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HGST Deskstar Internal Drives - Jerky Video?
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No, I am in business and don't have time to track down and try to fix an issue like that which may or may not solve the problem and I don't have anything running Windows anyway to mess with it. I have purchased over 100 internal drives for Macs over the years and never had to tinker with them to get them working properly.
I am sure it was my fault. I was not familiar with the term "NAS", I just went by what everyone out there is currently selling and recommending for desktop Macs. This is the description off the OWC site:
More Performance, More Reliability
The Deskstar® NAS hard drive is a 7200 RPM 3.5-inch hard drive that provides an exceptional blend of reliability and performance, making it an ideal solution for consumer and commercial desktop NAS systems. This NAS-ready hard drive from HGST delivers media transfer rates that are as much as 20% faster than 5400 RPM drives and seek times less than 12ms. Furthermore, Deskstar NAS hard drives incorporate a rotational vibration sensor and achieve reliability of 1M hours MTBF.
HGST Quality and Service
All HGST hard drives are designed to the highest quality standards with field- proven components. They are backed by HGST worldwide technical support and integration services, enabling customers around the globe to bring their products to market quickly.
OWC Tip:
This drive is identical in performance and general operation as the HGST 4.0TB Deskstar 7K4000 7200RPM Hard Disk Drive - but with the additional testing/certification for NAS storage qualification. Great for standard desktop use, RAID sets, and for Network Attached Storage arrays as well.
I think even if in general terms one should not use a desktop drive for RAID, it is not obvious that a RAID drive might present some issue on a desktop.
Some years ago I purposefully bought the consumer electronics version of a drive to generate less heat. It was not reactive enough to use as a system drive comfortably.
Some years ago I purposefully bought the consumer electronics version of a drive to generate less heat. It was not reactive enough to use as a system drive comfortably.
I'm sympathetic because something similar happened to me with WD Greens. The problems with specialized drives are not very clear. It's not even that clear that they are specialized drives in the first place.
I wonder how many people have bought these from OWC and not noticed the poor performance. In that sense you are fortunate.
NAS, Green, Blue, Red, Black, Purple, Gold are properly marketed. It is not paying attention. It is forgivable that people might be surprised by NAS in a desktop context.
Again, I bought a Green years ago knowing what it was and did not like the performance, so I'm not buying them again.
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All I see in the marketing is "quiet and cool" or "energy efficient". So I bought two WD Greens because that's what I wanted (not speed). A few years later both of mine failed, despite very light use.
I did NOT know that they had a special firmware that, if used in a normal desktop, would cause start/stop cycles that are thousands of times higher than normal, leading to widespread premature deaths:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=51401
http://www.ngohq.com/news/19805-critical-design-flaw-found-in-wd-caviar-green-hdds.html
At the very least there should have been a slip of paper included with the drive warning that if it was installed for normal desktop use, the user should download and use WD's utility to alter the aggressive spin down setting to a more typical one.
If I had known they were that "special" I never would have bought them.
If you are using yours in a desktop, I suggest using the utility to check to see if your usage pattern is causing significantly higher than normal stop/start cycles. For example that first post in the second link, the guy checked his and it had 87,000 park cycles in two months. That's 1/3 the total expected number of parks for the drive's entire expected lifespan occurring in just 60 days!
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Well, at least regular Deskstars have a warning on the box saying they are not intended for RAID use (not the full story, should be OK for small RAID0, RAID1 and RAID10 arrays).
Got the Toshiba replacement drive installed today, transferred the same files over, video jerking gone. Problem solved!
