Four 1TB hard drives on test

Hitachi was the first hard drive company to offer a 1TB model. We got our hands on the 7K1000 and were thoroughly impressed. Since then the other drive companies have piled into the Terabyte market, so it's time to see how they compare. In the last 12 months or so, the price of the Hitachi has fallen to £159 which pitches it …

[Rich]

Real-world pricing of these drives and other comments...

Hi Reg,

It would be nice if you made the effort to actually gauge the real-world pricing of these drives before publishing your review.

You state the Samsung is the most expensive of these drives yet it is in realtity the cheapest, costing just £119inc at Savastore.com! In contrast the cheapest price for the Seagate is around £138inc, and likewise for the Western Digital GP. The Hitachi is still around £150inc. Thus this spins the conclusion that the Samsung is the performance monster but seriously hampered by pricing on its head, and effectively changes your review.

Also, mentioning the various warranties would have been nice.

A bit of attention to details like this would really help with your reviews as it really doesn't take much effort to get the info.

[Steven Dick]

Who wants high performance?

I've given up on lusting after high performance in computing as all it leads to are high prices, high temperatures and too much noise.

I've traded some HD performance for a quieter and cooler drive (the WD's 500GB little brother to be exact).

[Mark Ireland-Spicer]

Bizarre pricing comments

You state the Seagate is the cheapest, yet from your links it's clear that the Samsung is actually better discounted (indeed the Seagate seems to be suffering from negative discount!!) and so cheapest as well!!

[Craig]

I have had the Western Digiatl for a few weeks...

For starters, I only paid £130, a key part of my buying decision!

I would dispute the review saying it's not a 'performance' choice, as that argument is a little flawed. I use it with a 4 tuner media center, quite often with 4 recordings on the go and watching something else, all from the same drive and it handles this sort of load fine.

A 1tb drive is only really suitable for a secondary storage drive anyway I would say. I certainly wouldn't suggest having any 1tb as your main drive, and if you really needed massive performance for some HD video editing or whatever, RAID is the only way to go, probably via a nice IcyDock eSata box.

So assuming a 1tb is only every going to be storing a bunch of video and mp3 files, any of these drives would be perfectly suitable, and I'd say go with whatever is cheapest :)

Also, I know from experience WD have a no-quibble return policy for up to 5 years on their premium drives, so it's not as if you're losing out on support because of a cheap drive.

[Duncan Budd]

The Samsung is less than £130 at Scan today

From the Scan "todayonly" page:

1000 GB Samsung HD103UJ Spinpoint F1, SATA II, 7200 rpm, 32MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ £109.99 (ex VAT) £129.24 (inc VAT).

I presume the reporter was quoting list prices. Unless I'm missing something, this makes the Samsung an outrageous bargain.

Duncan

[A. H. O. Thabeth]

Seagate write speed for the first 50GB?

http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/03/25/seagate_barracuda_3.jpg

Am I the only one concerned about the Seagate write speed for the first 50GB?

[Parax]

NAS Suitability Rank?? WD GP 10/10

I've had a pair of Western Digital GP Drives in my QNAP 209 for a couple of months now, as this is a NAS box running on Gigabit LAN as a Volume Storeage Device I am not too concerned about the fastest seek read write etc as its my LAN that holds me back, However I was very impressed to find a company serious about low power drives, this had to be the only choice for an always on NAS Box. 10/10!

So who is really using TB drives for anything other than volume storage?? I suspect gamers are still going to buy 15k Raptors.

next volume review please include NAS suitibility ranks..

[Leo Waldock]

Pricing

Believe it or not I did scout around for prices on the drives - I never use list prices as they mean nothing and I tend to shy away from stockists that list prices as 'stock in 2 days' or 'coming soon'.

'Today only' prices are great but impossible to anticipate by their nature.

I had little doubt that the 1TB Samsung would come down in price as even the best drive in the world won't sell if it carries a significant premium. I tilted in favour of the Samsung at the thick end of £200 and that feeling only strengthens as the price drops.

