Best hard drive for use as a primary drive (non ssd)

[sim667]

I wanted to buy a new hard drive to install and run the new OSX on, but I really can't afford an ssd (as was my original intention).

I use western digital caviar green for my raid setup but they seem very slow, and every now and then make some scary noises.

So can anyone recommend any reliable and fast hard drives for use to run the new os x in my mac pro on.

 

[alust2013]

Green drives are not ideal for RAID, as they have varying spindle speeds, so some of the speed of the RAID is canceled. The fastest 7200 RPM drives out there are the Caviar Black, especially the 2TB version.

 

[nanofrog]

I'll put in another nod for Western Digital's 7200rpm Caviar Blacks.

The Greens are fine drives, but as mentioned, they're not meant for RAID. They do work wonderfully as backup/archival volumes, particularly due to the cost per GB.

 

[nobiggiestudio]

EEW! NEVER EEVVVER WD disks again....they crashed for me.
AND today...oh no! you'll not getting new drives..

They send them of for repair! WHAT? -Yes, repaircenter.....that what he sad in the store were I bough them. New rules from the manufacture.
I haven't picked mine up yet, I really don't even want to do it either.
I know it will break again.. and I saw this happen last year over and over again at work.


Get of and buy Seagate barracuda, Hitachi is quite good disks to but I don't trust anything else.
I'm using seagate disks, some of them is really old. One of them is almost six years old...and the other is more than 13 years old (old UATA disk)
The disks are used in one of my servers so its just for now when my WD Main system drive crashed.

If you doing RAID in Hi-end, then go for Seagate constellation disks...Barracuda drives work just fine in other cases.
Just mount them in the holders and slide them in.
You might need an PCI-RAID card to rewire the SATA cables to the RAID card...in order to make the constellation drives spin up because these are not using SATA interface, but SAS interface.
Link to their website
Seagate disks are great. Works forever and they not making much noise.

 

[nanofrog]

EEW! NEVER EEVVVER WD disks again....they crashed for me.
AND today...oh no! you'll not getting new drives..

They send them of for repair! WHAT? -Yes, repaircenter.....that what he sad in the store were I bough them. New rules from the manufacture.
I haven't picked mine up yet, I really don't even want to do it either.
I know it will break again.. and I saw this happen last year over and over again at work.


Get of and buy Seagate barracuda disks and nothing else.
I'm using two Seagate disks, some of them is really old. One of them is almost six years old...and the other is more than 13 years old (old UATA disk)
The disks are used in one of my servers so its just for now when my WD Main system drive crashed.

Ife Const your doing RAID then go for Seagatellation disks...they work just fine.
Just mount them in the holders and slide them in.
You might need an PCI-RAID card to rewire the SATA cables to the RAID card...in order to make the drives spin up.
Link to their website
Seagate disks are great. Works forever and they not making much noise.

Old Seagates were great drives, but the more recent ones (since 2008 or so) have been garbage.

Search out the 7200.11 series, and you'll see what I'm talking about. It also affected the enterprise variants, though it didn't get the level of press the consumer versions did (aka Boot of Death for the enterprise models).

Also keep in mind, that their enterprise drives (ES Constellation series) are built off of the consumer models (7200.xx series). Which is the case for all brands when it comes to SATA disks (just add a few sensors, cherry pick platters, and uses different firmware for the enterprise variants). The rest of it, particularly the mechanicals, are the same these days.

BTW, Looking at the current 7200.12's, I've seen a 34% failure rate, which is horrible.

Recent WD's OTOH, haven't had the frequency of issues as their comparable Seagates.

I'd also recommend staying away from Hitachi's.

 

[crazzyeddie]

Old Seagates were great drives, but the more recent ones (since 2008 or so) have been garbage.

Search out the 7200.11 series, and you'll see what I'm talking about. It also affected the enterprise variants...

...

Recent WD's OTOH, haven't had the frequency of issues as their comparable Seagates.\

Totally agree with this. WD Black or RAID edition is what you want for reliability. Green is fine, too, but noticeably slower.

