Best 3.5" hdd

[JHZR2]

Hi,

I have a guardian maximus raid 1, which currently has 500GB HDDs. After backing everything up on my computer, plus with all the archived stuff, I've packed the drives to the brim.

Curious what I should get. Because this thing is my main archive, cost is not a concern compared to reliability. I don't really think speed is either. My feel is that I'll be archiving photos of 7MB each in files of 2-8 GB, and doing computer backups that are something like 30GB each.

I seem to recall threads talking about "server grade" HDDs that have super MTBF. Given that I only turn the hdd system on for maybe a few hours once a month or so, not sure how important that is.

But I think I'd be in the market for 2-3Tb drives, but am open to suggestions if great stuff that would be preferable is in another size, I'm all ears.

So, what is the current best? I don't think I'm looking for consumer stuff, but I don't know what I want. Suggestions would be great.

Thanks!

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Samsung has been good to me so far. Paying $$ for server-grade disks for a system that's not up 24/7 is a waste.

2-3TB disks are too expensive now, wait til the price drops.

 

[SLCraig]

WD Blacks have a 5 year warranty.. I've no troubles with those drives.

 

[Nick R]

Honestly it seems most 1TB+ drives from every manufacturer have relatively high failure rates. I'd personally go with Western Digital, or Samsung. Make sure you get the samsung soon though, as Seagate just bought out Samsungs HDD division, and will disappear, or ruin them.

Personally I'm just gonna stick with my 640GB WD Blue, 500GB Samsung 5400RPM drive, and 320GB Hitachi, until such a time as SSDs are more cost effective.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: Nick R
Honestly it seems most 1TB+ drives from every manufacturer have relatively high failure rates. I'd personally go with Western Digital, or Samsung. Make sure you get the samsung soon though, as Seagate just bought out Samsungs HDD division, and will disappear, or ruin them.

Personally I'm just gonna stick with my 640GB WD Blue, 500GB Samsung 5400RPM drive, and 320GB Hitachi, until such a time as SSDs are more cost effective.


Lovely...

So are you saying there is no worthy 1TB+?

 

[Donald]

Originally Posted By: Nick R
Honestly it seems most 1TB+ drives from every manufacturer have relatively high failure rates. I'd personally go with Western Digital, or Samsung. Make sure you get the samsung soon though, as Seagate just bought out Samsungs HDD division, and will disappear, or ruin them.

Personally I'm just gonna stick with my 640GB WD Blue, 500GB Samsung 5400RPM drive, and 320GB Hitachi, until such a time as SSDs are more cost effective.


How many hard drive failures on 1TB drives have you personal experience with to make that statement.

IBM zSeries mainframe computers use large disk enclosures with many many small HDs that are managed to look like a string of 3380 disks. I am sure they have failures but not to the extent you are suggesting. And they are probably RAID 1 or at least thats an option.

My box of bad HDs from other fixing people's computers has many from 40Gb to 320GB. But no one's computer has a 1TB or larger HD that I have come across.

 

[simple_gifts]

Frankly, I would just buy two 1Tb drives if worried about reliability and the data warrants it. Keep multiple copies. That keeps you (1) drive ahead of any drive failure

The high end storage vendors I work with recommended RAID6 for all SATA based storage using 1 or 2Tb drives; (I am not recommending this obviously)

That is a pool of disks with not just 1 parity disk, but 2. This is to accommodate both the higher failure rates found with those disks and the long rebuild times in case of a disk failure. (data is still protected) In effect, the issues caused by large cheap disks can be ameliorated by more, large cheap disks. This might be a good strategy for the home.

 

[Nick R]

If you want 1TB drives, I'd go with this one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185

 

[JHZR2]

They have a 2TB for not much more. It may be the ecogreen model though. 2 would do...

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: Donald
Originally Posted By: Nick R
Honestly it seems most 1TB+ drives from every manufacturer have relatively high failure rates. I'd personally go with Western Digital, or Samsung. Make sure you get the samsung soon though, as Seagate just bought out Samsungs HDD division, and will disappear, or ruin them.

Personally I'm just gonna stick with my 640GB WD Blue, 500GB Samsung 5400RPM drive, and 320GB Hitachi, until such a time as SSDs are more cost effective.


How many hard drive failures on 1TB drives have you personal experience with to make that statement.

IBM zSeries mainframe computers use large disk enclosures with many many small HDs that are managed to look like a string of 3380 disks. I am sure they have failures but not to the extent you are suggesting. And they are probably RAID 1 or at least thats an option.

My box of bad HDs from other fixing people's computers has many from 40Gb to 320GB. But no one's computer has a 1TB or larger HD that I have come across.


The highest failure's I've seen outside of the old Fujitsu 40GB failures of yesteryear are a particular Seagate family, of which I had 4x1TB drives fail on me personally. But that's an issue with a particular drive/family, not the capacity.

 

[Rand]

seagate 7200.11?

