Samsung F3 1.5TB

[emuprophet]

I've been waiting quite a while now for Samsung's 1.5TB version of the F3 to come out. It was mentioned in a Tom's Hardware article to be released a couple weeks ago. (the article at least did predict the 1TB F3) Has anyone seen it floating around? 1.5TB seems to be a sweet spot for value right now and I am in dire need of some room. It'd be great to see this one finally released...

 

[buwish]

I concur. I'm in the market for a 1.5TB as well and based off of tom's article and a few others, it does seem like a decent drive, especially for the storage and the performance over other 1.5TB drives out there. Hopefully it's reliable in the long run.

 

[emuprophet]

ZZFH: I've been reading great things about the F3 and their reliability, given it doesn't arrive DOA. I know there is much irony in my last statement, but WD has been putting out equally sketchy drives this last year and 2TB is NOT worth $300 even if it had a 10 year 100k mile warranty with a free car wash. (oh right we're still talking about HDDs...)

 

[emuprophet]

I am referring to the 2TB WD Black drive... it costs 300 bucks. Was that a 2 platter 1TB not-green drive? If so, that'd be a sweet deal, however I imagine that not to be the case. I am looking for 1.5TB because I don't like the risk of raid0 and hate having more than two drives in my compy. Also when I buy new, I want to make sure the tech I get is fresh. (500gb/platter) This is not something WD has a solution for in the 7200rpm class. If that were the case, this thread would be titled WD Blue 1.5TB. I use a lot of virtual instruments with ridiculously large libraries and need that little extra performance over the green drives while not breaking the bank just for a marginal increase in performance over a consumer grade 7200rpm HDD.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

The WD Black 2TB model is the only one in the product line w/ 500 GB platters. The other Blacks are 333 GB per platter and hence not the performer that the 500GB per platter ones are.

Also, check what you are doing w/ the HD before picking one cause it wins a particular benchmark. The black excels in workstation I/O for example but also pales to the comp in many other categories so it's important to match your tasks to the drive:

=on&prod[2770]=on&prod[2365]=on]http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-3.5-desktop-hard-drive-charts/compare,1015.html?prod[2371]=on&prod[2770]=on&prod[2365]=on

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Well the 750 is certainly not a 500 .... I'll take a guess and say they are even older 250 GB platters.

 

[EXT64]

I believe, like Jack said, both of those are 250GB platters.

 

[student_sol]

How long has it been since samsung has been selling hard drives? Cuz in Korea, their hard drives have reputation like: "excellent after service, low reliability", even though they seem to sell quite well.

 

[EXT64]

I'm not sure. I never really considered them until their new F3 line, and since that is new, I can't really say much about their reliability. I've got one now though, so check back in 3-5 years :lol:

 

[student_sol]

I'm not sure. I never really considered them until their new F3 line, and since that is new, I can't really say much about their reliability. I've got one now though, so check back in 3-5 years :lol:

lol Not sure about new drives, but I know older samsungs few years ago had reliablity issues in Korea. Hopefully the new drives are different.

 

[EXT64]

Yep, it will be interesting to see. For my past drives (all Western Digial and Seagate) I have not had any issues, and some of those are going on 5-6 years old! The F3s are really popular right now (can hardly keep them in stock in the US) so if these do turn out to have serious issues, there will be a lot of unhappy people. I have had great luck with Samsung DVD burners.

 

[Canuck1]

Samsung hard drives are fine. I have a F1 edition and it's still rated as high speed even compared to newer drives. It continues to be neck and neck in benchmarks although not the fastest anymore but close. I think it's WD that has the issues now. Especially their 'Green' drives with the parking heads problem. Just look it up. If I am buying a slower, 'energy efficient' drive, I would choose either Samsung or Seagate. Seagate's problems all go back to the 7200.11 series and how they handled it (firmware issues included). It seems any time a 7200.12 is found to be defective, fingers get pointed and the 7200.11 is mentioned. A lot of screaming and accusations follow and people call Seagate, 'crap.'

I don't know if Seagate's 7200.12 is good or not but they get good reviews and decent benchmarks. The 1TB version is 2 500GB platters so that is good. Also, they are at or near the top for lower power consumption and low temps. That is also good for a drive.

Therefore, I am interested in the Seagate 7200.12 for the speed/performance and the Samsung EcoGreens for using as external storage. Even the Seagate with the low temps could be considered for that function.

But, the F3 I am interested in. Where can you get it? Can you get it in Canada yet?

 

[student_sol]

I think it's WD that has the issues now. Especially their 'Green' drives with the parking heads problem.

I may be wrong, but I heard it's only a real problem if you use linux... Apparently linux saves files every 20 seconds or so and the head must load/unload much more than other drives since WD green unloads drive head after 8 seconds if not in use to save electricity. You can get around this problem by increasing the time interval for unloading heads to 300 seconds.

 

[EXT64]

Both are 'deactivated' on Newegg.ca. They were extremely hard to find in the US when I got mine. I do not know if they are having problems with manufacturing, quality, or just demand is too high. When I got mine, it was made the same month that I bought it, meaning pretty much it was made, shipped, and I bought it right when it got to the US.

 

[wuzy]

How is 2TB $300? I picked up two 1tb 32mb cache WD's yesterday for $59 each. With 5 year warranty's!

I do a lot of builds and I've not had a defective or doa WD in at least 7 years.

7yrs, you should have learnt about the true nature of HDDs by now. They are mechanical devices and has much higher defective rate than any other computer parts. Looking at brand + HDD is truly pathetic in terms of reliability. What a brand provides when they do eventually fail, if within the warranty period, is how they handle RMA or response to mass defects (no HDD manufactures were prone to it in history, period).

Due to that, personal data has to be backed up and with optional RAID redundancy as another layer of safety measure.

On-topic:
Anything with 500GB platters (3 for 1.5TB), 7200rpm (if for pure storage 5400rpm is fine), and as long as it's cheap is good. If it came with 5yrs warranty that'd be even better.
As for 2TB drives we'll just have to wait until they bring out 3 platter versions to drive $/GB down further than the lowest currently (which seems to be 1.5TB 5400rpm), not to mention heat & vibration. As an early adopter of 1TB drives, running a pack of four 7200.11 1TB (4 platter version) is not really ideal.

 

[student_sol]

How is 2TB $300? I picked up two 1tb 32mb cache WD's yesterday for $59 each. With 5 year warranty's!

I do a lot of builds and I've not had a defective or doa WD in at least 7 years.

I agree with what wuzy says. WD drives are designed around a 5 year lifespan...Here's a reply I got after asking WD about reliability/lifespan of their hard drives: "Kindly take note as all drives are designed around a 5 year life span. Our drives have less then a 1% annualized failure rate and cost difference is usually because of warranty length and features. (speed, cache, RAID, ect.)"

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Check their statements against the reliability ratings on storagereview.com

The Raptor for example had a 25% failure rate.

And like PSU's it's much less about which manufacturer than it is about which line of drives made by that manufacturer.