 Subaru1-3-2-4Premium
join:2001-05-31
Greenwich, CT | reply to Duramax08
Re: Western Digital Red in stores now So reading this thread it seems like to stay away from WD drives? |
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| said by Subaru:So reading this thread it seems like to stay away from WD drives?
I don't think so....
Keep in mind, there are 2 major manufacturers left, so once the current product lines are finished, you won't have much of a choice. Unless you go for SSDs, but for cheap storage, they probably won't be there for quite a while.
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Wacky Races 2012! |
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JoelC707Premium
join:2002-07-09
West Point, GA
kudos:5 | reply to Subaru
Koitsu has told me about several issues with Seagate drives, such as only anchoring the spindle motor on one end (I think I got that right?). It's problems like that, that would lead me away from Seagate drives. I look at it like this, Seagate drives have some mechanical deficiencies and WD drives have some firmware deficiencies. Every manufacturer has a deficiency somewhere, it's inevitable.
And because Seagate and WD are the only two major manufacturers left in the desktop segment, you're stuck with them. Apparently there are a total of four manufacturers left in the HDD industry in general. WD, Seagate, Toshiba (bought Fujitsu's HDD division in 2009 apparently), and Simmtronics (never heard of them). |
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 GbcueP.E.Premium
join:2001-09-30
Santa Rosa, CA
kudos:8 | What about Hitachi? They're still around, no? |
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Subaru1-3-2-4Premium
join:2001-05-31
Greenwich, CT | I think they sold that division |
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GbcueP.E.Premium
join:2001-09-30
Santa Rosa, CA
kudos:8 | reply to koitsu
I guess from now on, I have 1 rule in HDs: Buy WD Black, only. No bother buying Green. Blue is okay. |
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JoelC707Premium
join:2002-07-09
West Point, GA
kudos:5 | reply to Gbcue
Hitachi merged with WD in 2011: »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_de···acturers. Not sure how complete or accurate the list is of course, since it is Wikipedia  |
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 DarkLogixTexan and ProudPremium
join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX
kudos:3 | reply to JoelC707
I think you got that wrong because I've taken apart WD drives and they too are only supported on the base. |
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 koitsuPremium,MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
kudos:20 | reply to JoelC707
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koitsuPremium,MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
kudos:20 | reply to JoelC707
said by JoelC707:Koitsu has told me about several issues with Seagate drives, such as only anchoring the spindle motor on one end (I think I got that right?). Hmm, I don't remember saying anything to that effect. I don't tend to do actual examination of spindle motors on the physical level (meaning actual engineering examination of the mounting methods and so on). I wonder what I might have said that gave you that impression; if I did, can you find it so I can re-read what I wrote and maybe clarify?
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Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer. |
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 Camelot OnePremium,MVM
join:2001-11-21
Greenwood, IN
kudos:1 | reply to Gbcue
said by Gbcue:I guess from now on, I have 1 rule in HDs: Buy WD Black, only. No bother buying Green. Blue is okay.
I think much like the Intel v AMD, Apple v Microsoft, or any other big brand versus big brand, everyone has an opinion on which is better, and most people have had a bad experience with one or the other. I've been using 1 and 2Tb WD Greens for storage in my machines and client machines since they first came out. To date, the only failures I have seen were in the "AV" series marketed for DVRs. I'm not saying they are perfect, and they certainly aren't the fastest things around, but they have worked well for me, so I continue using them. I have had a couple of Blacks roast themselves to death, particularly when they were used as replacements in Dell slimlines. (which just have lousy cooling) But Greens in the same boxes work fine.
I had a really bad run of Seagate failures in the 750Gb .11 line, to the point I stopped using ALL Seagate drives. But over the past few months I've started using some of their 3Tb drives, and haven't had a single problem. |
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GbcueP.E.Premium
join:2001-09-30
Santa Rosa, CA
kudos:8 | I've stopped using Seagate after one of my 1TB .10's crashed. |
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JoelC707Premium
join:2002-07-09
West Point, GA
kudos:5 | reply to koitsu
Yeah I reread the PM and it's the actuator arm you referred to that Seagate doesn't lock in place while the heads are parked so that was my mixup, sorry. You mentioned on that drive that you thought the spindle was loose based on the noises it made but I don't think you ever opened it up to see. That's where I got it confused, sorry. |
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 PhoenixDown-- Wants FIOSPremium
join:2003-06-08
Fresh Meadows, NY
kudos:1 | reply to Duramax08
koitsu -- what do you think about the various SSD drives?
btw: I find your explanations enlightening. thank you. |
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koitsuPremium,MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
kudos:20 | reply to Camelot One
What you said here is more or less correct -- everyone's experience with drives differs. What is fact, however, is that we're basically down to only a few drive manufacturers, and one of those (Toshiba) still has indirect ties to a competitor.
