Please, could I ask you for advice ? With hard disk stuff, and choosing new ones.
(3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)
Loading...Hey guys 
Please, pretty please with sugar on top, I have hard disk issues and I need some advice, could I humbly ask for a few minutes of your time ?
If you feel that’s right up your alley, thanks if you read the post below 
And else, no worry, you can move on, merry day to you dear sirs ! 
As my hardware is growing older, I’ll need to buy a new hard disk to prepare myself for the day one of my current hard disks die.
Tough luck, two of my disks require attention.
– One of them (2 TB Caviar Green) shows no Smart problems but sucks with high speed downloads (a longer explanation is here, I really have no idea why that happens ?!?).
– And the other disk is officially getting bad : do you think this becomes an emergency, or not yet ?
My data is already backed up (all important stuff in my PC tower is mirrored, by principle), but, hey, better be ready in advance !!
Total threatened capacity : 1 + 2 TB. Ouch.
In this regard, between 2 hard disk models, could I ask the “hardcore nerds” that I love (come on, I know there are a few of you out there, you need something to fill your disks don’t you !), if they think there is a great winner between
– the Toshiba DT01ACA300 and
– the Western Digital Caviar Green WD30EZRX ?
(I don’t give hyperlinks, I don’t know what’s your country/language, and the serial numbers are enough)
Both cost the same price, are 3 TB 3.5′ internal hard disks, and both suit my needs in that regard. I don’t seek performance and fast reads (no, really, I don’t care. Only my system disk, an SSD, needs it). The only think I seek is reliability and a long life.
I know they both have a 2 year warranty, that’s a minimum. I only experienced with the customer support service from Western Digital so far (and it went great, a phone call, “hello my disk is dying” – “tell me about the tests you made, cause you did tests, right ?” – “yeah, your official utility program told the smart data was as good as dead, and same deal in an external rack” – “OK, we’re sending you a new disk ASAP, and we’re taking your credit card number to make sure you remember to send us the dead disk. Oh, and the shipping fee’s on us, we’re sending you a coupon.“).
Maybe there’s a definitive winner between the two disks (I repeat : performance can GTFO, I only aspire to reliability and longevity). So, well, I’m asking. Thanks if you’ve got enlightening answers to give
(99€ coupons on AmazonFrance/materiel.net may serve if you don’t have the perfect advice, lol)
Ive used many WD green drives for a long time. they last me a long time and I havent had any issues. of course, not all people have the same luck. in terms of hard drives in general, id go with WD over toshiba any day
WD over Toshiba any day like Vinh said. That said have you taken a look at a Seagate? I run Seagate(s) for last decade and haven't had a single problem.
I had 2 Seagate drives literally blowing up on me (well, one of them was a friend's), so I wouldn't recommend it to anyone I know.
WD has been reliable for me (using both Black 1TB and Green 2TB 3 years in), Toshiba and Samsung went kaput after 2-3 years. I'd say it was well within my expectations.
the 2 years warranty is just a way to ensure any bad batches gets dealt with efficiently
I would recommend WD always insted of TOSHIBA because of 2 reasons the first one is the speed and the app that comes with WD (App for backup and cleaning to maintain the HD), the second is the customer support is way better in WD side since most of TOSHIBA customer support are mainly for desk/labtop's. So for me I recommend WD. I read comments and I think they too agree. WD and good luck man ;D
To be honest, I think you should just get whichever hdd is cheapest.
At this point, whether you go WD, Seagate, or Hitachi, you should be all fine.
The only other deciding factor, imo, is the warranty. Whichever one has the longest warranty with the best price should be fine.
If you want to have a faster response time you should go for the 7,200 rpm drives for faster seek times.
Green drives are nice if you're using it just for storage.
I personally hear horror stories about the WD red, but considering it don't ever see it being used by anyone i know, I guess it's not really a popular choice.
