Ecogreen vs Western Digital Caviar green

[b0redom]

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

[staffsMike]

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

[Singh400]

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.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

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.

[s3ds]

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

[arthurleung]

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 have had one samsung that came off the shelf with bad sectors but only one so far

I frequently get DOA drive regardless of brands, so it is not really an indicator of the reliability.

[s_kinton]

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!

[noobieocer]

i would got for samsungs f2, i got 2 here on my nas they nice and quite

[Biscuit]

I frequently get DOA drive regardless of brands, so it is not really an indicator of the reliability.

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 etc

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.

[ed^chigliak]

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.

[arthurleung]

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?

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.

[b0redom]

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

[peterb]

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.

[ehhhhhhh]

+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

[switchmode]

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.

[b0redom]

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!