If you need massive performance and opt for RAID - presumably RAID 0 -you're increasing the chances of a drive failure as you rely on both drives and also the RAID controller. This hurts MTBF.

[Stuart Halliday]

No warranties or MTBF?

Why didn't you guys look into their warranties and MTBF ratings?

As a IT admin myself, I care very little about the price.

What I want to know is Performance, Noise, Amps and MTBF.

Was this report done by a real IT professional or an amateur?

Come on Reg. You really must do better.

[Rich]

Leo...

Well in future Leo may I reccommend using the following UK stores to price-check on hardware...

Scan.co.uk

Ebuyer.com

Savastore.co.

Overclockers.co.uk

...you will thus then be pretty much assured of finding the pretty much the lowest realistic price of anything hardware-related between those four stores, as each have their strengths and weaknesses for different products. Bookmark 'em!

WESTERN DIGITAL GP

I also think you've missed the point that numerous other professional reviews have cottoned onto with the WD GP though and that is that performance isn't THAT bad considering it will be used only as a storage drive in 9/10 cases (pun noted, but not intended), and even as a silent and cool HTPC drive it will be fine for streaming and recording and anything else you want to do with it. The drive was never meant to be a performance monster... it was only ever meant to provide the lowest energy consumption and noise/vibration possible at a competetive price-point, that is its' sole reason for existing, and it does the job admirably. It won't be used for boot, shutdown, intensive server work... anything of the sort... and for it to be this efficient is a very nice step in the right direction for a HD manufacturer to take. WD will be bringing out a new 1TB monster based on their new 320GB platter technology soon (basically like the Samsung F1's) anyway so we will then see an uber-performing drive that will stay up there with the big boys.

All the best,

Richdog.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Leo

Precisly!

Scan Overclockers... My favorites! and a neat mantra too.

lol @ 9/10 cases, but as stated earlier as a storage drive its gonna be out of the case and on for streaming a lot more! for such a drive, low power and low noise are far more important as long as it gets the job done, the top end performance is not important to many.

mind you if the drive is not used and is powered down the spin up time can be relevant too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Should have compare a WD AV-GP NOT a WD RE2-GP

Reasoning the RE2-GP is designed for contious use (the other drives you compare with are not certified for this), Has 5 years Warranty, is COOL, QUITE, and LOW power. BUT does not support the NCQ function, this is very obvious on your benchmark for copying in the same drive!!

So the performance of the AV-GP (still low power quite etc) should have been much better as it DOES support NCQ (as far as I can make out) and thats why it costs a bit more too :-)

How do I know all this? I reaserched it! I feel this review lacks the research and detail I would have expected from reghardware.

I have just payed out for 4 RE2-GP for my home machines in (raid) and the spinpoint F1 as my new boot drive :-). I have also put a RE2-GP in an external case, and it is VERY cool to the touch so should last even longer than the other drives I have tried in external cases!! (and more than fast enough over USB 2.0/FW400)

The NCQ was only finally worked out on the RE2-GP (product has a FYPS code ) by asking WD directly here is there reply:

Dear xxxx,

Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support.

The FYPS drives do not have NCQ, any model of the YS drive does have NCQ though.

Answer Title: Do Western Digital Serial ATA hard drives support NCQ or TCQ?

Answer Link: http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1311&p_created=1107793642

Sincerely,

Jeremy P.

Western Digital Service and Support

[Dick Emery]

Bigger is better?

I got a Samsung 750GB drive for £79 and could not be happier. It is used for storage so speed is not that important. It runs very cool and quiet too. Like anything though it's good to make backups of important data. As drives get larger and larger this is going to be a bit of a quandary for those storing large files that are difficult to backup (HD video etc). Tape drives are still expensive and a difficult and slow medium. I personally am looking forward to Blu-Ray rewritable to become A LOT cheaper. Or SSD to become A LOT larger and cheaper (Supposedly more resilient?).

[Peter]

old stye 4-pin HD connectors

I must say I think that a hard supplied with the old style 4-pin power connector is a bonus. The sata connectors are so fragile and I've heard several reports of the connectors failing :(

WD also have there secure connect system that makes the sata data connection much more robust.

