Terabyte Hard Drives

[nick2253]

(Just a note: I did search the boards, and was unable to find anything relevant. If you happen to be able to point me in the right direction of a current topic, then please by all means. Also, StorageReview seems to be lacking in reliability data for 1TB drives)

My question surrounds the reliability of terabyte or 1.5 TB harddrives now on the market. If you go to, for example, Newegg, and you look through the reviews for the terabyte hard drives, on the whole, the reviews are positive, yet there are quite a few people reporting problems with drive failure for a specific brand, and make claims that this sort of failure is wide-spread with that particular drive/brand (for example, a Seagate drive), and recommend that us buyers look to other brands for better reliability (ie Western Digital). However, this is a vicious cycle, because on the reviews for this other brand (the WD) say the exact same thing, and recommend that us buyers go back to the original brand (Seagate) for the best reliability. Etc, Etc, Etc.

Now, what I want to know is two things:

A) Are there any hard facts/data/studies done on the reliability of terabyte hard drives that can tell me if one drive is really more/less reliable than the other?
B) What current terabyte drive has the fastest performance? I was unable to find any data comparing, head to head, any more than 2 terabyte drives at a time, and these reviews generally seem to deal with the older model terabyte drives.

I'm NOT looking for opinions about what drive is better than another one, or personal anecdotes surrounding your experience with a particular drive. I've already seen enough of this on Newegg reviews, much less the many, many threads all across hardware forums promoting one brand over the other. I want to make my own choices based on testing and benchmarking, not personal experience.

Thanks,
Nick

 

[Username2324]

Western Digital claims their 1TB Black Caviar drive is the fastest on the market, built for performance. (This is exactly why I bought one, and am very unimpressed. I believe I got a faulty drive, or screwed up my OS somewhere along the line.)

I know that's precisely what you didn't ask for, but I'm afraid at the moment it's all you'll get.

Honestly though, if you're looking for performance, a TB drive is not the answer, and you won't find one drive terribly faster than another. My advice is to find the best deal (Comparing cache size, seek times, overall reviews) and go for it. You'll either hit or miss, and if you miss you can always send it back (Like I most likely will do).

Sorry, that's all I can offer you.

 

[Homeboy2]

Newegg has a bunch of idiot reviewers and like you i couldnt decide by that so i took a chance on the samsung 1 tb. No problems and it runs cooler than my hitachi 250. 1tb drives DO have great performance just not equal to a raptor. The samsung is on sale for 109, cant beat that

 

[nick2253]

Well, I've decided on the WD Black. And you gotta love Newegg. I ordered it yesterday after 4:00, and it was on my doorstep when I came back home for lunch today--all that with the standard saver shipping.

 

[chookman]

Nice, im a little shocked that it was left on the doorstep unattended though.

 

[KITH]

leaving the item there is usually how it is done for residential delivery.

the bad part is probably how newegg packaged it.

 

[Homeboy2]

newegg always packages my stuff great.

 

[dagger]

Read and write benchmarks:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/3-5-hard-drive-charts/Average-Read-Transfer-Performance,658.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/3-5-hard-drive-charts/Average-WriteTransfer-Performance,659.html
Velocraptor is on top of both charts, Raptor is further down, below the 1TB drives.

There is no hard data on reliability. 1Tb drives are just too new. I have one 1TB and one 1.5TB drive, both Seagate. They've worked perfectly in the few months since I've brought them, but that's meaningless given the short time period.