I had some bad deathstars (250GB)..
and we once had a WHOLE PALLET of bad 10GB WD's

other than that.. I had some incompatible hitachi's that never worked with my ich9r correctly.. wouldnt spin up from sleep.. would go to sleep with it disabled.

I've had REALLLY good luck with seagate 7200.12 500gb size (45/46 still in service)
and also 8/9 WD RE series

 

[OVERKILL]

Yes, those would be them

I had some bad death stars of earlier vintage, IIRC 80GB or so?

The WD REII's would also fail early, but could be "revived" to be replaced just by keeping them cool. No issues with the REIII's.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

A friend who works at a well-known public institution where much R & D is performed, has several multi-petabyte arrays, all use 1TB drives only started using 2TB very recently.

DOS 6.22 is the host OS.

(just kidding

...it's Linux.

I like the Samsung 2TB HD204U drives, they're fine for personal archiving and have a few of them at home to backup all our pics, vids and MP3s.

 

[GMFan]

I've gone through plenty of desktop/laptop drives from Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi, Maxtor and Samsung without any issues. I've only had one drive fail and that was a Samsung 80gb after about 2.5 years but that most likely just a fluke. Drive model/vintage of production has a much great influence on reliability than the brand that makes it....

For example I have some 160GB 7200.7 Seagate Barracudas that have been running for 7 years (the 7200.7s are known to be bulletproof and some of the most reliable Seagate has produced) but the later 7200.xx vintages had issues.

I'd stick with proven model lines and avoid the latest ones. For example, WD Caviar Blue and Black lines have been going for some time...I have a 640GB WD Caviar Blue which has been great so far.

Larger hard drives in the 1TB+ ranges haven't been around as long and they aren't as proven. I'd wait until the manufacturers work out the kinks in the latest drives.

If I had to make a recommendation I would recommend the WD Caviar Blue series. I really like my Caviar Blue 640GB and my Lenovo came with a 500GB WD Scorpio that is great also. In the end reliability is really a gamble with any hard drive. All you can do is backup!

 

[Donald]

Why don't more home computer users (who understand computers) use RAID 1 or RAID 1 SAFE xx at home. The HDs do not cost that much and the extra for a RAID enclosure is minimal vs a plain enclosure.

 

[Rand]

its more reliable to use 2 separate hdd than a raid 1

ie 2 usb/esata hdd vs 1 raid 1 array.

also sometimes the enclosure hardware goes bad and you are foobar without an identical enclosure as it uses a proprietary(or uncommon) filesystem.


Raid 1 is great for a server that needs 0 downtime.. its not really that great for backups.

I have used it in the past but not for personal backups.

I suppose you could have a raid 1 enclosure backup.. then backup that to a large usb drive or similar.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: Rand
also sometimes the enclosure hardware goes bad and you are foobar without an identical enclosure as it uses a proprietary(or uncommon) filesystem.


Example?!

I've only ever seen external drives arrive formatted NTFS or FAT32. Mac-specific drives may come out of the box HFS. NAS-oriented drives may be ext3 or ext4.

 

[Rand]

Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more
Originally Posted By: Rand
also sometimes the enclosure hardware goes bad and you are foobar without an identical enclosure as it uses a proprietary(or uncommon) filesystem.


Example?!

I've only ever seen external drives arrive formatted NTFS or FAT32. Mac-specific drives may come out of the box HFS. NAS-oriented drives may be ext3 or ext4.


I was replying to donald who was suggesting a raid 1 box.

The dlink 321 comes to mind even with mirrored hdd if the box goes bad its a terrible time to recover files for a regular person as it requires specialized knowledge and software to recover without the box.

would be better off with 2 seperate usb/esata drives. one goes bad you replace it.. still have a full backup.. no extra effort needed.

 

[JHZR2]

I think Im going to get a 2.5" and a 3.5" samsung spinpoint HDD, the 2.5 can be kept in the safe deposit box, and the 3.5" drive will be used to backup. Though the comments on RAID, I may buy two to use my enclosure... But I might keep the enclosure with the 500GB drives, if I can learn enough about managing time machine backups.

 

[Donald]

Originally Posted By: Rand
its more reliable to use 2 separate hdd than a raid 1

ie 2 usb/esata hdd vs 1 raid 1 array.

also sometimes the enclosure hardware goes bad and you are foobar without an identical enclosure as it uses a proprietary(or uncommon) filesystem.


Raid 1 is great for a server that needs 0 downtime.. its not really that great for backups.

I have used it in the past but not for personal backups.

I suppose you could have a raid 1 enclosure backup.. then backup that to a large usb drive or similar.


Certainly that is a consideration. I did just have my RAID enclosure go bad and it was replaced under warranty. The drives popped back into the new enclosure and back in business.

I use the Win 7 built-in function to take backups. Unsure how one could setup it to back up to two devices. Its scheduling is pretty poor, you have your choice of daily/weekly/monthly. What about 2x or 3x a week.

Anything that requires manual effort will fail IMHO.