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I am looking for a 2 TB HDD for data use with an SSD for OS. I bought a Samsung Ecogreen (the TR recommended) a while back and so far so good. It had an 11% 1 egg rating.

It is a bit disturbing to look at 22% and 26% DOA and early death stats for most HDDs at this size. I'd rather not spring for a Black or an enterprise version, but may for some greater assurance it'd last a while. (I do routinely churn new drives for active storage and older ones for backup - so over 2-3 yrs all are replaced or used for offline backup).

Do you just buy one, have backups and hope? It seems amazing quality has declined though costs are up and warranties are shorter. No useful market niche for some corp?

Maybe a TR poll or study is worth while? (SSDs get all the talk and HDDs only get complaints - yeah - I know - like this one.)

My rule on HDDs: Never buy any 'Green' model, regardless of manufacturer. All manufacturers will sell a dud drive from time to time, but I just read about more problems on hardware forums with Green drives.

I have a WHS stuffed with two Samsung F3 1TB drives and 2 Seagate 1.5TB drives, the notoriously finicky AAC firmware drives that got bad reviews ... and so far no hiccups from any of the 4 that pull 24/7 duty for well over two years now. The HTPC has two Seagate 7200rpm 64mb 3TB drives that I ended up buying extended warranties on ... 1 year warranty on a 3TB is not something I wanted hence the warranty extension.

Good luck finding anything Samsung these days. They're all rebadged Seagate models.

$130 3.0 TB Seagate ST3000DM001
$ 90 2.0 TB Seagate ST2000DM001
Since they cost less than half as much as similar Western Digital drives, you can put a pair of them in RAID1 and then use a 3rd one in an external dock for backups.

I'd really rather have the WD Caviar Black drives, but Western Digital are pricing themselves out of the market.

I've had multiple drives of this size over the last few years. I have had good experience with Green drives.
I've also done RMAs with both Seagate and Western Digital (just completed an RMA on a 2TB Seagate BarracudaLP 5400rpm yesterday)

Over all I think my failure rate (only RMA level) is 10% for HDD and 33% for SSD over the years and I've got 4 x 3TB and 5x2TB currently running in systems.

One of the HDDs that went was a WD Black so buying higher is not a guarantee of quality.

Thanks - yet I read a lot of concern about the drive screech on Samsung - though their may be a firmware fix. Both drives have 25% one eggs - and less than 60% 4 or 5. Many doa or die soon - not a risk I wish to seek out! (My one 2 TB is still alive and fine after 2 months or so)

Why's the quality so poor? Seems an issue worth exploration by tech media.

I don't think we should equate Newegg ratings with overall drive reliability - it can certainly be an indicator of the overall quality of a product, but if you really sift through the 1 egg reviews it might be reasonable to assume many of the DOAs and complaints of reduced capacity could be the result of other hardware incompatibilities, etc. Beyond that you're not going to get reviews from folks that are just plain happy and too busy to go review something that is working like it should. I don't know that the hard drive industry would survive if they truly had 25% failure rates within the first year and that really would be a story if true.

I have a 3tb seagate external that has been fine for a couple of months along with samsung and WD drives as well. I've had my share of drive failures and I don't know that WD is any less prone than seagate or samsung to fail in the long term - I've had 2 WDs fail in the last couple of months - one in warranty, one out. For DOA drives and failures shortly after installation - I wonder how much of that has to do with handling (both at the warehouse and installed in the machine) and shipping.

I don't know about most people but I know I've got way more harddrives and storage in general than I did even 5 years ago so I think by definition that's going to expose me to more drive failures. As a result anything i actually care about is backed up at least one other place, most of it in two. You're literally putting all your eggs in one basket with a single drive and no backup. As JAE said, a WD Black can fail just as easily as a Seagate, but you can get 2 seagates for the price of 1 WB black and you should - use one for storage and the other for backup - RAID1 or otherwise. I've got 3 different WD Green drives that haven't failed and they range in age and capacity from 1-3 years and 1-2TB so I wouldn't say "green" drives are more or less failure prone either.

Get what's on sale, buy 2 and prepare for one of them to fail sooner or later.

frumper15 wrote:

Get what's on sale, buy 2 and prepare for one of them to fail sooner or later.

Shouldn't have to have this attitude going in. If we expect drive makers to make something crappy, they'll continue to do so.

DancinJack wrote:

frumper15 wrote:

Get what's on sale, buy 2 and prepare for one of them to fail sooner or later.

Shouldn't have to have this attitude going in. If we expect drive makers to make something crappy, they'll continue to do so.

Never be afraid to RMA a product and get the replacement you are entitled to!
Without that then the manufacturers don't actually know about all the failures and continue to publish overly high MTBF numbers.

That isn't what I was saying. If I have a product fail on me, I RMA it. I'm just saying that if you continue to buy stuff that fails constantly, they'll keep selling it to you.

DancinJack wrote:

That isn't what I was saying. If I have a product fail on me, I RMA it. I'm just saying that if you continue to buy stuff that fails constantly, they'll keep selling it to you.

