Anyone care to pass judgement? I'm loading a bunch of the 1.5TB ones into a FreeNAS based storage array. Either one better than the other? Low power and longevity are more important that speed or price.
Cheers...
b0redom
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Anyone care to pass judgement? I'm loading a bunch of the 1.5TB ones into a FreeNAS based storage array. Either one better than the other? Low power and longevity are more important that speed or price.
Cheers...
b0redom
Well I remain firmly in WD's camp as I'm yet to face a HDD falliure from them. There probably are pros and cons to both but this is one of the few instances that I don't really pay much mind. I find the WD I want and click buy lol
I dunno mate, I'm loving my Sammys, and I'm just about to buy some more. Bother are good, and both have their pros & cons. And both have the fans too.
You can't go wrong with either of them.
I prefer Samsung TBH as I have had their drives for years and they have been relatively quiet while at the same time having decent enough performance. However you cannot go wrong with Western Digital too and both companies make the best hard drives ATM.
WD for me but i have got some Samsungs as long as you test befor use they both should be ok
i have had one samsung that came off the shelf with bad sectors but only one so far
If you're buying Samsung Ecogreen F2 you're guaranteed to get 500GB/platter.
On the other hand if you're buying the Caviar Green, you could get a 375GB/platter drive.
I got slipped on this one, the difference is huge. The Caviar Green have terrible performance near the end of disk which is just a very small bit higher than typical USB harddrives. (38MB/s ~ 78MB/s). The Ecogreen F2 can hit over 105MB/s and the end of disk well over 50MB/s.
I frequently get DOA drive regardless of brands, so it is not really an indicator of the reliability.Quote:
i have had one samsung that came off the shelf with bad sectors but only one so far
I would just go for the cheapest, there's not much else to consider really. Both are good drives from reputable companies so in this case - cash is king!
i would got for samsungs f2, i got 2 here on my nas they nice and quite :D
Me too, you never know what has happened to them between production and being put in your hand; where they have been in the crate in which was transported, whether any numpty has dropped it and just slid it back on the shelf etc etcQuote:
Originally Posted by arthurleung
I personally am the same as mike, loyal to western digital for life. I did get an F1 few months back and it vibrates so much that its the noisiest hard drive i have ever had! I think i was just unlucky there though. If what arthurleung is correct the samsung could be the winner but at the end of the day its your money and your data so you have to feel safe putting your money in it.
I have excessive vibration on two Samsung hard drives out of four different drive models bought at different times. Samsung need to spin the drives up, measure the vibration and reject the ones with unbalanced platters if I am to buy any more. I'd rather a drive died and lost all my data than constantly annoyed me with droning vibrational noise.
I'm now buying WD blues and blacks without problems. I don't have any TB capacity drives but the 640GB drives seem good.
Tried using rubber mount?Quote:
Originally Posted by ed^chigliak
I've been buying 5400RPM drives only in the past 2 years and even WD Green gives me slight vibration, not as bad as 7200RPM drives though.
Also try using a heavier case, add something to the bottom of the case or may be shift the hdds around. That might change the resonance frequency enough so the vibrational noise is damped out.
Thought I'd necro this thread. I'm looking at upgrading to 2TB disks now. Anyone have any thoughts on which are the best at this capacity. Quietness and low power/vibration are much more important than speed this time around.
Cheers....
b0redom
I have just bought some WD 1.5TB drives - but they were EARS drives with the advanced format - 4096B sectors rather than 512. They aren't a problem (apparantly) with Win7 or Vista, and there is a jumper setting for use with XP. WD claim that the drive works with all other OS.
However there have been some problems with Linux as the drive drivers and tools haven't been updated\ in some distros. In brief, the partitions need to be aligned to 4096 boundaties for optimum performance.
I bout one for use as a replacement in an mdadm array (with the intention of replacing the other drive once it had synced. After about 10 minutes it crawled to a snails pace and the array just threw it out.
I am now using a couple of Samsungs without problem
I might have been unlucky, and if I had been building the array from scratch, and been a little more careful with the partitioning, I would probably have been OK. But just something to be aware of if you are doing anything out of the ordinary with them.
Full details
http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/...EARS/m-p/10940
http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5301.0
Although a Google WD EARS Linux will bring up many more.
It has also been discussed on HEXUS in several threads.
+1 for WD, fast quiet, reliable
I have 2 WD ears drives in my main rig (raid1, win7) and also an other EARS with Ubuntu...works perfectly, just investigate if you are planning to use obsolete OSs on EARS drives.
Many say that Samsung drives are just as good, but I won't risk it again for myself. And as I read in reviews the samsung drives shine in synthetic benchmarks but in real world scenarios the WDs have some advantage
anyway good luck
I have had a WD Raptor just stop being recognised dead as a dodo.
A WD 2.5'' that parked the heads with a clunk every few minuits and WD would not supply any software to turn the advanced power managment settings down, in fact they said it was not available, I found a hd utility that could switch off the advanced power managment but needed to be applied every re-boot.
The most vibrating spinner disk I have is also a WD drive, so I'm not much of a fan now.