Not an expert. Been looking for a new HDD for my laptop and Im reeling towards Hitachi (HGST). Of those 2 Id probably go with WD as they now own Hitachi.
Some new HDD technologies in the works/out now. Hitachi has helium filled HDDs (less turbulance in the box to affect the read/write heads, …). Seagate is working on Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (Lasers heating the place where the magnetic orientation is being switched).
Nano-Imprinting: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/512261/a-nan… "Now the industry is running up against limits to this strategy, partly because the particles’ magnetism becomes less stable when they are very small, a phenomenon known as superparamagnetism." I wonder if this means that smaller capacity HDDs (that have a smaller bit density) should last longer?
Then again the smaller capacity HDDs might just have less disks or inferior quality ones.
Also Lower data density disks and lower RPM HDDs should be less likely to accidentally read/write from/to the wrong location (Less turbulence). If anything I feel comfortable reccomending you not to get the highest capacity HDDs available.
Hard Disks are as good as the class for which they are intended. If all you want is storage space, any kind will do. If you want performance then it is a whole new game.
WD's "green" lineup of HDDs are less loud but generally perform horribly in write/read intensive environments. The WD Black series are much more resilient to errors, more durable, have a longer warranty and even recertified ones work loads better than Blues and Greens.
Even if many do not favor Toshiba HDDs, they are a good option nonetheless. So what if they do not have Acronis as a "freeware" bonus… It all comes down to performance and asking tech support for help on a dying HDD is… Well… Not too smart no matter the brand.
IMHO the best HDD brands are in the following order (from best to worst):
1. IBM/Lenovo
2. WD BLACK all others aside from enterprise or RAID ones SUCK.
3, Toshiba.
4. Maxtor.
5. Seagate.
6. Samsung.
7. Hitachi.
8. Fujitsu.
Choose according to your objective and budget.
Cheers.
I don't know about Toshiba because I use WD in my build but I suggest you look into Seagate
because were I'm from they come with a 3 year warranty maybe its the same for you
Google Seagate costumer service and if you like what you see go for that
if not stick with what you know (WD) and have a peace of mind
Hitachi and WD usually have the lowest annual failure rates, closely followed by Samsung drives.
Never ever buy a Seagate.
I normally buy Western Digital, I've had disks last up to 8 years too. Seagate is shit. Samsung is only good for SSDs.
WD is good for PC .. choose WD either Green / Blue / The new RED
Toshiba is good for Notebook HDD
From my experience and expertise (i manage a service center), in terms of quality and realibility, WD Black and Hitachi are top tier. Seagate Momentus HDDs have the best performance among high capacity HDDs.
Well, you did a pretty extensive diagnostic right there.
The one drive showing you CRC errors in the S.M.A.R.T. diagnostic is due for replacement ASAP! CRC errors are as serious as it gets, they are usually either surface defects on the spinning platter or developing defects in the magnectic coating. Make sure you backed up everything and replace the drive – YESTERDAY.
As for the “speed problem”: your info is a wee bit thin, though you got praised in the WD forum.
Q1: We forget “downloading data” for a moment. WHAT is the read and write speed you get when moving data on your LOCAL network between computers? (also add link speeds, like “100Mbps cabled ethernet” or “1Gbps cabled ethernet” or “150Mbps 802.11N” – you get the idea)
Q2: Assuming you even get a lousy transfer speed on your local LAN, does the situation improve if you disconnect the hard drive with the CRC errors (yes, the faulty drive could have a negative impact) from the SATA cable (and also power)?
Q3: Assuming disconnecting the faulty drive didn’t improve things, what kind of yellow and red events are recorded in the Windows Event Viewer (Source / Event ID / Descriptive Text)?
Q4: Assuming Windows doesn’t show you any problems (unlikely – there has to be a metric butt-load of errors about the faulty drive in the backlog), you updated some driver lately (SATA controller driver, Chipset driver, Network interface driver) which could have caused the problem due to it being a buggy release?
