2TB Internal (what manf)

Alloneword · 3 May 2011 at 10:21

Hi everybody, normally i'm a huge fan of WD, right now i have 5 x1TB black drives and have no issues what so ever so i went and invested in 2 x 2TB (WD20EARS) however i didn't do my reasearch this time and got burnt IMO, there just seems to many problems for my liking all this business with parking times and LCC counts etc, not to mention the new AF (but i know a lot of drives are going that way), so i'm returning them for a refund and looking for another brand that does 2TB drives.

These drives will be used for storage (audio files on one and video files on the other) I will be playing both the audio and video files directly off the drives themselves, but the drives will never be booted from neither will they be cloned from or cloned too.

I'm working on the basis of 5400rpm is fine for my needs and 32mb cache will be fine also SATA 3 is not needed as SATA 2 would be good enough, it has been suggested to me i go for the "Samsung HD204UI/Z4 2000GB Spinpoint F4" (Manf code is HD204UI/Z4), like most people i have been through a few manf in my time and WD has always served me well I have read somewhere that either Samsung or Seagate had an issue with some firmware of late but i never took too much notice at the time (Doh!), can anyone shed any light on what manf it was that had the issue?

Reliability is a major factor for me so i don't mind paying a bit more to get a better quality drive having said that i can't afford the 2TB Black drive, so what do you suggest guys, i'll be using XP Pro SP3 32bit for the next month or so then moving over to Win7 Ultimate 64bit and a 3yr warranty would be nice as well.

All1

Alloneword · 3 May 2011 at 14:19

Seems to be issues with Samsung F4 EcoGreen and firmware needs to be updated, jesus what is it with the 2TB drives, WD & Samsung needs to be played with just to get em working.

All1

exia · 3 May 2011 at 14:50

Your being paranoid - of course you'll read of the problem units, but believe it or not the majority do actually work (else why continue selling them?).

IMO, keep the WD, if you use linux or happen to have the LCC problem on Windows, spend 1 minute on using the tool to remove any doubts. I really don't know where people get the idea that hard drives blow up when one other person says they have an issue.

Engram · 3 May 2011 at 14:56

I just bought a Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000:

http://overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-076-HI

It's 2TB but doesn't use 4k sectors; so it's suitable for use with XP, WHS v1, etc.

DragonQ · 3 May 2011 at 15:51

WD Green is fine but you should probably run that tool to increase the timeout for head parking. Samsung F4EG is also fine, drives bought now would not need the firmware update.

Both are 4k drives so need to be aligned properly.

Alloneword · 3 May 2011 at 17:02

Yea your right i guess i am being paranoid but i'd rather be paranoid now then loose 4GB of date in 15-18 months time.
I know the high LCC may not kill the drive, but on the other hand it may and i just don't want to take the risk, also i don't see why i should have to buy a new hard drive and then update firmware to get the damm thing working, I have no issues with doing it for motherboard bios or drivers that's the norm, but not with HDD, well not IMO anyway.

I like the idea that Engram suggested (non 4k sectors), will have to do more digging on this one.

All1