HD purchase advice - want a long-lived drive

[pooneil]

I have been quite satisfied with my computer which runs on a pair of WD400JB in a hardware RAID 0 setup (IDE controller on the PCI bus), but I am looking to add a drive with more space for editing my old home videos and writing them to DVDs.

I have been looking at the WD Caviar 250 GB (WD2500KS) sata II drives which are selling for a very low price, but I checked around some and several people have been critical of the reliability of the drives, although it is hard to sort out the shipping damage, don't-know-what-they're-doing ESD-discharge failures from the possibility there is a serious design flaw in the drive. I can't make sense out of the whole business of drive capacity and pricing these days - bigger drives with newer interfaces sell for less than smaller drives with EIDE ?!?!
Opinions and education please? I have done the search engine thing but haven't been able to find much that was helpful.

My mobo has built-in sata 150, and it boots from the PCI RAID array.

Thanks in advance for any help, links or advice.

Pooneil

 

[jlockley]

I haven't used a sata drive yet, but have had excellent experience with both Western Digital and Seagate IDE. Everything is going to have the occasional lemon. The problem with the opinion boards is that the people who are satisfied don't share.

 

[cdogg]

I also like Seagate, especially the newer SV35 series. It really doesn't matter what brand you go with, but whatever you select make sure it has at least 8MB of cache and supports NCQ (Native Command Queuing). Just about every SATA drive out there these days will have both. If it doesn't say in the specs where you are buying the drive, check the manufacturer's website for the complete specs.

I believe all the 7200.9 and SV35 models from Seagate support NCQ and either have 8 or 16MB of cache. I'd verify that first though...

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[LWComputingMVP]

In 12 years working professionally in technology, I've seen every major brand of drive fail. The most have probably been Western Digital drives. But I've also probably seen the most Western Digital drives overall. So it may just be par for the course. For me, I don't really care what brand I buy. BUT, I make sure ANY drive I buy has AT LEAST a 3 year warranty. (Ok, I violated my own rule over thanksgiving when I bought a 200 GB maxtor drive with a 1 year warranty - but it was $25 after rebate at staples, so I couldn't pass it up).

In any case, that's the rule - 3 year warranty minimum, then buy any brand. BUT, I have to say, it's foolish to run a RAID 0 and have anything important on it. RAID 0's are twice as likely to fail as a single disk. Great performance, yes, but to me and most professionals, not worth the risk. Use RAID 0+1/10 for safety. For video editing, RAID 0 is fine - for the temporary disk where the "editing" is done. But not to store anything important - including the operating system.

 

[paparazi]

Answer to your first question:
"bigger drives with newer interfaces sell for less than smaller drives with EIDE ?!?!"
Well SATA is the more common interface now! more are being produced than IDE so they are cheaper.

The Western Digital WD2500KS SE16? are fine drives, fast and reliable but if extended warranty and reliability are a priory then take a look at WD's Enterprise Edition Range.
Raid Edition or RE, they are built to last with a five year warranty and only cost a few $$$'s more

http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/index.asp?cat=2

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[firewolfrl]

If you want a long lasting drive I would recommend that you have good cooling of the harddrives. I like cases that provide a fan in front of the harddrive rack and keeps then cool. also RAID also has conflict issues with some software such as ADOBE products and their licensing.

Just to note Seagate bought out Maxtor so wait to see how that plays out for Maxtor drives.

A drive I don't recommend Samsung....I have seen a high failure rate with those drives

 

[LWComputingMVP]

No problems with samsung here - I've got four of them in my personal systems... and another 4 at a client. Varying ages and sizes.

 

[firewolfrl]

lwcomputing,
the Samsung drives that I had issues with 5 in HP machines and 1 in a generic box are 160 gig SATA I have a SMAll business but I have RMAed 6 of these drives this last year...way more then any other manufacturer...way more then I normally have to RMA.
I will have to say Samsung gives great customer service

 

[JimInKS]

I'm with cdogg on Seagate. I have been buying Seagate SATA drives lately. They are the coolest running and quietest I have ever had, plus they have a 5 year warranty.

