces remain constant, the temperature delta will increase by the same 20%. To measure both is either to verify the test results of the other, or to do this second test out of sheer stupidity thinking it'll represent something new.

Ok. It's not actually that simple. It's all about where temperature is measured. HDD is full of hot spots and temperature delta is directly related to power consumption when majority of hear is carried away by convection and when we assume uniform heat distribution of the device. As it's full of hot spots, these can become quite hot and actually heat radiation may play a big role in cooling the spots. Radiation isn't directly related to temperature delta but exponentially related to absolute temperature (i.e use Kelvin scale, but also remember that computer case will also radiate at it's own temperature, and that some radiation is reflected, etc., etc., etc., etc.).

So f*ck it. Why on earth would you measure temperature as hot spots are different for each HDD? Also, if they measure it from top cover, using infrared sensor, it plays a BIG role whether top cover is painted or not. Also, thermally poorly conductive top cover or thick insulation between casing and top cover result in "better" results.

If you want to measure temperatures, why don't you find the hottest spots on the PCB, take a infrared camera picture, report which chips are hottest. This is of course very difficult to do with flipped PCBs.


Ok. I probably shouldn't open any link to Tom's in future because every time I do that, I only start growing a mushroom on my forehead while reading the stupidity written in their "reviews".

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Post by fwki » Sun Dec 28, 2008 9:05 am

Matija wrote:But I'm almost certain I can't find the B revision here.
I've been considering adding a 7K1000.B to my home server since paper launch this summer...I have had no problems with my current 7K1000, 5-platter, AAM-enabled, 32MB cache. Now that dot B's are showing up in the channel, any ideas how the 16MB cache will impact performance in a server?

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Post by Tamas » Sun Dec 28, 2008 9:14 am

whiic wrote: GreenPower's power consumption in that review is quite high. Maybe it is with head loaded? Well, it's actually a fair comparison this way, as 7K1000.B has it's heads loaded and spinning at 7200rpm. Pretty darn impressive economy of that Hitachi. It practically matches 5400rpm competition (though it's probably the 4-platter variant of GreenPower). That, or Tom's Hardware botched taking the measurements when drive was idle, or mixed test results with each other in their notebook.
Ok please calm down. :D
This link placed here just because to show that the new 7K1000.B is now competitive in terms of power consumption, nothing more. They are really not a competitive review site, but it seems they usually got the new hw's first.

Hitachi's own specification states (3platter 1TB model):
"idle average power consumption" 5.2W
"heads unloaded idle average power consumption" 4.4W
"heads unloaded low rpm idle" 2.4W

The Green Power drive was a first generation 4 platter drive, according to silentpcreview this drive (4 platter) consumes 5.7 W at idle (3.7W heads unloaded//low rpm state?).
Last edited by Tamas on Sun Dec 28, 2008 9:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

Matija
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Post by Matija » Sun Dec 28, 2008 9:23 am

Hmm...

E7K1000 and 7K1000.B are the same, except that the first one has 32 MB cache and a higher MTB.

http://www.storagereview.com/php/benchm ... 9&devCnt=3

Idle noise looks worrying.

Tamas
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Post by Tamas » Sun Dec 28, 2008 9:37 am

Matija wrote:Hmm...

E7K1000 and 7K1000.B are the same, except that the first one has 32 MB cache and a higher MTB.

http://www.storagereview.com/php/benchm ... 9&devCnt=3

Idle noise looks worrying.
http://www.storagereview.com/php/benchm ... 8&devCnt=3

whiic
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Post by whiic » Sun Dec 28, 2008 10:15 am

What kind of home server are do you have / intend to build, fwki?

If it's just centralized feeder of video (even if 1080p high-definition) and place to store random documents from every computer in the house, I think even GreenPower can handle that easily.

I use GreenPower (3 of them) for bulk storage and F1 (1 of them) for OS.

Tamas: "Ok please calm down. :D
This link placed here just because to show that the new 7K1000.B is now competitive in terms of power consumption, nothing more."


I wasn't pissed off at the person linking to the review, just pissed at Tom and the world that is rather willing to support reviewers like Tom instead of review sites like SPCR, SR, iXBT, who most of the time actually know what the F they are doing.

Quoting Tamas, added notes:
Hitachi's own specification states (3platter 1TB model):
"idle average power consumption" 5.2
W <-- Tom's 5.4W is close enough to this mode. StorageReview measured 5.5W.
"heads unloaded idle average power consumption" 4.4W
"heads unloaded low rpm idle" 2.4W


Tamas: "The Green Power drive was a first generation 4 platter drive, according to silentpcreview this drive (4 platter) consumes 5.7 W at idle (3.7W heads unloaded//low rpm state?)."

3.7 in SPCR and 3.8 in StorageReview with head unloaded.
5.7 in SPCR and 5.3 in Tom's with head loaded. (But is Tom's 4-platter?)