If you can think of more information don’t hesitate to write it down – but the things above are the main points you should answer for start.
Hey LA
I'm very short on time so I'll be brief,
I have no other computer on which to do copies, save through wifi at a weak 10-15MB/s effective actual data speed.
My max internet DL speed is around 12 MB/s, my CPU's able to handle such a traffic volume with encryption too (I remember my previous CPU – before it burnt T__T – couln't and caused the PC to slowdown during full-speed SFTP operations).
However, copying from disks to disks on random various occasions shows speeds ranging between 20 MB and 55 MB/s , from my experience, never lower, never higher.
No time yet to test with swtiching SATA cables, and I'm supposed to be working right now (cough, ok, everyone needs a break) so I can't go and turn off my PC to unplug stuff. Later.
I haven't installed the hard drive yet but I think you might want to check out the WD AV-GP WD20EURX 2TB IntelliPower hard drive. It is a drive that is made to be run 24/7. If you need a drive that is made to run all the time this may be the one you are looking for. The price is right here in the US. It's only $99.99 at Newegg.com.
I would also tend to favour the WD Green but with a twist WD Green drives have a too short head park time so use the wdidle utility directly fro WD (originally for Raid edition drives but works) and set that time from a mere 8 seconds to a more reasonable 2-5 minutes.
All you need to do is
1. Download this tool: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?group…
2. Creat a bootable Dos USB-Stick with somethin like: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-c… (insert usb stick choose to format it and select FreeDOS and let it download)
3. Copy Wdidle.exe to root of usb stick
4. Boot from stick start wdidle
5. Use syntax provided in readme to check value and set a desired one
after that the WD green should work better which you could also try on your old one hope i helped.
no time to answer everyone, I'm just asking one thing here : this utility, wdidle, only adresses a few disks according to the page where it's offered. It's not covering my current disks (like wd20earx) and it's not covering the new models either.
Is that really safe to use with the other non-listed models ?!?
The value manipulated by this Utility is WD specific so if the tool detects the value it can change it and should be reasonably safe and as for compatibility lists its only ment for enterprise.
I used it on mine which also aren't listet and have no problems til now and i have them running for 2+ years now. Mine Are an older WD Green 1TB and a cuple of WD RED 3TB and all worked fine with it.
And keep in mind if the value is set to 0 it wont spin down even if the OS has a spin down time set because the heads dont park which is why i set mine to the max value of 5 minutes so that they spin down but that all depends in what you would have your drive do.
And finaly sorry if it is abit confusing to read my head is not working its beast in this heat
At my wish list: Western Digital 3TB Red (WD30EFRX)
Reasoning: http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21/what-hard-dr….
And with that reasoning, stay away from WD 3TB Green.
Hey, Oliver. It would help to know how you narrowed your search down to those drives. I’ll echo everyone else and recommend WD; it’s the only brand I use.
Normally, I would recommend the RED drives, as I have 500GB and 1TB REDs that still work with no errors. I had to retire them because they were too small. Unfortunately, the 3GB REDs have a horrible reputation (50% dissatisfaction rate on Newegg), and the 4TBs are much too expensive. The 2TB drives have great reviews, however.
The Green drives are interesting, but the warranty scares me. Newegg also has a 50% dissatisfaction rate for the 3TB. I saw a WD forum post that complained of a high load cycle count (S.M.A.R.T. error counter) that may contribute to the failure. Essentially, to use less power the read/write heads are parked aggressively (within a few seconds of inactivity), causing the drives to die sooner than necessary. The Green drives have a maximum count of 300K; Red drives are 600K, and they don’t do aggressive parking. This user saw 280K in a year. Either he was rebooting a lot, or the power saving feature is poorly designed.
If you’re buying a WD, skip all 3TB drives. I would go for either 2x2TB or a 4TB. The Green WD40EZRX is more expensive than the 3TB, but it has an 80% satisfaction rating.
