Buying a Terabyte drive - suggestions?

pepiman

So I'm looking to buy a 1TB hard drive to use as a backup to all of my stuff... it might be enough who knows!
I will be using it to store every single byte of data that I can get into it as a backup to my other stuff (so a Ghost image of my vista x64 machine, a copy of all my personal files and more)

I need something reliable reliable reliable

1TB Seagate 32mb 7200.11 - 5yr warranty - 263.46$
1TB Wd Caviar 16mb - 5yr warranty - 227.43
1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1 - 3 yr warranty (not valid in Canada??) = 199.99$
1TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 - 3yr warranty - 328.99$
1TB Seagate ES.2 - 5yr warranty - 294.12$
1TB Hitachi Ultrastar - 5yr warranty - 369.99$

What is your suggestion and why?
Funny thing is, the one with the best reviews so far is the cheapest one (Samsung)


I'm currently running with a 160gb Raptor, 320gb seagate and a 500gb wd mybook

kris23

1TB Seagate ES.2 man......

none of those are better in performance or reliability....

temeteus82

Kris23, you have recommendation for 0.5 TB drive?

kris23

are you looking for the best reliability?

the Seagate ES.2 500GB is best too, they run cooler and are rated for harsh operations.

if you want GB to $ then the WD SE16 640GB drive is best, pretty fast too i hear even with only 16mb cache

Judas

i'm very fond of my seagate 7200.11's...

500gb or 1tb..

temeteus82

I do want GB to €
That seagate is a bit too expensive for me... around 100€ in here. And that WD is 80€
When the SE16 500GB is around 66€...

Judas

holly crap... $150 dollars for a 500gb seagate 7200.11?

that's insane..... and i thought our prices were a bit high.

temeteus82

Judas nope, you just were too fast... I meant that ES.2 drive

the 7900.11 is 77€ in here

kris23

the Seagate ES.2 is basically a highly binned 7200.11 with better components....

the reliability goes up 5x apparently

Judas

ES.2 is essentially a enterprise/Business applicated hardrive... made for workstation...

7200.11's are typical home hardrives..

still the 5 year warranty and failure rate are probably relateively good still or similare.

PangingJr

i think all of those hard drives should remain reliable for at least 3 years, pick which one you like best.
if you like me, i pick the one that i can get it back quickly and without too much hassle if i need to replace it.
5 years waranty is a plus if you plan to use it that long.

kris23

Seagate has an Advanced RMA service that i just remembered.... 20 bucks gets you a prepaid shipping label, upgrade to priority shipping and they send the new drive first.... real good service, cant argue about the price.

used it and got the drive real fast!

but sadly its only US residents though....

pepiman

sounds like a very weird RMA to me...
I've had a WD bust on my 5 years ago...
I set up the RMA, gave my Visa # ... they shipped me a new hard drive with return postage on it for my busted one
total cost = 0.00$ + tx = 0.00$ (CDN$)

pepiman

I didn't think the ES.2 was that much better in terms of reliability ... and to think I had a 500gb ES.2 in my hands just a week ago but gave it away (what the hell???)

I will look into this situation........... Thanks !

kris23

they are built to withstand the harsh conditions of server computing so they are naturally binned higher interms of components....

Grace

You don't want to find out about the RMA rate of this drive. You especially don't want to become part of the statistic yourself. The number of dead F1's is insane and rivals that of the famous IBM Deskstar (which was nicknamed Deadstar for obvious reasons).


The WD caviar or Seagate 7200.11 are absolutely fine and highly reliable drives. I'd get the Caviar because of the price.

kris23

yea id go with WD or seagate, if WD gives advanced RMA for free then go there! id switch too if they do, do that

BlueMak

Am I the only one that would never RMA a hard drive unless it was brand new with no or limited data on it?

I don't trust WD after my personal WD Mybook fiasco of last summer, so I have to say Seagate.

PangingJr

hmm i have a few friends who are fan of the spinpoint drives they uses a bunch of the F1's 750GB both 16MB and 32MB models,
it seems to me they like the F1 drives. they also got 5 years warranty, but i'm sure the terms of warranty can be vary from location to location.

pepiman

I'm looking at the ES.2 1TB more than the others now ... I like reliability! An extra couple of bucks is nothing compared to data security.

Thanks for all the replies fellas. As always

PangingJr

the enterprise class drives are (usually) meant for using in a RAID scheme, but most will still want to use some spare drives anyway.

Mousey

I'll go with Kris on this one, Seagate make the best drives for reliability methinks, your'e probably safest going with that one

PangingJr

western digital also has enterprise class drives in 1TB size like RE2-GP model,
samsung has the spinpoint F RAID model. check them out if you like to use an enterprise class drive on your PC.

pepiman

I'm also looking at the WD6400AAKS now ... it's very cheap (120$) and apparently fast as hell from the reviews i've seen
2 of those would equal 1.28TB and about the same price as 1TB drives

temeteus82

Got WD500AAKS drive today... That is Caviar SE16 500GB. So far it has worked just fine.