[HDD] Seagate or Western Digital???

???


$99 - 320GB 3.5" SATA-II Seagate Hard Drive 16MB Cache 7200rpm [ST3320620AS]

$98 - 500GB 3.5" SATA-II Western Digital Hard Drive 16MB Cache 7200rpm [WD5000AAKS]


???

Which one should I get?

I'm going to use it as a second HDD in a newish computer. Already got a 250/16/7200 Seagate in it.

???



PS: ???

Might as well get the bigger one.

Here's the lowdown on hard drives...

They're virtually all the same, they're manufactured in the same types of places, and they're all made as cheaply as possible. They almost always offer the same warranties - although Seagate, in the past anyways, has provided some excellent durations on their warranties, but you're still going to walk out with a refurb should the drive fail.

The thing about hard drives though that I don't think a lot of people realize is that they're like cars you can't change the oil in. There's no maintenance for hard drives to keep them fully operational for any extendedl length of time. They can only complete so many operations before they wear themselves out.

I guess what I'm trying to say is is that a bigger hard drive has more room to hold stuff, which isn't bad, but it creates a problem though when it comes to accessing the information it's stored. The bigger drive'll have to work harder to keep information being written and read from the platters. Inside the two drives are identical, the guts are the same on the inside.

Bottom line, bigger drives are prone to fail faster than the little ones, you've got more data spread out over larger digital work area, which means the excessive reads and writes to the drive will wear it out faster. Personally I stick to 250GB or smaller drives, but for such a good price a 500GB would be great, and I certainly wouldn't turn it down.

If the 500 were to cost more, I wouldn't hesitate to get the smaller one.

I guess what I'm trying to say is is that a bigger hard drive has more room to hold stuff, which isn't bad, but it creates a problem though when it comes to accessing the information it's stored. The bigger drive'll have to work harder to keep information being written and read from the platters. Inside the two drives are identical, the guts are the same on the inside.

Bottom line, bigger drives are prone to fail faster than the little ones, you've got more data spread out over larger digital work area, which means the excessive reads and writes to the drive will wear it out faster. Personally I stick to 250GB or smaller drives, but for such a good price a 500GB would be great, and I certainly wouldn't turn it down.

If the 500 were to cost more, I wouldn't hesitate to get the smaller one.Where do you get this idea from?

And also, not all drives are created equally. Some are marginally faster than others. Some are quieter. Some produce less heat. Some have better bearing designs on the motor. Some use a different type of platter. Some have 3 platters. Some have 2. Some have 1. etc. etc. Each model is different.

That being said, I have had every single brand of drive fail at one point or another throughout my many years of using PCs. The single largest contributing factor to premature and catastrophic failure of a drive is HEAT. Keep your drives well cooled and at LEAST below 40C and you should be fine for the most part.

Hash;13038728']
I guess what I'm trying to say is is that a bigger hard drive has more room to hold stuff, which isn't bad, but it creates a problem though when it comes to accessing the information it's stored. The bigger drive'll have to work harder to keep information being written and read from the platters. Inside the two drives are identical, the guts are the same on the inside.

Bottom line, bigger drives are prone to fail faster than the little ones, you've got more data spread out over larger digital work area, which means the excessive reads and writes to the drive will wear it out faster. Personally I stick to 250GB or smaller drives, but for such a good price a 500GB would be great, and I certainly wouldn't turn it down.

This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read.

This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read.

It's rediculous that a larger capacity hard drive will read and write more information requiring more movement from the actuator and longer access times accessing more information? Of course a larger hard drive will have more platters than a smaller drive...


And in regards to temp being the big killer of drives, you're wrong. Google already crushed the whole "hard drives last longer when they're kept cool" bullshit last year.

Hash;13041955']It's rediculous that a larger capacity hard drive will read and write more information requiring more movement from the actuator and longer access times accessing more information? Of course a larger hard drive will have more platters than a smaller drive...


And in regards to temp being the big killer of drives, you're wrong. Google already crushed the whole "hard drives last longer when they're kept cool" bullshit last year.What you're saying shows a huge lack of understanding about how hard drives are designed.

ALso, cite your sources about the heat thing or else you're full of shit. My years and years and years of experience say you're wrong. "Google" doesn't conduct tests.

Wicked.

So... There's a fan blowing on the harddrives anyway.

Might go for the Seagate drive, just because I'm a bit of a fanboi... and I can't see myself filling up the 500Gb in the near future anyway.