In the case of DarkLogix  he specifically asked for my opinion on something, so I gave him my opinion.
But my prior post (the long diatribe  ) contains both facts and my views/opinions as someone who tries very hard to follow the storage industry and all their (gradually getting more awful) products.
As for your experience with your Green drives, it's very important that you disclose the "generation" of drive -- meaning its manufacturing date and exactly what firmware is used. The original 1st-gen and very early 2nd-gen Green drives worked fine and did not have badly thought out crap added to their firmwares -- I had a drive of this sort so I can attest to it behaving much like yours. The Green -AV series behaved stupidly from day one, I'm in complete agreement. But present day Green drives, as my blog post proves, with evidence, are absolutely horrible.
Again, all of this is crap (bad design choices) in the firmware. I'm sure it's being thought up by one or two people deep within the bowels of the company, or possibly marketing. I can only speculate. If that crap could be removed, the drives would behave decently. But that's not the way this capitalist money-focused world works, is it? Instead, here comes WD, with a "new" drive that "works great with NASes". A hard disk shouldn't (and they didn't used to!) care about how they were being used (meaning what device type they were attached to or how it behaved) -- they used to do one thing: I/O. And I really believe that's all consumers want (and what they have always wanted): a drive to do I/O and not have all of this man-in-the-middle nonsense crap going on that does nothing but cause problems. WDIDLE3, TLER/CCTL/ERC, blah blah, none of that stuff should have ever been created.
BTW, history lesson: the earliest occurrence that I know of where an MHDD vendor introduced a firmware feature that was both unwanted and did nothing but cause problems, was IBM's ADM feature introduced circa 2000. You won't find this feature discussed on the web very much, unless you were one of the people using an *IX OS and saw drive timeouts. I was one of the people who engaged IBM to discuss this (after reading the technical datasheet) and asked them, point blank, how to turn it off. This was their response. I can explain what ADM was for, and what it actually did (meaning how it screwed people over ), if people want to know. ADM was completely (and quietly) removed from all their ATA drives the following year and never reappeared. Hmm, imagine that.
That was 12 years ago. And just like today, so many features which are added and enabled by default which you cannot disable or toggle. Maybe IBM started a trend. I don't know. But it doesn't matter because it's an unwanted trend.
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Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer. |
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koitsuPremium,MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
kudos:20 | reply to PhoenixDown
said by PhoenixDown:koitsu -- what do you think about the various SSD drives? Depends on the drive model and manufacturer. You'd really have to give me a specific list of vendors + models for me to give you my opinions on them. Same goes for MHDDs of course.
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Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer. |
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DarkLogixTexan and ProudPremium
join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX
kudos:3 | Whats your opinion on the intel 520 480GB drive? |
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koitsuPremium,MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
kudos:20 | said by DarkLogix:Whats your opinion on the intel 520 480GB drive?
No opinion -- haven't used one. The largest SSD I've had the chance of tinkering with was an Intel 510 250GB model.
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Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer. |
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DarkLogixTexan and ProudPremium
join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX
kudos:3 | Ok, as I now have a intel 520 480GB, are there any tests you think I should do?
I got tired of my 128GB C300 being so close to full that I'd have to uninstall a large program to install another (thing WOW, adobe premiere elements, and some others) |
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koitsuPremium,MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
kudos:20 | said by DarkLogix:Ok, as I now have a intel 520 480GB, are there any tests you think I should do?
I got tired of my 128GB C300 being so close to full that I'd have to uninstall a large program to install another (thing WOW, adobe premiere elements, and some others)
For SSDs there's really not much to do other than benchmarking and monitoring SMART attributes (like you would with a mechanical drive). My SSD knowledge is significantly limited because the technology is new, rapidly changing, etc...
The only test I can think of that isn't routinely done by review sites is a wear levelling and FTL efficiency test; you fill the drive up with amounts of data (say 10%, 20%, 30%, etc.) then you benchmark the entire thing each step of the way. Once you hit 95-98%, do a benchmark, then wipe the entire drive in two ways: delete all the files you created that take up space + run benchmark (to see how the FTL handles this situation), then do a drive erase (NOT a "Secure Erase") like using CCleaner or DBAN or equivalent (writing zeros to every LBA) then another benchmark. After that you can do a "Secure Erase" (which resets the FTLs wear levelling LBA counter stuff back to factory defaults) and re-benchmark.
This is why I always tell people that with SSDs, always keep 40-50% of the drive free/unused else your performance will begin to suck. But that percentage/number varies per drive model, firmware, FTL method, blah blah... Would always be interesting to see how these things perform after being heavily used like that.
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Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer. |
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