2tb Hard Drive for Data storage and back up

[dipzy]

Hi oc3d members, i want to get a few hard drives for data storage and backup aswell for my music, videos, pictures and work files.

I will be accessing data from drives 1 & 2, drives 3 & 4 will be a backup of 1 and 2

Im looking at 2tb drives and on Aria, i have come accross two, the 2TB Seagate Barracuda LP ST2000DL003 SATA 6GB/s Hard Drive and the 2TB Samsung HD204UI Spinpoint F4 SATA-II 3.5" Hard Drive.

I can see that the seagate it a SATA III 6GB/s and the Samsung F4 is a SATA II 3GB/s. Is there much of a difference between the two?

The main things i want from the hard drives are decent read and write speeds but most importantly reliability.

If there are any other drives apart from these two, please suggest.

Thanks

 

[KaraMurat]

Sata III is essentially used for ssd's. hdd's don't fully use sata II let alone trying to make them use sata III, sata 3 hdd's are more of a gimmick.

Go for the samsung, more reliable and faster.

As for other drives, i'm sure there should be 2TB Western Digital drives.

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

Get 5400rpm 2TB Western Digitals, any green edition drives will be good for mass storage as they don't need to be fast

 

[sheroo]

You also need to be aware that a lot of these 2TB drives are advanced format drives. They work fine for W7 & Vista but for older OS's like XP they may need addtional steps and formatting. For instance, to use the WD**EARS drives on XP you need to use a jumper across pins 7-8. This allows the correct offset to be used for the drives under XP.

 

[dipzy]

You also need to be aware that a lot of these 2TB drives are advanced format drives. They work fine for W7 & Vista but for older OS's like XP they may need addtional steps and formatting. For instance, to use the WD**EARS drives on XP you need to use a jumper across pins 7-8. This allows the correct offset to be used for the drives under XP.

Thanks for the info, i'll be using a 500gb for win xp in dual boot config with win 7

 

[yggdrasil]

Watch out as well if you are using raid. The "green" HDD's do not work well in raid as they have a built in power saving function where it puts the needle "to rest" and when the raid needs to access the HDD the HDD's aren't ready and need to put the needle back in posision on the disk and both disks won't do this in sync and this will crash the raid. But if you use some sort of back up program you should be fine

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

Watch out as well if you are using raid. The "green" HDD's do not work well in raid as they have a built in power saving function where it puts the needle "to rest" and when the raid needs to access the HDD the HDD's aren't ready and need to put the needle back in posision on the disk and both disks won't do this in sync and this will crash the raid. But if you use some sort of back up program you should be fine

On their own though, as serperate storage devices they'll be alright wouldn't they? There's no real point in raid unless it's for backup (as mentioned) if the scenario is mass storage

 

[yggdrasil]

They will be dine running as independent drives. Using software to back up such as windows or other software will be fine. So long as it's not Raid you'll be all good mate

 

[sheroo]

For WD green drives there is a utility called wdidle3. It is used to "modifies the behavior of the drive to wait longer before positioning the heads in their park position and turning off unnecessary electronics". This reduces the amount of load/unload cycles which has been known to get very big in a short amount of time.

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

For WD green drives there is a utility called wdidle3. It is used to "modifies the behavior of the drive to wait longer before positioning the heads in their park position and turning off unnecessary electronics". This reduces the amount of load/unload cycles which has been known to get very big in a short amount of time.

Is that pre-configured delay extension or can you manually set it for hours on end before it parks a spindle?

 

[sheroo]

Is that pre-configured delay extension or can you manually set it for hours on end before it parks a spindle?

http://www.storagereview.com/how_stop_excessive_load_cycles_western_digital_2tb_caviar_green_wd20ears_wdidle3

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

http://www.storagereview.com/how_stop_excessive_load_cycles_western_digital_2tb_caviar_green_wd20ears_wdidle3

Seems good enough for what it is. So it can be set in 30 second blocks? or up to 30 seconds?

(I ask not for myself, but for future knowledge to help others)

 

[sheroo]

Seems good enough for what it is. So it can be set in 30 second blocks? or up to 30 seconds?

(I ask not for myself, but for future knowledge to help others)

I have a couple in my server, I think I set them to 300 seconds. It's just that if you have a program that accesses the drives on a regulat basis, like a drive monitoring utility, every 8 seconds the drive would unload, then the program would access the drive - so it would load and the after 8 seconds of inactivity it would unload again.

There is a finite number of load/unload cycles for the lifetime of the drive so once this is reached then..... who knows - probably more prone to failure...

 

[SmoulderingCircuits]

I have a couple in my server, I think I set them to 300 seconds. It's just that if you have a program that accesses the drives on a regulat basis, like a drive monitoring utility, every 8 seconds the drive would unload, then the program would access the drive - so it would load and the after 8 seconds of inactivity it would unload again.

There is a finite number of load/unload cycles for the lifetime of the drive so once this is reached then..... who knows - probably more prone to failure...

I know there is limited cycles for a drive.

5 minites is a reasonable setting though.

Okay thanks

 

[dipzy]

i won't be putting the drives in raid, so i think the WD 2tb Green drives are fine. thanks for the help guys

 

[heartspains88]

I've had 3 2tb western digital green drives go out on me in two years time. all in the same fashion. I personally won't be purchasing them again.

 

[dipzy]

I've had 3 2tb western digital green drives go out on me in two years time. all in the same fashion. I personally won't be purchasing them again.

I still haven't ordered them so i might go with the Samsung F4 2TB or the Seagate 2TB.

Thanks for letting me know

 

[heartspains88]

No problem!

Seriously nothing against western digital, as I've been using them for years.

But 3 for 3.. Pretty bad odds.

I use them as slave/storage drives as well so they'r not even being accessed constantly.

They eventually get the dreaded clicking sound, then go out shortly thereafter, has happened to all 3.

Why did i keep purchasing them? Heck, they're dirt cheap.. but gonna sped a little more for quality this time around haha.