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koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
Humax BGW320-500

koitsu to me1212

MVM

to me1212

Re: How are Toshiba and Deskstar HDDs?

I'm going to assume you're talking about 3.5" hard disks and not 2.5".

My opinions/sentiments mirror psafux See Profile. There is no particular brand that is more or less reliable than another (well, aside from the ongoing firmware nonsense in some brands -- so maybe I should say "mechanically reliable" ).

The only drives I tend to recommend people stay away from, brand-wise, are Fujitsu drives. But that's based on my experience professionally with those disks; for all I know there's some other person who has had total success with them.

Drive models I tend to recommend folks steer clear of right now:

- WD Green drives or any WD drives with a -GP suffix. These drives repeatedly part their heads which can cause all sorts of wonderful complexities/issues. Internet nerds call this the "LCC issue" (LCC = Load Cycle Count). There are ways to work around this problem on WD Green drives, assuming APM can be disabled. Details: »koitsu.wordpress.com/201 ··· parking/

- Seagate's ST1000DM001, ST2000DM001, and ST3000DM001. These drives also excessively park their heads, and emit an audible clunk noise when either parking or unparking. Seagate users have complained about this on their forum for quite some time and Seagate asked silly questions when it was obviously a firmware design choice. Worse, on these drives (at least with the firmware versions I tested), parking was not counted in SMART attribute 193 (LCC). As I understand it, Seagate now has the same drives out but end in -DM003, and those have the same behaviour but the head parking is counted in attribute 193 (but so what, the drives shouldn't be doing this). Oh, apparently all of these drives also have a firmware update (hmmmm!): »knowledge.seagate.com/ar ··· 223651en

- I am not impressed by the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives either, due to the infamous BSY firmware bug that turns these drives catatonic: »hackaday.com/2012/07/30/ ··· are-bug/ -- heck, I don't particularly like any of these models for similar reasons: »knowledge.seagate.com/ar ··· 207931en

- I do not think fondly of Samsung's F4 EcoGreen drives either, due to firmware bugs that can result in data loss: »sourceforge.net/apps/tra ··· adBlocks

If you want my personal recommendation for a reliable 1TB drive that doesn't have weird firmware design issues (as of this writing), go with the WD Red drives. However you won't find WD Reds for US$68, that's for sure. You might be able to find some WD Black drives for that price, but they'd probably be used drives, in which case you should make sure wherever you get them from has a good return policy and test the drive fully first (read all LBAs, erase drive (every LBA), then read all LBAs again, as well as look at SMART attributes).

P.S. -- Deskstar (not "Deckstar") is a model/series, not a brand/company. The original company to make the Deskstar series was IBM, who sold their hard disk division to Hitachi Global Storage Technologies in 2003. However, in 2011, Hitachi effectively sold itself to Western Digital. »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi ··· nologies
me1212
join:2008-11-20
Lees Summit, MO
·Google Fiber

me1212

Member

Since you seem knowledgeable in this, I've been wondering for a while but haven't had time to actually look it up with finals the past couple weeks. What exactly is the niche of the WD reds? I know green has power use, blue is balance, black is performance, but I've not yet learned what WD red's special area is.

I don't really care *that* much about price, I want a good drive more than I want a low price.

Bach
Premium Member
join:2002-02-16
Flint, MI

Bach

Premium Member

According to WD, the red drives are aimed at NAS (Network Attached Storage) boxes.

»www.anandtech.com/show/6 ··· -premium
me1212
join:2008-11-20
Lees Summit, MO
·Google Fiber

me1212

Member

Ah, interesting. Upon reading about them I do think I'll probably get red. Its supposed to be more optimized for storage and reliability, the most important things that I am looking for.

Grated that 1TB RE4($108.99) enterprise drive is only $9 more than the 1TB red drive($99.99), would it be worth the extra $9 to go from consumer red to enterprise RE4? I know it probably wouldn't be worth $65(for what I am doing) to go from the $129.99 2TB red to the 2TB RE4 that costs $194.99, but if its not worth the $9 from the 1TB red to the 1TB RE4 then $30 to get an extra 1TB may be...

koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
Humax BGW320-500

koitsu to me1212

MVM

to me1212
It's basically what Bach See Profile (hey I like your music :P) said, although I use them for desktop drives as well (hopefully will become apparent below).

The main difference, simply put, is their firmware settings and feature set. They perform somewhere between WD Green and WD Black drives, but have the extremely low temperatures of the Greens while offering proper features that the Blacks do. They also don't suffer from stupid firmware design choices like the "LCC issue" and a couple others. And if you care about this sort of thing (honestly it should be the job of either the OS or the controller, sigh), the TLER settings are adjustable (including during run-time) and default to 7 seconds.

My """review""", per se -- keep in mind I do not care about benchmarks -- »koitsu.wordpress.com/201 ··· d10efrx/

Despite my approval of the drives, my general advice, like psafux See Profile, is that any drive can fail. Do backups regularly. Expect your hard disk to fail -- by operating under that assumption, you'll be much happier when you lose a drive and aren't having to consider the costs of a data recovery company.

aurgathor
join:2002-12-01
Lynnwood, WA

aurgathor to me1212

Member

to me1212
2 TB Reds are selling for as low as $125, meaning the 2nd TB would only cost you $25. So if I were to buy a WD Red, I wouldn't get anything less than the 2 TB model.

Disclaimer: I have a 3 TB WD Red.
me1212
join:2008-11-20
Lees Summit, MO
·Google Fiber

1 edit

me1212

Member

I know, $30 for a whole extra TB is soooooooooooooo hard to pass up. However, I've only used 1TB, or smaller, drives so far in my live, and I've heard things about once drives hit 2TB+ complicity their reliability is far less than 1TB and smaller drives, I assume due to multiple platters. And thats why I'm conflicted right now, spend $9 more than a 1TB red and get a freaking enterprise drive(for $11 less than even newegg) or spend $30 more and get a 2TB red and be even more unsure about the life time of the drive.

EDIT: how do the red drives use multiple platters? Does it read/write to one at a time, or to both of them at once and achieve higher speed that way?
me1212

me1212 to koitsu

Member

to koitsu
Don't worry, I have everything I care about backed up in at least one place, most more than one.

aurgathor
join:2002-12-01
Lynnwood, WA

1 recommendation

aurgathor to me1212

Member

to me1212
The Red has 1 TB platters. The Red and the RE4 has comparable sustained DTR, but seeks on the RE4 are roughly twice as fast. So if you need a boot drive, or a drive with lots of random access -- by all means get the 1 TB RE4. For a pure archival type storage drive, or for large files -- get the 2TB Red.
me1212
join:2008-11-20
Lees Summit, MO

me1212

Member

Well since its just going to be a game storage drive, the faster seek time wont really help. 2TB it is!

Thanks everyone!