I just watched a tech magazine show on line and they had a guy who is a forensic drive recovery technician on and he said that WD drives have a batch of drives that just die due to diode problems on the controller I think it was.
That said all makers have problems now and then so its personal experience that can make you go for one or the other make.
I buy any make and hope for the best. Mostly Samsung at the moment as I have had least problems so far with them and find them smooth running and fast.
I will use any make and hope for the best if the price is good.
I always cool drives with a fan when possible and treat them with kid gloves ie my systems are on stable footings and not wobbleing about on one of those cheap desks.
Hmm. My NAS solution uses OpenFiler + ZFS, and there are spurious reports of problems with these drives due to the 4096 byte block. I'm think I'll do with the Samsungs....
Thanks - you just saved me a lot of time and hassle!
Just bought a pair of HD203WIs, very happy with them, and they were even cheaper than the WD EARS drives when I bought them.
Not really a question of "obsolete" OS, more a question of some of the tools in the distro not fully recognising the drive reports - which means that partitioning has to be done carefully to ensure partitions end on a 4K boundary. It may also be possible to apply the jumper setting required for WinXP which seems to force the drive to 512byte sectors. Ubuntu's distro may have updated fdsk and parted - or you could have been lucky in your partitioning! :) As I was adding a drive to RAID on production system, I didn't really have the option of tinkering with the partition table on the existing drive.Quote:
Originally Posted by ehhhhhhh
Probably the safest option if you are in a hurry - or don't want the hastle of experimenting.Quote:
Originally Posted by b0redom
I don't know what you're specifically saying there since you say "seems", but anyway - it doesn't actually force the drive to use smaller sectors - it can't do. The whole benefit of bigger sectors is that less physical disk space is required for the same size partition, so a 1.5TB EARS drive is smaller than a 1.5TB EADS drive, as I understand it. If not, then it's just an EADS with chunk of the drive disabled.Quote:
Originally Posted by peterb
The jumper setting just internally shifts all requests one sector ahead. XP normally installs its partitions 1 sector before the 4kb boundaries, which apparently wrecks performance, so the jumper manually tricks it into installing one sector ahead, which means it falls into line with the start of the next 4kb sectors. So it's not really doing anything clever, and I don't know whether it works with unix based systems - it definitely would not be a good idea to use the jumper in Windows 7 though.
Thank you for clarifying that. The reason I said 'seems' is that it looked as if there was a choice of formatting systems installed on the drive, and the first time the drive was written to, it selected the appropriate one, but I didn't go into it in any great depth as I wasn't using Win XP on it - and having seen the problems other Linux users experienced, I just RMAd the two of them (took them back to Novatech last Sunday (BH Sunday!!) - their CS dept was open!) after getting an RMA authorisation earlier in the week when I ordered the Samsungs. Should get the refund this week. (Mine are the 1.5TB UI variant)Quote:
Originally Posted by snootyjim
I did see that there is a WD software tool that achieves the same thing as the jumper, but didn't have the time or inclination to download it and faff about! :)
Yeah, I've got one of the 1.5TB UI drives, my server likes Samsungs :pQuote:
Originally Posted by peterb
It's not worth it really in my view, mucking around with these new format drives. If they were exceptionally cheaper than the competition, or exceptionally faster, then I'd think fair enough, but they just aren't. Even if you buy it for a Windows 7 machine now, I'd be pretty hacked off if in 5 months' time I can't put it in my server.
I'm sure in a few years time it'll be a different situation, when all drives are like that, but for now it seems fairly irrelevant.
I have also noticed that the Samsungs are running about 5C cooler than the WD (according to the S.M.A.R.T report.
Yeah, I noticed that as well with my drives... I'd assumed it was an error, because originally I was comparing 7200rpm Samsung F1 drives with a 500GB Western Digital Caviar Green drive, at around 5900rpm. Yet the Samsungs were always 3-4 degrees cooler.
Surely it must be to do with the system of measurement then? As I say, I'd assumed it was an anomaly or a faulty sensor on the WD, because it seemed impossible, but if you're seeing it as well... weird.
if it's consistent across all WD and Sammy drives, then I'd assume it's a different point of measurement which means the WD will always report a higher temp: 3 - 5 degrees is a pretty significant difference otherwise...
There are extra paramters on the Samsung - airflow temp (which is some internal measurement), and it also records max and min temperatures ever reached (I'm using smartctl and smartd under Linux) I wondered if it because the Samsungs are drawing slightly less power. Both the Sammy and the WD have a case fan in front of them but the external airflow across thenm is pretty similar. The other Samsung is mounted slightly differently, with slightly poorer airflow across the chassis but is within a degree of the other - and about 5 below the WD.
WD
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 179 179 000 Old_age Always - 64066
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 124 109 000 Old_age Always - 26
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
Samsung 1
188 Command_Timeout 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022 081 078 000 Old_age Always - 19 (Lifetime Min/Max 17/22)
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 081 077 000 Old_age Always - 19 (Lifetime Min/Max 17/23)
Samsung 2
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022 078 076 000 Old_age Always - 22 (Lifetime Min/Max 17/24)
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 078 076 000 Old_age Always - 22 (Lifetime Min/Max 17/24)