 

[MacinJosh]

This is my experience with over 20 drive failures in as many years:

Early Seagate was great. Current is garbage as was already mentioned. 4 drives dead in the last 4 years.

Fu*****u makes up of 50% of all my drive failures. (Fujitsu)

Western Digital. Nothing bad to report. In fact I'm impressed with it. I currently have 3 in my MP, 2 of which are over 5 years old. My TC has a WD and gone through abuse through 4 years no probs.

No recollection of ever owning IBM/Hitachi drives. There were others but I forget.

Edit: others were Maxtor, Quantum, Samsung, and Connor (?)

Fujitsu acquired by Toshiba.

 

[blunti]

I've been using Samsung drives for years and NEVER had problems with them. Check out Samsung F series. Highly recommended stuff!

 

[nanofrog]

Fu*****u makes up of 50% of all my drive failures. (Fujitsu)

Were these recent units, and were they SATA or SAS?

I ask, as I've had great experiences with their more recent SAS disks (2008 on), particularly for workstation use (not had access to their SATA disks in forever, as WD's have worked well for me, and I'm sticking with them for now).

No recollection of ever owning IBM/Hitachi drives. There were others but I forget.

Edit: others were Maxtor, Quantum, Samsung, and Connor (?)

Fujitsu acquired by Toshiba.

Hitachi's SATA disks used to be really good (Malaysian plant), but their reliability took a nose dive when they shifted to China for finished disks.

Their SAS disks have been fine (particularly the 10k or 15k rpm units), but they don't share anything with their SATA counterparts (different platters, servos, spindle motors, ...).

BTW, Western Digital recently acquired Hitachi GST, so it will be interesting to see how that shakes out (whether or not Hitachi's will get better, SATA variants go away, or worse nightmare scenario, Western Digital fall into dumpster territory ). Hopefully, WD won't mess this up (fingers crossed).

I've been using Samsung drives for years and NEVER had problems with them. Check out Samsung F series. Highly recommended stuff!

Samsung's have had reliability problems in the past, but they have gotten better.

 

[SamWavy]

+1 Western Digital's 7200rpm Caviar Blacks. I have 2 installed, might buy a 3rd.

Green Drives are way too slow, only good for data storage.

SSD's are too overpriced!

 

[codymac]

Early Seagate was great. Current is garbage as was already mentioned. 4 drives dead in the last 4 years.

Wow. Four drives in four years?
You're lucky.


I've had 3 Seagates fail just this summer. I've lost count but there's 5 failed Seagates sitting here next to me as I type this and I've got another 2/3 at the office (can't recall exactly since there's just platters left).

I've taken to replacing them with WD Black drives.

I'm expecting I'll lose (or throw out) another 4 Seagates before the year is over.

 

[nanofrog]

I've had 3 Seagates fail just this summer. I've lost count but there's 5 failed Seagates sitting here next to me as I type this and I've got another 2/3 at the office (can't recall exactly since there's just platters left).

I've taken to replacing them with WD Black drives.

I'm expecting I'll lose (or throw out) another 4 Seagates before the year is over.

It truly is sad as to the state of QC for recent Seagates. But it's also frustrating, as they should never have let things get to this state IMO.

 

[Macsonic]

This thread is helpful. I bought a Seagate last 2010 and luckily this still works ok ( knock on wood ) But my next HD purchase will be Western Digital.

 

[MacinJosh]

Wow. Four drives in four years?
You're lucky.


I've had 3 Seagates fail just this summer. I've lost count but there's 5 failed Seagates sitting here next to me as I type this and I've got another 2/3 at the office (can't recall exactly since there's just platters left).

I've taken to replacing them with WD Black drives.

I'm expecting I'll lose (or throw out) another 4 Seagates before the year is over.

Lol, wow. And I thought I had it worse. Using my "peripherals", I can see 2 dead Seagates lying around as I type this.