:shrug:

Thanks?

Wicked.

So... There's a fan blowing on the harddrives anyway.

Might go for the Seagate drive, just because I'm a bit of a fanboi... and I can't see myself filling up the 500Gb in the near future anyway.

:shrug:

Thanks?

Temp's a non-issue. Seagate tends to have some great warranties on their stuff, usually 3-5 years, double check just in case, check both actually to see if there is a difference.

Honestly, I'd buy the 500gb just because the prise is so low, I guess all I was trying to say is that from what I've worked with and seen in the past, bigger hard drives, at the very least, seem more prone to failure, of all brands, I'm not discriminating on brands. But if I'm building a new box for myself or anyone else, unless they know they want some jumbo-tron hard drive, I stick to the smaller ones.

The higher cap ones might give you more bang for your buck if you really have that much stuff to fill it up with, but I like to take the best chance of longevity of my drives, and if I can push a drive on 24/7 worth of use, gaming during the day and torrents running all night long and have it last 6+ years then I'm happy with my investment.

I got the 500Gig WD drive in the end :o


(They had no 320Seagates left)


And.. Now Vista isn't automatically adding the drive onto the computer ... wfs?


Its there in the Bios. Its there on the hardware manager thing.

Its not in my computer?


EDIT: MAKING NEW THREAD.

Hash;13043519']Temp's a non-issue. Seagate tends to have some great warranties on their stuff, usually 3-5 years, double check just in case, check both actually to see if there is a difference.Most cases are designed okay, but not all, and as a result, some drives will heat up a huge amount. Especially if you have several drives stacked one on top of another. Try running your drive at 50C or higher non-stop and see how much of a "non-issue" it is.

As for the whole "bigger drives are less reliable thing" that is still bullshit.

As for the whole "bigger drives are less reliable thing" that is still bullshit.

Yes.

I mean, if that really was the case, I'd think 2 gig drives would last forever, and 500s would last about a week or so.

And as far as heat being irrelevant, well, that's ridiculous.

Ever think that your high-capacity hard drives are failing more often because they generate much more "irrelevant" heat? Heat is EVERY devices worst enemy. It shortens the life of everything. This is why I load up my drive cage with fans, and this is why I have never had a failure.

But don't let my 15 years experience as a field tech change your mind.

Yes.

I mean, if that really was the case, I'd think 2 gig drives would last forever, and 500s would last about a week or so.

And as far as heat being irrelevant, well, that's ridiculous.

Ever think that your high-capacity hard drives are failing more often because they generate much more "irrelevant" heat? Heat is EVERY devices worst enemy. It shortens the life of everything. This is why I load up my drive cage with fans, and this is why I have never had a failure.

But don't let my 15 years experience as a field tech change your mind.

I don't know how else to explain this, Google did a massive study on this very subject, heat not only didn't negatively impact the drives, the warmer drives actually lasted longer, non-issue.

Just posting a Google search of Google Study of HDs and heat(FYI); In 12 years I have never had a HD failure(I am not a super high-end user, mostly just gaming tweaked out on the high-end settings when I can with a medium range of OCing); last 2 rigs for me have/had the WD 10Krpm 150GB with 80mm fans blowing over them...

Of the last 10 rigs(mine included) I have built, cooling is a priority for me, but personally I worry more about the heat from CPU, Vid Card, Mobo area, then Memory, then HD, in that order and obviously one cooling solution helps the others ==> but that is just me, not a claim of right or wrong...

Google Study Examines Effects on PC Hard Drives (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2096737,00.asp)

Antec MX-1: Actively Cooled External HDD Enclosure | silentpcreview.com (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article728-page4.html)

Experts: No cure in sight for unpredictable hard drive loss (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070225-8917.html)

Google’s hard disk study shows temperature is not as important as once thought - TECH.BLORGE.com (http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/02/20/googles-hard-disk-study-shows-temperature-is-not-as-important-as-once-thought/)

Coding Horror: Hard Drive Temperatures: Be Afraid (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000748.html)

Hard drives Failures (http://www.softpanorama.org/Hardware/hard_drives_failures.shtm l)

This is one time where I say I don't give a fuck what Google says.

From your own articles:
When it comes to the question of temperature and drive failure, though, Gibson says that the "very high temperatures" which can affect drive longevity are actually quite common in home PCs. "SpinRite will stop mid-run when drives become too hot," he says, "but SpinRite will only stop when the drive gets really hot." And Gibson knows from user reports that his tool does regularly stop to let drives cool down. "So this informs us that these 'extreme' temperatures are actually being encountered in the real world and are limiting drive lifetimes."