The Black series is another alternative. More expensive than Green, but with a 5-year warranty.
I have been using WD Caviar Green series for a few years now with just one of four disks having one issue: it was unmounting itself randomly, presumably from the heat.
I own a WD30EZRX for a couple of months now with no problems so far.
In general terms I’d recommend the WD30EZRX for accessible storage needs: get at least 3 (plus at least one backup) and mount them in a RAID5 configuration.
For disk-intensive needs such as downloadat over 10MBps and running games or other disk-intensive applications, use a WD Caviar Black. You can then back-up your data which requires long-term storage to the Green RAID array or external HDDs.
That being said, I once tried to switch to Seagate, only to be punished for my blasphemy with a disk that clicked 4 days into mounting and filling it. Turns out their entire ST3000DM001 series has a factory fault in their firmware which causes a clicking sound (the drive heads reset themselves randomly interrupting read/write operations and affecting speed and the long-term health of the drive).
I'd say, buy a green for storage and to not go over 2TB. 2TB+ do have some errors that occur
In my humble experience, buy a HDD is a lottery. I had Quantum / Maxtor (now owned by Seagate) and Seagate drives, some lasted me for years before withdraw them by ancient and others failed about one year after (like a Samsung from a friend). As you can read here and in other discussions about it, they all have good and bad experiences with all brands, but if we rely in numbers then WD could be more reliable. My recommendation would be to take the brand that gives you the best warranty and of course protect your computer with a voltage stabilizer /surge protector (better an UPS) added to making periodic backups. Good Luck. http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/01/the-most-and-le…
Please don't buy the Toshiba! Been in the computer repair industry for 25 years, and I can't tell you how many of the Toshiba drives I've replaced in peoples computers. Western Digital makes three levels of drives. Green [Consumer Level], Blue [Business Level] and Black [Server Level]. If you care about your data, and we all do, spend the extra on the black level drive you won't be sorry. The greens are just not for the heavy access that some of us can put them through. Also, you are right about WD's customer support, second to none.
off topic:
some weeks or months ago i read about sandisk releasing a 4tb ssd, for servers, i will just point that to you if you have that (maybe) huge ammount of money to spend, i think regardless the holly molly 4tb space ssd, being for servers must be a heavy duty device
best regards
I have been using a Toshiba external HD for three years with no problem at all. I bought it after reading lots of complaints about WD crashes.
My suggestion if you go with the WD green:
Turn
off
intellipark
Depending on how you use a drive a different WD drive might be better. Personally i would never go green.
For hardware raids i use WD or Seagate enterprise grade drives
For normal usage i use WD blue drives
For NAS or consumer raid solutions i use WD red drives
The reason for not going green is its purpose is generally basic storage. Torrents and downloading files just put too much load on those kind of drives. But thats just my personal opinion
Dragonator, RAID 5 should be used with extreme caution. If you write partial clusters (easier to do with 4KB-cluster drives compared with 512b-cluster drives) you end up with 4 I/O operations instead of 1 to that cluster. Performance is impacted, but that’s not such a big deal for archiving.
The problem is that the increased I/O creates more wear on the disk, shortening its lifespan. On top of that, parity RAID levels (3, 4, 5 & 6) are more prone to data loss during a rebuild. The larger the disk, the less you want to use parity RAID.
There is no easy, cheap solution for large storage. I spent $2,000 USD on a NAS and disks in RAID 10 because the setup is the most reliable consumer option. The only thing better than this is an enterprise setup starting at $10,000 USD. It’s been seven years, and I haven’t lost any data. I can always get more porn, but I have business and personal items on there that I can’t risk losing.
Hi Oliver, interested by the topic for myself, I've just read a good comment who confirme what Geno says. By the way, thank you very much pal, for the tip. But it seems that wdidle, the software you 've mentionned doesn't work with this disk and can potentially cause the opposite: an acceleration of the head parking.
