What is Better?

[blogz101]

What is a good hard drive ? a Seagate or a Western Digital?

[CanadaRox]

It depends on what series and what size. The Seagate 7200.11's are better than most of the WD drives, but the 640GB WD drive is better. If you're looking at getting a 500GB drive, I'd suggest spending a bitmore and getting the WD 640GB drives. If you want something smaller, the 7200.11 is what I recommend.

[Mibs]

Both make good drives. So you can't really say that one is ultimately better than the other. As CanadaRox pointed out it depends on what you need the drive for.

[Dashock]

Plus One on Seagate 7200.11 I have 3 Seagates 7200.11 500gbs 1 on mine and 2 on my bros and they work absolutely amazing quiet and cool. The 7200.10 320gbs on the other hand were a let down 2 of the 3 i have already had to be RMA'D im still using the only Original one i have left which had the newest firmware.

Dude just get the Seagate 5 year warranty and peice of mind and very good performance it won me over. I cared aboot the piece of mind on the warranty.

Ohh and btw both times the RMA went smoothly the first time one of the harddrives blew up inside a Vantec External device it blew a chip and man all kinds of sparks lol and smoke was scarrry shit..... After showing Seagate some pics they gave me an rma. And i showed the warehouse the damage to my hard drive and the vantec case and Vantec after 2 weeks sent me a REVIsed model of the their External case, which i did a review on in the members review anyways and they also sent me a new 320 gb hard drive which is still running strong but 5 degrees hotter then my 500gb.

[Tazer-[X]]

Well, in my experience, WD's are much better. Not jsut for seek times, which, unless ur really Data, than you cant tell the differance between them two:P And, unless your attaching them to some exotic SATA 64 BIT wide RAID 5 card, than, ultimately, it will will actually be decided by who screams the loudest here, or what the 'cool' people say is in LOL. But, that would be out. In my opinion, SCSI Ultra 160 is better.

[Squeetard]

SCSI Ultra 320 has been out for years. 160 can't keep up with the sata2 drives.

[CMetaphor]

Raid 0 on SCSI Ultra 320 drives at 15k RPM each (while loud) is faster than a similar Raid on SATA2. Also, I also got 2x 500G 7200.11's and couldnt be happier.

[lowfat]

Originally Posted by CMetaphor

Raid 0 on SCSI Ultra 320 drives at 15k RPM each (while loud) is faster than a similar Raid on SATA2. Also, I also got 2x 500G 7200.11's and couldnt be happier.

They don't make SATA 15K drives . And WD VelociRaptors are as fast as most 15K drives out there these days.

As for brands? It really is personal preference. I do not agree with saying one brand is better than the other. They all have their high-points and low-points. But currently the best performing drives out there besides the VelociRaptors are drives with 320GB platters. And in Canada at the moment only two such drives are available. The Samsung F1 1TB and the WD6400AAKS 640GB drive. The WD6400AAKS can be purchased @ DC for $85 right now which is an amazing price for such a good drive.

[DarKStar]

Originally Posted by Dashock

Dude just get the Seagate 5 year warranty and peice of mind and very good performance it won me over. I cared aboot the piece of mind on the warranty.

Depending on where you live, especially Canada, sometimes it is better to just forget the waranty and buy a new drive, they are so cheap now - and the cost of the courrier shipping + insurance is a big amount + waiting at customs, etc, sometimes the difference is worth getting a new one - It's a shame that you have to PAY for shipping for a companY's lack of Quality Control. I know that Maxtor at some point offered an advance RMA, don't know if Seagate does this.

Ohh and btw both times the RMA went smoothly the first time one of the harddrives blew up inside a Vantec External device it blew a chip and man all kinds of sparks lol and smoke was scarrry shit..... After showing Seagate some pics they gave me an rma. And i showed the warehouse the damage to my hard

I have 2 external cases and many Seagate 7200.10 320GB (made in China) they are on 24/7 and never had an issue.. I did in the past fix some friends of relatives PCs and bad PSUs were very common - I've had on several occasions to replace faulty HDDs because they had a faulty PSU, voltage fluctuated and sometimes too high. The PSUs used in those enclosures are generic, and not of the best quality - they aren't meant for 24/7 operation - Mine has an external PSU and can be left on no problem. I make it a habit of testing the PSUs before using them. What you describe, I haven't seen yet - sounds like something shorted out...... probably the PCB area came in contact with the metal casing or something was moved around - or just bad luck !

Now back to the subject, my personal perference is with Seagate - Yes it seems they had a high failure rate on a certain batch, but apparently this appears to happen with other components lately (motherboard, etc.) One thing with SEAGATE is their SMART attributes go haywire and you THINK the drive is bad, but in reality it is just how they behave :)

Some seagate firmwares were known to be noisier / lesser quality for some reason. I was lucky to get the AAC ones, but on the 2 recent SATA ones I got from DC, I landed on the AAK ones :D

[AkG]

Just to reaffirm what lowfat said it really does come down to personal experience and preferences. I'll personally hesitate and think LONG and HARD before I buy Seagate HDDs again. I have had to many of the 7200.10 320gbs die on me to ever instantly recommend them. I've had good experiences w/ WD and that is what I usually recommend...but having 10+ 320s die is NOT a big enough sampling for me the say "All Seagate suck" same goes with 20 something WDs without a failure...the sample sizes are just too darn small.

Ask 100 people what brand is better 45 will say WD, 45 will say Seagate and the other will be a mixed bag of Hitachi and Samsung (and yes I'm pulling those numbers out of my butt :)~ )

INMHO Go with whats cheapest, available and gives the best performance per $$ at the time and forget about brand name.