As others have commented having a cooler/quiet/greener hard drive can be a major plus, so I would have liked to see the data for these in the review.

It's a shame that you can't get reliability figures to add into the review as well, I guess we would have to wait a few years thou :(

[Dermot Bradley]

Maxtor?

Why was no Maxtor drive reviewed?

[Anonymous Coward]

@Dermot

there is no Maxtor anymore Seagate bought them Dec 21 2005.

[Steve Roper]

Reliability over speed

In my time I've gone through literally hundreds of HDDs, mostly WD and Seagate (I used a few Maxtor drives before they got bought out as well).

In that time, I've had *every single* Seagate drive I ever bought fail within 3-6 months, and that went for the Maxtor drives as well. Bad sectors, disappearing partitions, head crashes, constant thermal recalibration - you name it. Since 2006, I now use WD exclusively, as I've only ever had two of their drives go bad and both were quickly replaced with no quibbling.

While WD aren't noted for their speed, I have to admit I prefer trustworthiness and reliability over speed any day. What's a few seconds more waiting for a file to copy, compared to the hours and days lost replacing drives, reinstalling OSs, and recovering from backups? I'd rather wait a bit longer and know that I'm not going to have HDD problems or lose data.

Speed isn't everything.

[Andrew Duffin]

Your mileage may vary...

Steve - horses for courses I guess. In my office we refer to WD drives as "Western Dodgital", since they fail so often. Just about every PC that comes back with a HDD problem turns out to have a Western Dodgital. We refuse to accept another WD drive as a warranty replacement because we'll only get it back in a few weeks later - Seagate or Hitachi only accepted!

Maxtor used to be good, not sure since the takeover there; Hitachi seem to me to be the most reliable drives around.

But then again, ymmv.

[m.dodd]

1tb disks faulty

Over the past few weeks i've purchased 4 1tb drives (3WD, 1 Seagate) and all have been faulty. The first WD does actually work but slows down alarmingly at times, the other 3 disks refused to work at all. The system has been checked and is OK and the last disk was checked independently and confirmed to be faulty. The disks were from different UK suppliers. I have been through quite a few disks in the past but never had anything like this out of the box failure rate. anyone else had similar issues?

[Graham Lockley]

Varying Mileage

>Hitachi seem to me to be the most reliable drives around.

Just goes to show how personal bias/experience can colour these things.

After a bad experience of IBM/Hitachi drives repeatedly failing (and a few Samsungs too) I am loathe to touch either manufacturers drives .

Personal choice has always been for Maxtors with Seagate being second choice alongside WD.

The good thing is though, looking at the review, I am pleasantly suprised at how close they are to each other, we never had it so good :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Mileage

Seems to me my experience is as varied as everyone elses' - I have found Maxtor and Hitachi/IBM to be dreadful, and WD to be the best by far for reliability.

I've not had any first hand experience of Samsung but I've never wanted to buy one as they've not been around as long as the other major manufacturers.

I've had 4 WDs in a RAID 5 array for 2 years constantly at home in a server, in a cupboard normally reaching 30 C at times, and not one has failed yet, touch wood! Not had any problems with them at work either.

[Anonymous Coward]

Review

Gotta hand it to the reg, it may not have included some information which a lot of us would have found useful, but it's by far the most detailed review I've ever seen on reg hardware!

Things can only get better (I hope!)

[john]

Seagate = Shitegate

Well I can only agree with Steve Roper about Seagate drives.

I've had 10 replaced in the last 5 years. All different sizes. They don't seem to cope too well with BitTorrent and other P2P programs.

I have had 2 Maxtors and 2 Samsungs in the same period - all still work, but the Samsungs are VERY slow.

I am in the market for 4 x 750gb drives and I will be going WD or Samsung only.

[cjmUK]

Shoddy

As others have pointed out, you need to get your act together re: pricing.

The Samsung is the cheapest, the fastest and the quietest. Only the Seagate comes near.

The only other factor is reliability; In my experience, the Hitachi is trailing (along with Maxtor) and the the Samsung & Seagate are up in front, but YMMV.