Were these recent units, and were they SATA or SAS?

1 Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ATA
1 Momentus 5400.6 160GB SATA
2 SATA 3.5" ones thrown away.

 

[getz76]

Samsung 1tB HD103SJ benchmarks within a hair of a Western Digital Velociraptor WD3000HLFS 300gB. At $60, it's about a third of the price and has over three times the storage.

I have had drives of every make fail on me. The only brands I avoid are Seagate and Hitachi, not only because of my experience with their failures but also because of the noise levels they both generate.

 

[PreetinderBajwa]

Hitachi ?

I got a Hitachi DeskStar, Sata 3, 2TB, 64 MB Cache, 3.5" disk for putting in the new iMac that I will buy this week, reading the not so positive comments about Fujitsu.... I am thinking did I get the wrong disk !

 

[codymac]

It truly is sad as to the state of QC for recent Seagates. But it's also frustrating, as they should never have let things get to this state IMO.

Agreed. It's sad to see given the value their name used to have.

 

[VirtualRain]

Stop screwing around! What do you mean you cant afford an SSD?! You do know his is the Mac Pro forum right and not the Dell Inspiron forum . Just sell a kidney and get an SSD

 

[derbothaus]

Samsung 1tB HD103SJ benchmarks within a hair of a Western Digital Velociraptor WD3000HLFS 300gB. At $60, it's about a third of the price and has over three times the storage.

I have had drives of every make fail on me. The only brands I avoid are Seagate and Hitachi, not only because of my experience with their failures but also because of the noise levels they both generate.

+1 for this choice. I got 4 of them on sale for 39.95 each. They are really fast for the money. I got a good 135MB/s in Aja Disk test. Insane.
+1 also for your current dislikes.

 

[scottsjack]

The original 2010 MP WD Caviar Black 32MB cache 1TB drive was not as responsive as the 2TB 64MB cache model I replaced it with. Currently I'm running four WD RE4 2TB drives and one Caviar Black 2TB 64MB cache.

The RE4 drives are said to be a little faster than the Caviar Black and more sturdy. Since they don't cost that much more why not get the best? My current boot drive is an RE4 with SL loaded then a 500MB partition with Windows 7.

I'm very satisfied and will stay with this configuration until SSDs become larger and cheaper, maybe 2013. . .

 

[MacinJosh]

I got a Hitachi DeskStar, Sata 3, 2TB, 64 MB Cache, 3.5" disk for putting in the new iMac that I will buy this week, reading the not so positive comments about Fujitsu.... I am thinking did I get the wrong disk !

Well, the DeskStar was affectionately known as the DeathStar when IBM was still making them.

Wikipedia: The IBM Deskstar 75GXP (as well as several other models made around the same time) became infamous for their reportedly high failure rates. This led to the drives being colloquially referred to as "Deathstars". Due to this, the drives were ranked 18th in PC World's "Worst Tech Products of All Time" feature in 2006.

As was mentioned, WD acquired Hitachi so it's anyone's guess how that will affect quality...

 

[toxic]

I use a 1 TB WD Blue as my boot drive. a Black has lower latency, but I'm satisfied with the Blue so I haven't bothered upgrading.

the Samsung HD103SJ mentioned above is better known as the Spinpoint F3. sequential IO is great, but overall random IO is better with a WD Blue, according to XBench. I use an F3 as my data drive.

 

[DesmoPilot]

Samsung's F3 1TB is a beast.

 

[codymac]

As of this morning, go ahead and make that 4 failed Seagates for me so far this summer.

Got to the office this morning to find another Seagate 1TB throwing errors.


Sheesh!

 

[somnbulance]

+1 Western Digital's 7200rpm Caviar Blacks. I have 2 installed, might buy a 3rd.

Green Drives are way too slow, only good for data storage.

SSD's are too overpriced!

Completely agree with this, its like they say, once you go black you never go back

64mb cache, 7200 rpm. its fast and quiet, highly recommend them