Anyway, GP actually is most of it's life in unload mode as it unloads heads in ~8 seconds (default). Hitachi unloads it's heads... never (default) or in 2 minutes (maximum power saving through APM).

This new Hitachi 1TB revision sure is impressive in both desktop benchmarks and in it's modest power consumption. Or probably not to be called modest since it's actually quite ambitious... Other 7200rpm terabyters aren't even close to it. Hitachi would be in tie with WD 5400rpm if WD didn't have that overly aggressive unload timer which has caused much discomfort (with 1-minute SpeedFan SMART polling, 2.6 million unload cycles in 5-year service life, and the drive is rated for only 300000).

If they wanted, they could make one helluva cool 5400rpm drive with the tech they are using in their 7200rpm drives. But they aren't going to do it any time soon, if ever. When GP was released Hitachi already gave a statement that they'll cut the power consumption without cutting corners and doing the "easy" way by reducing rpm. I admit that I surely considered that reducing rpm was rather bold, and that reducing consumption without reducing rpm is rather futile and will only yield in very small benefit. I was actually wrong in the latter, as they actually managed to match GreenPower thermals with higher rpm. They didn't take it lightly. (But to ease the challenge, they were already doing pretty darn well before they made the statement about cutting the consumption.)

Anyway, I still consider WD's decision even bolder than Hitachi's very successful engineering to reduce power consumption. Hitachi's solution didn't solve noise issues. Some steady improvement, but not a total revolution.

Reviving 5400rpm was radical. Before GreenPower the last big 5400-revver was ML16 300GB by Maxtor but it suffered from ball-bearings and otherwise old-tech. Other manufacturers also had 5400rpm drives but only for value line. Didn't Seagate have one? And Samsung had V-series along with P-series. These value lines were only available in low capacities and their availability in retail was non-existent (they were aimed at OEMs who wanted to save that extra 1 cent)... 300GB Maxtor was the only exception at this as it was Maxtors attempt to reach highest capacity at it's era. After that, Maxtor adopted fluid dynamic bearings to 5400rpm model and started using state of art platters (160GB instead of 66GB). These newer received any hype. I'm not sure if it was publicly announced anywhere. They weren't even available through retail channels. And only the 1-platter variant came available to few stores, the promised 2-platter 320-gigger never did. Maxtor got bought by Seagate, Seagate killed all Maxtor-designed product lines. At this point, I considered 5400rpm dead and I was sad about it.

When all hope was lost, WD did the unthinkable. And now even Samsung has revived it's V-series by naming them F2 EcoGreen. Well, not much to do with old V-series which was based on P-series casing (or the other way around) with cast aluminum top cover. F1 is a decendant of T-series, and so is F2 (most likely). I haven't even seen the F1 EcoGreen. It never received any hype and I came to know of it when F2 EcoGreen was paper launched on some French site. The 5400rpm models easy get ignored ...luckily F2 is the first paper launched 500GB/platter drive, and probably made many people aware of Samsungs 5400rpm line.

I hope the F2 hype will make F1 EcoGreen more easily available.


That went so off-topic that I should probably copy-paste it to F2 EcoGreen thread and shrink the font here...
Last edited by whiic on Sun Dec 28, 2008 11:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

Tamas
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Post by Tamas » Sun Dec 28, 2008 10:34 am

whiic wrote: Anyway, I still consider WD's decision even bolder than Hitachi's very successful engineering to reduce power consumption. Hitachi's solution didn't solve noise issues. Some steady improvement, but not a total revolution.

Reviving 5400rpm was radical. Before GreenPower the last big 5400-revver was ML16 300GB by Maxtor but it suffered from ball-bearings and otherwise old-tech.

That went so off-topic that I should probably copy-paste it to F2 EcoGreen thread and shrink the font here...
Samsung manufactured very good and quiet 3.5" 250GB 5400RPM hdd with FDB HA250JC. They tried to reintroduce 5400RPM, but the marketing wasn't too succesful. (Only silentpc enthusiast bought these drives.)

I think WD has a real success story with their new marketing (Green Power/Raptor/Raid Edition/Black Edition).
Samsung also follows them.

Hitachi is a really good manufacurer, but with very bad marketing. Maybe they disappear from the HDD market soon, if they not change fast enough.

whiic
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Post by whiic » Sun Dec 28, 2008 11:49 am

Tamas: "Samsung manufactured very good and quiet 3.5" 250GB 5400RPM hdd with FDB HA250JC. They tried to reintroduce 5400RPM, but the marketing wasn't too succesful. (Only silentpc enthusiast bought these drives.)"

Again, another example of series of drive I never saw in HDD list of any retailer in Finland and of which I didn't know it even existed. They receive absolutely zero hype, and even in SPCR, next to zero. Well... what is there to hype about if they cannot be bought anywhere and they're only aimed for OEMs.

Tamas: "Hitachi is a really good manufacurer, but with very bad marketing. Maybe they disappear from the HDD market soon, if they not change fast enough."

