Previous discussion threads

• All About Harddisk Thread V3, Discussion for Good Harddisk (Jun 2010 - Jan 2012)
• All About Harddisk Thread V2, Discussion for Good Harddisk (Oct 2008 - Jun 2010)
• Discussion for Good Harddisk, Harddisk Discussion (Oct 2005 - Oct 2008)

Check HDD Warranty

• Hitachi
• Seagate & Samsung
• Western Digital

Utilities

• Benchmarking
  • CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1c
  • ATTO Disk Benchmark
• Information
  • Comparison of S.M.A.R.T tools (Wikipedia)
  • CrystalDiskInfo 5.0.4
  • SpeedFan
• Testing
  • Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows (by Western Digital) (Seagate compatible)
  • Drive Fitness Test (by Hitachi)
  • HDDScan 3.3
  • Seatools for Windows (by Seagate)

Informative Forumer Posts

• Information about Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test by dkk.
• Information about Seagate's Seatools for Windows and Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows by dkk.
• QUOTE(wildwestgoh @ Jan 17 2013, 07:56 AM)
  Western Digital laptop (2.5") drives' thickness chart.
  http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/mobile/ (Z-height)
  
  Seagate laptop (2.5") drives' thickness chart.
  (Click Specifications below the chart.)
  http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drive...op-hard-drives/ (Height)

  

Terminology

• PATA
  Maximum transfer speed: 16, 33, 66, 100, 133 MB/s
  
  
• SATA
  • SATA 1.5 Gbps aka SATA 1 aka SATA I
    Maximum transfer speed: 150 MB/s
  • SATA 3.0 Gbps aka SATA 2 aka SATA II
    Maximum transfer speed: 300 MB/s
  • SATA 6.0 Gbps aka SATA 3 aka SATA III
    Maximum transfer speed: 600 MB/s
• S.M.A.R.T.
  "S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology; often written as SMART) is a monitoring system for computer hard disk drives to detect and report on various indicators of reliability, in the hope of anticipating failures."

Capacity

• 4.0 TB = 3,725.29 GiB
• 3.0 TB = 2,793.96 GiB
• 2.0 TB = 1,862.65 GiB
• 1.5 TB = 1,396.98 GiB
• 1.0 TB = 931.32 GiB
• 750 GB = 698.49 GiB
• 640 GB = 596.05 GiB
• 500 GB = 465.66 GiB
• 320 GB = 298.02 GiB

Further Reading

• Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population
  "In this paper we present one such study by examining the population of hard drives under deployment within Google's computing infrastructure."

This post has been edited by everling: Jan 30 2013, 08:28 PM

News

2012-01-23

• QUOTE(Western Digital)
  The company also announced it has made significant additional progress to restore its manufacturing capacity following the recent flooding in Thailand. It has continued to ramp HDD production in Thailand and yesterday resumed slider production which had been suspended since October 10. The company now believes its manufacturing capacity will be back to pre-flood capabilities in the quarter ending September 2012.
  http://www.wdc.com/en/company/pressroom/re...15-7c4c5346606c
  

2012-03-06

• QUOTE
  Western Digital will be allowed to acquire Hitachi’s 2.5” and SSD businesses, but not the 3.5” business. Instead Western Digital will be selling that business to Toshiba – factories and all – along with granting licenses for the necessary patents, which would allow Toshiba to effectively continue in the 3.5” market from where Hitachi left off.  This would firmly establish Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba as the 3 major players in the hard drive business across all product segments.
  
  [...]
  
  Finally, it would appear that this is as far as the EU and FTC are willing to let the hard drive market contract, at least at this time. Their various rulings have made it clear that they will block any attempt at consolidating the market to two manufacturers, so the wave of acquisitions that started in 2009 should be at an end.
  Western Digital To Sell Hitachi's 3.5” Hard Drive Business To Toshiba, Complete Hitachi Buyout

This post has been edited by everling: Mar 7 2012, 11:55 AM

Has the price of HDD generally gone down already or is there still time to wait? TQ

The prices have dropped since its peak, but still nowhere near what it used to be before the Thailand floods.