I often read about users obsessing over their CPU or GPU temperatures, while ignoring their hard drive temperatures entirely. That's a shame, because the hard drive is the most temperature sensitive device inside your computer. Most manufacturers rate CPUs up to 70°C, and GPUs commonly rate to 90°C and beyond.


Manufacturers measure off quite a modest range of operating temperatures for hard drives, from +5 to +55°C as a rule, and occasionally to +60°C. This operating range is much lower than processors, video cards, or chipsets. Moreover, hard drive reliability depends heavily on their operating temperatures. According to our research, increasing HDD temperature by 5°C has the same effect on reliability as switching from 10% to 100% HDD workload. Each one-degree drop of HDD temperature is equivalent to a 10% increase of HDD service life.
Hard drives are only rated to 55°C in most cases. Although there's still a lot of ongoing discussion on what exactly a "safe" temperature is for a hard drive, the general consensus is that high temperatures are much more risky for the hard drive than any other component inside your computer.

Sure enough, with the front fan disconnected, both drives inched up to 46°C in 15 minutes. And that was at idle. I can only imagine what the temperatures would look like after internal temperatures increased under load. I've already had one drive failure in this case with sustained temperatures around the same level. Some kind of replacement airflow is essential. I used foam tape to mount an 80mm fan on the front of the drives, blowing across the drives and back towards the case. As I write this, they're down to 33°C -- a whopping 13 degree drop.

Hard drive temperature is arguably the most important temperature to monitor in your computer. If you regularly see temperatures of 45°C or higher on your drive, consider improving airflow in your case. If you don't, you've substantially increased your risk of hard drive failure or data loss.

There are lots of studies out there where drives were intentionally heated, and higher degrees of failure were indeed reported (this is mentioned in the google report too). So the correlation is probably still valid, just not well-proven.

I should also explain that without a complete set of data from Google's study, the findings are iffy to me. Not to mention that their methodology doesn't isolate heat as the cause of failure. It merely states that there is no correlation, which is a very different conclusion.

If I'm not mistaken, what they did was look at their failed drives, and then look at the temperatures that those failed drives were under, and based on that, they determined that there was no correlation. What should've been done to reach any solid conclusion about heat causing drive failure is that drives should have been PURPOSELY heated and maintained at elevated temperatures, and then see if those drives failed more than an identical setup with lower temperatures. Of course, that would've been a costly experiment.

edit: In case it wasn't clear from my quotes above, another problem with Google's setup what they consider "extreme temperatures" is actually normal operating temperatures for a lot of desktop PCs. I have a 120mm fan on my 7200RPM SATA hard drive and it's still reading about 33C at idle, and my ambient (room) temperature is about 23C. Imagine what you would get under full load on a smaller case with no fan on it. Google's test setup was under controlled temperature conditions, and if you look at the data they provided, they consider anything above 40-45 to be "extreme."

http://www.crimetank.com/misc/afr_temp.png

As for cooler drives failing sooner, I would actually say that's a fluke in their data.

Seagate's study seems much more scientific and the people conducting it are likely more qualified. Google cited that study.
http://www.seagate.com/content/docs/pdf/newsinfo/disc/drive_reliability.pdf

This PC World article seems to cover some of 'both' sides of the issue:
PC World - Study: Hard Drive Failure Rates Much Higher Than Makers Estimate (http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,129558/printable.html)

Googles research was done mainly on their server HDs in a control temperature, dust free area, etc, etc... I would like to know their 'controlled temp' setting and also the configuration of their cooling solution for each server or server station and their fixed mounting of their HDs(vibration) ~~~> possibly their worst set-up is still better than normally seen/available with individual home PCs so the translation of results may not be fully applicable(apples and oranges comparation)...

Must admit that cooling of the HD with an intake fan blowing ambient room temperature air over it should still be a good thing; heat in a PC is not what we want...

When I interned at Cisco Systems many, many years ago, I did HALT (Highly Accelerated Life Testing) on some of their fun (and expensive) routing equipment. The environmental chamber we used was freaking cool and allowed for temperature ranges of -20C (liquid nitrogen baby) all the way up to 100C, and vibration ranging from 0G to 20G. So I have a good idea of how a proper stress test should be conducted. Google's study is exactly that: a study (more like a survey) and nothing more.