Indeed. And for many people (especially in the business world) the cost of the drive isn't even the main concern. The lost productivity incurred due to the failure can easily result in indirect costs which are larger than cost of a replacement drive, so reliability is paramount.

just brew it! wrote:

The lost productivity incurred due to the failure can easily result in indirect costs which are larger than cost of a replacement drive, so reliability is paramount.

That right there is some truthiness !!!

DancinJack wrote:

frumper15 wrote:

Get what's on sale, buy 2 and prepare for one of them to fail sooner or later.

Shouldn't have to have this attitude going in. If we expect drive makers to make something crappy, they'll continue to do so.

I see what you're saying - I guess I was taking more of the tack that unless you already have a backup solution in place you would be better served by 2 drives where one can act as backup than a more expensive drive, albeit more reliable or not. I suppose if the question is which is less likely to lose your data - a single drive of better reputation or 2 drives of lesser reputation in either RAID1 (theoretically no downtime) or some other configuration for offline backup. If the costs are the same I think the 2 drive option makes more sense.

I'm certainly not advocating supporting poor quality products and completely agree about taking advantage of warranties where they exist - in my experience I have usually gotten newer/faster drives than the one I had replaced.

You still need backups even with RAID-1. RAID-1 protects you against a single drive failing; it doesn't protect you from user error (e.g. accidentally deleted files), flaky system hardware (e.g. file system corruption from failing motherboard/RAM), failing PSU or power surge (could fry both drives or even the entire system), fire, flood, theft, etc.

axeman wrote:

WD with their segmentation is dumb, especially since they dropped the Blue.

Wait, what? When did that happen?!?? They're still listed on WD's web site.

Edit: Ahh, I see. The Blues only go up to 1TB. So not "dropped" per se, but only available in smaller capacities.

Based on the Google HD study and the Microsoft million PC study, there was many common elements about HDs uncovered.

One buying element that came out of them: HD warranty matters. The longer the warranty the less likely it is to end up dead within that lifespan. Once the warranty expires all bets are off.

axeman wrote:

Yeah I have a Seagate 1TB drive that is failed but I've stopped RMA'ing it. I have other Seagates that have been fine. For whatever reason, that particular model was a dud, I have no idea why Seagate didn't just send a different model as a replacement, but every replacement fails within 6 months - this is the 3rd time for the same drive. It's not worth the time.

I had the same with 2 Seagate 7200.11's. The dirty little secret to drive RMAs is that when you RMA them you get another drive that got sent back for RMA by someone else and got patched up till it passed diagnostics, you do not get a new drive. This means it is far more likely to die again.

The Seagate 7200.11s were a nightmare. IMO worst reliability of any hard drive series since the IBM "Deathstar" fiasco over a decade ago.

just brew it! wrote:

The Seagate 7200.11s were a nightmare. IMO worst reliability of any hard drive series since the IBM "Deathstar" fiasco over a decade ago.

I've just stayed away from Seagate in general. I've been burnt far too many times from them. Their SAS lines are OK but their consumer drives die long before their Samsung/WD counterparts. I've seen it over hundreds of machines.

Arvald wrote:

Never be afraid to RMA a product and get the replacement you are entitled to!
Without that then the manufacturers don't actually know about all the failures and continue to publish overly high MTBF numbers.

I'm not going to RMA a drive that I wasn't able to zero out and if it was working well enough to do that I wouldn't be RMAing it at all.

Lazier_Said wrote:

I'm not going to RMA a drive that I wasn't able to zero out and if it was working well enough to do that I wouldn't be RMAing it at all.

I'm not going to continue using a drive at all once it starts developing unrecoverable bad sectors, other than to copy files off of it (if necessary). Provided I can still zero the remaining sectors I'd be OK with RMAing it, though I suppose there is a (rather remote) chance that someone might be able to recover old data from the sectors that fail to write.

Note: This is of course dependent on how sensitive the data is. If it is classified government data, physical destruction is the only viable (and legal) option.

I haven't yet encountered a drive that politely failed in a manner where that was possible, the failures that have been gradual enough to have any symptoms at all still weren't in any condition to run hours of nonstop writes.

I'd settle for a 99% overwrite if the failure allowed. I don't have classified or NDA data but my potentially intact personal data is worth more than a $60 refurb drive to me.

The answer is clearly data encryption but keeping it simple prevents me from locking myself out.

Lazier_Said wrote:

I haven't yet encountered a drive that politely failed in a manner where that was possible, the failures that have been gradual enough to have any symptoms at all still weren't in any condition to run hours of nonstop writes.

My experience has been about half and half. I think it has also been roughly correlated by brand -- Maxtor/Seagate (which also account for the majority of the failures I've had over the years) have tended to develop creeping bad sectors; other brands have tended to just fail outright.

Lazier_Said wrote:

I'd settle for a 99% overwrite if the failure allowed. I don't have classified or NDA data but my potentially intact personal data is worth more than a $60 refurb drive to me.