So, in our native tongue, french, the last comment of this page from 'hornpipe' is very
enlightening: http://www.materiel.net/disque-dur-3-5-pouces/wes…
Good luck in your choice.
Hi Oliver I realise you might not want to spend a lot but it you really want a reliable hard drive I would not choose western digital green but spend a little more for the more reliable black series. Even though its mostly for game centered computing you are downloading a lot and that is HDD intensive as it is. Or if you are using your HDD's in Raid configuration I would suggest you use the Western Digital Red series instead of black as it is designed for being used in Raid configuration. However in the end it is up to you on whether you want to spend more or not, this is just my suggestion. I have had the opportunity to run both Toshiba, and western digital. I have found that after a year and a half most Toshiba hdd fail for one reason or another. whereas WD HDD you get about a good 3 years before failing. All in all I would suggest buying a western digital rather than a Toshiba hdd. if you want to spend more I suggest buying the Black or red series depending on what you are doing for the configuration.
Sorry guys, I will write in french because
1) It's too hot here.
2) It will be easier and faster
3) I'm lazzy
My apologies. If someone insist to have an english version, I will try to spend some time to translate.
Bonjour Oliver,
comme certains l'ont déjà mentionné, le disque avec des erreurs de CRC est à remplacer rapidement.
Le SMART indique aussi que certains secteurs ont été déplacés ( il y a toujours un peu plus de secteurs disponibles sur le disque que la capacité annoncée, cela permet de réalloué un autre espace lorsqu'un secteur devient défectueux, sans perte de capacité ). Bref, sont état est assez critique.
Pour le problème de performance tu peux tenter un diagnostique supplémentaire en effectuant un transfert local entre deux disques sur la même machine si tu en as la possibilité. Idéalement sur deux câbles sata différents. Effectue un double test, un premier avec un GROS fichier de plusieurs gigas et un autre avec des milliers de fichiers plus petits ( comme tes galeries d'images ).
J'utilise beaucoup de disques WD et j'en suis content. J'ai eu pas mal de Seagate pendant un moment et ils vont bien aussi. J'ai également des Samsung qui sont très honnêtes.
Je suis passé depuis quelques temps SSD sur ma machine principale ( le gain e performance est évident ) mais mon NAS est toujours en disques HDD traditionnels ( WD pour le main et Samsung pour la backup ). En HDD, je te conseille de privilégier les disques avec minimum 32Mo voir 64Mo de cache et une vitesse de rotation de 7200 tours minimum.
@+
Oliver,
No, it is NOT safe to use that utility on non-listed drives. You will void the warranty, and it could destroy the drive. WD30EZRX is NOT supported, and there are NO other utilities that perform similar actions on this drive.
That said, there are plenty of anecdotes on the Internet saying wdidle worked to various levels on success on this drive. One group says you can disable the idle timer completely. Another group says you cannot disable it safely and must set the timer to a higher value (e.g. 300 seconds instead of the default of 8).
When it comes to data, I ignore people on the Internet and listen to the manufacturer. The manufacturer will refuse to help you if you did something that wasn’t supported. It sounds like money is a factor in your purchase, so don’t take the risk.
I have 2 WD Red 3TB drives that run well for over a year, they have 3 yr warranties. WD black is currently on sale 4TB drive for $249 on their site with a 5 yr warranty. You pay a premium for quality and warranty on the blacks so I would reccommend those.
I have a 1 tb iomega external HDD (inside is a seagate barracuda 1tb) that i conected to my laptop ac adapter, story short i burned it, and after 2 weeks with a technic, he said it was lost, but after searching the internet i found how to "repair" the hdd, I cut a diode, dis some solderind and… GOOD AS NEW!!!, Then to try it y used it for a day or two without turning it off and i managed to make it fall from a table by pulling the cable by mistake and it was still ok and it still runs perflectly so iomega makes really sturdy hdds. Also that hdd is more than 3 years old now.