Hitachi has played too honestly. WD basically lied about rpm, causing lots of confusion, and openly admitted constant operation at fixed rpm after majority of retailers already listed the drive in their catalogues as 7200rpm. At least 90% of Finnish retailers sell it as such.

Also, the difficulty or sheer impossibility of determining platter numbers and keeping track of WD variants is a cause for head-ache as retailers don't separate drive based on the variant. Most other manufacturers honestly introduce a new line of drives when construction is significantly changed. In WD's advertizing, cache size plays a bigger role than number of platter, rpm or data density.

All big OEMs require qualification testing. I don't know if selling different platter count variants under the same name (albeit a different variant) gives WD the advantage of skipping qualifications or whether all variants go through the lengthy testing. Other manufacturer at least have to qualify each major variant change.

Even though most OEMs probably test each variant change, retailers list only the main models, accepting different variants without extra hazzle.

Like Tom, WD's marketing (no matter how successful it is) pisses me off.

I like that WD has chosen the right markets, but I hate how they are model numbered and how little meaningful information they actually realease. I could care less about majority of BS they put in datasheets when all the meaningful stuff is left out. It's probably not as bad anymore but WD also resorted to heck of a lot of copypasta from datasheet to another... as did Seagate. Seagate had "12 ms" access time on U-series when even AAM disabled they couldn't get below 20ms! And WD just copypasted or threw power consumption figures out of some hat, completely missing real values by several watts.

Well, luckily, even though Hitachi is playing too honestly for it's own good, it at least has the advantage of very big patent portfolio. Seagate has one too. Other manufacturers have practically NOTHING. They can only exist by cooperating with the two technology leaders and focusing on market segments.

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Post by Tamas » Sun Dec 28, 2008 12:26 pm

whiic wrote:"Hitachi has played too honestly. WD basically lied about rpm, causing lots of confusion, and openly admitted constant operation at fixed rpm after majority of retailers already listed the drive in their catalogues as 7200rpm. At least 90% of Finnish retailers sell it as such.

Also, the difficulty or sheer impossibility of determining platter numbers and keeping tracks of WD variants is a cause for head-ache as retailers don't separate drive based on the variant. Most other manufacturers honestly introduce a new line of drives when construction is significantly changed. In WD's advertizing, cache size plays a bigger role than number of platter, rpm or data density.

I like that WD has chosen the right markets, but I hate how they are model numbered and how little meaningful information they actually realease. I could care less about majority of BS they put in datasheets when all the meaningful stuff is left out. It's probably not as bad anymore but WD also resorted to heck of a lot of copypasta from datasheet to another... as did Seagate. Seagate had "12 ms" access time on U-series when even AAM disabled they couldn't get below 20ms! And WD just copypasted or threw power consumption figures out of some hat, completely missing real values by several watts.


Yes, the lack of documentation is a weak part for almost all manufacturers. A Hitachi product specification contains way more information than any other brand.
This should be the minimum documentation for a new drive, instead of Intellipower 5,400-7,200RPM etc. :wink:

I totally agree with your opinon about WD. It's too bad that even though all misleading infos, as I see in hardware forums, they are the most famous hdd manufacturers nowadays. Everybody deals with platter number connection with product numbers, frequency and linear speed measurements.

Here in Hungary there are 4 platter Green Powers still in stock, for an average user it's will be a surprise wether he/she gets a 4 or 3 platter drive. :)

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Post by fwki » Sun Dec 28, 2008 4:36 pm

whiic wrote:What kind of home server are do you have / intend to build, fwki?
If it's just centralized feeder of video (even if 1080p high-definition) and place to store random documents from every computer in the house, I think even GreenPower can handle that easily.
The server in my sig is a WHS with a Tyan MoDT flex ATX board..it backs up 3 desktops and 3 laptops...streams DVD's, music and photos and the kids keep the school work on it for remote access. Also since I use it as an extra desktop for internet access, I run Avast AVS and Diskeeper.

I prefer HDD performance over power saving primarily to push file transfer speeds to the max. We rip / encode DVD's and CD's on clients and move them to the server over gigabit network. From Tim Higgins' work over at smallnetbuilder.com, it's pretty clear that well-built networks are limited by HDD transfer speeds and server RAM (data buffer).

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Post by whiic » Sun Dec 28, 2008 4:50 pm

Tamas: "This should be the minimum documentation for a new drive, instead of Intellipower 5,400-7,200RPM etc. (link)"

Yeah. I know those docs and love them. ~300 pages of specifications is always a good read. I have archived OEM specs of those Hitachi HDDs I own. I hope I never actually need to read them (for the purpose of doing data recovery or similar troubleshooting.

Other manufacturers also release OEM specs but they just don't put them on their website for everyone to read. You actually need to be some system integrator to get them, or at the very least, you have to ask them from customer support and hope they'll be cooperative. Or Google... OEM specs are sometimes leaked.

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