Was using Samsung before that but had some failures with them and others seemed to have excessive vibration and noise so I switched to Seagate.

For video I would look at something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148140

 

[firewolfrl]

Seagate is my favorite drive manufacturer. They just bought MAxtor so I can't wait to see what is going to happen to the Maxtor line...they will probably phaze out maxtor or use it for the cheap stuff

 

[pooneil]

Thanks to all for the input. Having reviewed the recommendations and pricing, looks like the Seagate 7200.10 is a better choice than the WD2500KS with it's 5 year guarantee. The enterprise editions of the the WD (necessary to get the 5 year guarantee) is MUCH more expensive.

Do others share lwcomputing's sense that a RAID 0 is a no-no for the operating system? I keep the os on a separate partition to make it fairly painless to restore the array in the event it becomes sufficiently corrupted to make it necessary. And it is of course backed up. Still a no-no? Why?

Thanks for all the advice.

 

[cdogg]

Instead of a "no-no", I'd rather say it's a "beware" for the reasons lwcomputing mentioned.

As long as you make regular backups of the hard drive, there's nothing to really fear.

I have two 80GB Seagate 7200.9 SATA drives striped in a RAID 0 array. Then I also have a 200GB hard drive with a partition dedicated to storing an image of the RAID 0 array (using Acronis TrueImage software).

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[LWComputingMVP]

As I said, you have TWICE the possibility of losing your data. And even if you're careful, I find most people still store data - even occasionally - on the C: drive. All you have to do is put that one important file there and when the drive goes, your spending hundreds or even thousands on a data recovery service. You can chance it... but I wouldn't.

 

[cdogg]

lwcomputing,
Your point was well understood the first time, I believe. I even agree with it to a certain extent.

Keep in mind that an exact image of the drive that is updated every 3-4 weeks is good enough for most people if they were to lose one of the drives in their RAID 0 array. Within a matter of minutes of replacing the failed drive and running a restore from backup, I'm back to where I started.

In addition, you can implement a RAID 0+1 configuration for increased security. The third hard drive in your array acts as a mirror of the first two. That way, the data backup that exists on the third drive is always up to date. There are actually a lot of other solutions for data backup as well using other RAID configurations.


~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[ArizonaGeek]

If you are going to do a RAID for sure, I would suggest getting the Western Digital RAID Edition hard drives that are specifically designed to work with RAID. They are supposed to last longer and be more reliable than regular hard drives in a RAID. Newegg has them for $189, use coupon code EMCWDRE2CAV and it knocks $30 off. (Yeah I am a geek)

Living in a desert I can tell you that heat and dust are my two biggest enemy's when it comes to hard drives. Keeping them cool and relatively dust free certainly goes a long way in longevity.

Cheers
Rob

 

[pooneil]

lwcomputing, cdogg,JimInKS,firewolfri, and ArizonaGeek,

Thanks for all the input! I decided to go with a Seagate SATA 320 gb (7200.10) with the 5 year warranty.

I am very careful with backing up my data and imaging my OS drive to a removeable HD, so I have decided to continue to live a tad dangerously with the OS on a RAID 0 simply because I can't stand a slow computer, and the RAID 0 seems to make a bigger speed difference from what I can tell than the CPU or mobo for the types of work I do. It sure boots a heck of a lot faster, too.

I have held off on getting a second SATA to do a RAID 0 and left my WD 400JBs (still going strong) in RAID 0 for the OS... mainly because I'm waiting until I see which goes first - hard drive or mobo.

And I agree with Rob on the HD cooling business - I have a full tower case and put both drives an empty drivebay apart with a manhattan HD fan on each HD to keep them cooler. And I have multiple case fans, too. I'm convinced it makes a difference in the longevity of the whole computer.

Again, Thanks for all the input. The 320 gb should give me a faster swap file and plenty of room to edit all those old home videotapes.

pooneil