Recommended hard disks? (Mechanical)

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Cutter

Carbon Allotrope
Oct 8, 2001
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I'm looking to replace a 150GB Western Digital Enterprise class Raptor drive which has served me faithfully for almost 5 years but is now starting to make intermittent clicking noises on boot-up and during use, suggesting it is on its way out.

I'm looking at getting a new 1TB disk to replace it. I'm using a EVGA 122-CK-NF68 (Socket 775) motherboard with the most recent BIOS. As far as I can tell the board supports SATAII. Not the newest of systems I know but my intention here is to prolong the life of an existing system rather than select a drive for a new build system.

Wondering if anyone can recommend any particular makes of hard disk.

I was looking at the 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 which on the whole gets good reviews. However, I've also seen reports about batches of this drive escaping into the market which are either DOA or die shortly after use.

Also looked at the 1TB Seagate ST31000340NS Barracuda ES.2 and the 1Tb Western Digital WD1003FBYX RE4 Enterprise but can't seem to find reviews which compare noise levels or heat output from the drives.

Anyone able to recommend any drives from personal use?
 
Never found any drives recently that are 100% perfect in everyones opinion, personally I've been happy with my Samsung's but Id be advising otherwise if I had been unlucky and they had died. There's no way to be certain of any drive only thing you can do is to back it up either via raid or to another drive/media.

Keep in mind the warranty on Raptors was 5 years
 
3 of my Samsung F1 discs died on me, lost arund 3tb worth of data. I would never ever recommend samsung ever again so it just shows how different our opinions are :p:
 
My WD is running smoothly for years, can recommend WD. (and seeing your old WD also made it through 5 years)
 
3 of my Samsung F1 discs died on me, lost arund 3tb worth of data. I would never ever recommend samsung ever again so it just shows how different our opinions are :p:

Wasn't that my point?, that peoples opinions differ on a product depending on their experience with it. Over the years the make I've most failure with is Maxtor but that may just be because people seemed to pick them because they were the cheapest at the time so were more common. I've certainly had multiple failures on WD, Fujitsu, Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi/IBM, Seagate etc etc so by most people's reasoning Id not recommend any HD. I had two IBM drives that were labeled deathstar due to their unreliability but they lasted a long time until I upgraded, there was never any fault, to me that makes them a good drive regardless of their reputation.

The Raptors are supposed to have a higher reliability hence the 5 year's warranty, they are supposed to sit below the enterprise level but above your std drives, regardless of them being WD or not.

Quite frankly pick any drive, if you complain if it fails within its warranty and that it has lost you a load of work then you have nobody else but yourself to blame for either not using RAID1 or making backups, regardless of what drive you buy there is still a possibility of failure and Id not put my faith in any drive out there.
 
Well yeah, one things sure. If you worry enough about your data to pick a drive based on its reliability rating, you worry enough to either be taking backups or running RAID1. Never rely on a harddrive to keep your data safe.
 
Wasn't that my point?, that peoples opinions differ on a product depending on their experience with it. Over the years the make I've most failure with is Maxtor but that may just be because people seemed to pick them because they were the cheapest at the time so were more common. I've certainly had multiple failures on WD, Fujitsu, Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi/IBM, Seagate etc etc so by most people's reasoning Id not recommend any HD. I had two IBM drives that were labeled deathstar due to their unreliability but they lasted a long time until I upgraded, there was never any fault, to me that makes them a good drive regardless of their reputation.

The Raptors are supposed to have a higher reliability hence the 5 year's warranty, they are supposed to sit below the enterprise level but above your std drives, regardless of them being WD or not.

Quite frankly pick any drive, if you complain if it fails within its warranty and that it has lost you a load of work then you have nobody else but yourself to blame for either not using RAID1 or making backups, regardless of what drive you buy there is still a possibility of failure and Id not put my faith in any drive out there.

I WAS AGREEING WITH YOU. hi
 
Thanks for the input guys - I'm probably going to end up getting a WD Caviar Black 1TB. :)

Question 2: data security - I tend to archive off to DVD and an external hard disk, but what are people's experiences with various types of RAID? Software under Windows 7, hardware in your computer box, or external RAID via a NAS?

Some of my most precious data is demorecs from matches! :rofl:
 
Personally I use RAID1 off my MB controller, suits my needs. Previously I had dedicated RAID card and ran a RAID5 array, in the end I thought it was overkill for what I need.
I wouldnt go the route of software RAID, not bootable and relies on system to work
NAS with RAID is a good option if you need to access files from multiple locations and need a safe way to archive it.