For example, from Viewnet price lists:

• Samsung 2TB HD204UI
  • 16-10-2011 : RM 249
  • 25-10-2011 : RM 289
  • 27-12-2011 : RM 449
  • 08-01-2012 : RM 399

No one has any real idea on when the prices will return to the pre-flood prices. Some says it will happen by mid-year, some says it won't happen until the end of the year.

Assume that, every two weeks after next week, will drop to 25myr, depends how the demand will move. Some said just in time for Ivy Bridge release, move back to 320myr for 2TB.

Hopes the price goes soon ASAP. Running out of HDD space soon.

Me too now consider to buy which brand of HDD.

Update from WD, pre-flood manufacturing capacity expected to be back in Sept end 2012.

http://www.tweaktown.com/pressrelease/6751...very/index.html

prices are going to be hovering around this range for quite some time more.

Realistic target : I have to change my initial predictions from August to end of the year...

+1, here is another link of the same source

http://www.bjorn3d.com/news/Western_Digita...again/1232.html

Well that is when it will reach the same production, but to reach back the volume that they lost during all this time. May take a bit longer for that so prices wont be exactly the same to pre-flood at that time I guess.

Hope is a hope
but i still love to see 1TB below Rm200 anytime soon = =

the current HDD price were around RM330 for 1tb.
hope it can drop until RM300 by the end of the month.

i have hitachi 2.5" hdd from 2007, the occasional when using got like a "beep" sound

then when reading the disk can hear "tak tak tak" sound from it

not sure if the hdd is failing, but i have backup most of the things from it.....is there anyway to salvage this hdd??

It is very unlikely that you'll be able to keep your five year old HDD for much longer. On the bright side, today's 2.5" HDDs are much better performers and should have larger capacities for a similar price point, despite the Thailand floods.

---

Added on January 26, 2012, 6:14 pmThanks you two. I have added it to the news section, but sourced from WD itself. Hopefully WD's copy will stay around indefinitely.

This post has been edited by everling: Jan 26 2012, 06:14 PM

Download Hitachi's diagnostic utility. It's called Drive Fitness Test. Burn it to a CDR, and boot from that. It should "fix" (ie mark) the bad sectors.

http://www.hitachigst.com/support/downloads/#DFT

There's a link on that same page to check warranty expiration date. Key in the serial number, and it shows the expiration date. The serial number is printed physically on the hard disk. There are also utilities that will show the serial number. (Seagate's Seatools for Windows and WD's wdlg both do, and they also sometimes works on other brand's hard disks. It's usually better to use the manufacturer's own utility though, if it's available).

I also use this free utility that can do surface scan reads, and shows the time it takes to read each block. Blocks that takes a very long time to read might have problems.

http://hddscan.com/

Windows just popped up a warning saying that the HDD is in a bad shape and advised backup. How much time do I actually have before it actually fails?
Using a 1TB Samsung HDD, roughly 2-3 years old.

The warning is based on the SMART data, which may indicate a real problem. However empirical research has shown that the SMART data, as it is, are not good predictors for HDD failures. There is still a chance that your HDD may work fine for its expected lifespan, or it may fail in the next hour.

To get more information about your HDD, you could try using CrystalDiskInfo which details the SMART data. SpeedFan also details SMART data, and it also has an option to analyse your SMART data via a web-service. There are also other free tools that can analyse your SMART data and provide recommendations.

But even with these tools, it would still be difficult to predict when it will fail. I would play it safe and back up important data. If storage space is not an issue and the HDD is still under warranty, sending it in for warranty replacement may be a good option. Otherwise you could treat it like a time bomb and hope that nothing will happen.

Thank you for your advice. What are the recommended brand for 2TB HDD nowadays since Samsung HDD division is acquired by Seagate?
Its been a long time since I keep up with the IT news, it used to be that Samsung was the brand to go when they had the 1TB back then.

Huuuhuuu, price better drop. Running out of space now. Too much downloads and photos. Anyway, can anyone guide me on the most cost-effective way to have a central point to save all my things. Should I get NAS or should I get a Home Server or should I get a server? Pros & cons. Thanks lots.

It'll be great to have a section showing noticeable/important history of price for HDD since most people's concerns are just that.