I agree 100% that it is unwise to RMA drives you can't overwrite if there's anything potentially sensitive on them.

Lazier_Said wrote:

The answer is clearly data encryption but keeping it simple prevents me from locking myself out.

Hard drive encryption is getting easier to use, and with modern systems the performance penalty should be small. I've been considering it myself, but haven't used it on any of my home desktops/servers yet.

I made the mistake of buying a couple of WD 2TB Greens. Worst decision ever.

ordskiweicz wrote:

I am looking for a 2 TB HDD for data use with an SSD for OS. I bought a Samsung Ecogreen (the TR recommended) a while back and so far so good. It had an 11% 1 egg rating.

I am looking for a similarly sized drive, and am tossing up between 2TB WD RED and a Seagate Barracuda. I am leaning towards Seagate as they are slightly cheaper for me at the moment and have a higher rotational speed. I just hope their build quality has improved since 7200.11 days.

I am a bit disappointed with Western Digital as they appear to have devalued their BLUE line with shorter warranties and lower capacities than their other comparable drives.

If I were rich I would totally opt for Enterprise Class storage with all its baked in goodness.

ordskiweicz wrote:

(I do routinely churn new drives for active storage and older ones for backup - so over 2-3 yrs all are replaced or used for offline backup).

Do you just buy one, have backups and hope? It seems amazing quality has declined though costs are up and warranties are shorter. No useful market niche for some corp?

When buying drives I make sure I rotate them out of use after their warranty period expires. I have backups and hope for the best, so when buying a new drive I make sure I have enough storage to act as a backup for what amounts to a larger newer drive.

In the last couple of years I have greatly increased the amount of personal data resident on my system and I am beginning to consider full disk encryption. I am not too worried about hackers or the FSB gaining access to my data. Instead theft of a portable drive (of which I use some for backup) or even RMA of a drive could expose me to potential snoopers.

After a couple of drives recently dying, I find myself needing to do what I swore I wouldn't need to do again, and that is buy another drive.

Officemax has a Toshiba Canvio 2TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive on sale for ~ $100. I've always preferred to buy bare drives and put them in my own enclosure for the ability to take it out if needed. With different brands, I've read that some have a chip - for encyption? - that prevents the drive from being taken out and used. Since Fry's has a Toshiba OEM 2TB drive for close to the same price, I'm wondering which I should go for - especially since for about $20 more I can upgrade the Officemax Toshiba to a 3TB. As I write this, I think I'm going to have to go with the Fry's OEM and fore go the extra TB, but I'm open to all opinions.

Money is tight, stress levels are in the red and after reading about some of the problems with BR burners - which I was looking at - I need something that is going to last for a good amount of time.

I'm pretty much at a loss when in a position to choose or recommend a particular mechanical HDD these days. I have the feeling now, that unless you can afford enterprise grade drives, it's probably pretty much a crap shoot.

I got a new NAS last summer and, because they were fast and cheap, I filled it with 3 Seagate 7200RPM ST2000DM001 drives. And it was actually listed on my NAS's manufacturer published compatibility list. This was just before the WD Caviar Reds were released - otherwise I may have splurged for those. At the time (and probably still) people were blasting Seagate for their reliability. Yet, going on 9 months later, all 3 have held up, on pretty much 24/7 the whole time.

I know 3 drives isn't a huge sample size, but I thought for sure that one would have failed by now, given all the bad reliability press, but maybe I'm just lucky?

I have had the NAS declare a disk error twice on the same drive. However, no undue SMART errors, and the NAS has been able to automatically rebuild my array both times without incident by just pulling the disk, rebooting, and putting it back in so I'm thinking it is as likely to be NAS-related as much as drive related - or maybe something else like vibrations causes the drive to slightly unseat itself if that second connector is a little looser than on the other drives...

Sorry for lack of specifics, but a friend who last year? bought some kind of Apple computer told me that they had sent her a recall notice due to the 1TB Seagate drive in it having problems. She doesn't know the model. I'm trying to find out because I have at least one 1TB Seagate that has died.

I bought a 2TB Toshiba drive this morning and am trying to get it up and working.

My friend told me the model of her drive. The problem may be larger than just this one. Model: ST31000528ASQ

just brew it! wrote:

The Seagate 7200.11s were a nightmare. IMO worst reliability of any hard drive series since the IBM "Deathstar" fiasco over a decade ago.

I bought a bunch of the 750 GB 7200.11s (and refurbished ones at that) a few years back and haven't had a single problem with any of them.

Come to think of it at least 3 of the 1.5 TB drives in my home server are 7200.11s as well. Between all of them I had one failure since ~spring 2009 and Seagate happily sent me a Barracuda LP to replace the failed 7200.11.


That said - I saw a LOT of dead Maxtors and IBMs back in the day.

I'll put in a good word for the Western Digital Reds. I have two of the 2 TB models running in a mirror array for a server at work with no troubles at all.