Caviar black. But the caviar blue will be sufficient tho.

Just bought WD Blue 500GB yesterday and encounter the "Humming" sound issue.
At first I though it was the WD drive problem till I google up.

Looks like there's some "incompatibility" between Samsung Spinpoint and WD drive.
This guys had the same exact problem like me

If u google up "WD Humming", you could see alot of results relate to SS Spinpoint or vise versa.

Weird huh.

and thx to the power of google search, I found the solution to it (not quite, but it's better)

This post has been edited by Kr0ll3R: Aug 13 2012, 09:10 PM

Red drive seems price drop to 539 - 549 3TB. will it continue to drop?

This post has been edited by mitodna: Aug 13 2012, 01:44 PM

even the TS - BigRoo also cant solve it, how u solve it ar?

In depth read, Some Say Samsung, Some Say WD

I used the last person post's method.
The humming sound is significantly lower unless u're in a complete closed room.

Hi guys, gonna get a 500GB external hard drive but cannot decide whether I should get the Seagate Slim Portable Drive or the Buffalo Mini Station Extreme. Any advice sifus?

can rekomen the brand ah?


btw...any1 got their hands on the WD Red?

hows the performance? this WD red target NAS storage user....how it compare to green?

My reds are coming end of the month, GGZ will call me to let me know when they arrive...

Thing is, do i need to use wdidle to change the idle parking time for WD red like what we had to do with the green drives?

hi sifus,

may i know what are the current reliable hard disk model now?
i am looking to backup about 8-10TB of data and store it away for long term safe keeping.

i hear alot of people say all hdd is the same is just depends on luck, but do u know which brand have a reputation of reliability compare to others?

thanks!

Still WD black
Its design make it last longer and always outperform current blue and green model.

If few years ago we might recommend samsung, but............

great info bro..the seagate forum is full of bashing...haha

btw, any other option for long term storage beside hdd? all i can think of is tape but is too expensive... lol

The Red is anytime better than the Green. For NAS usage, I'll avoid it like a plague.

Actually, I'm also in a dilemma. Initially looking at 3TB drives but I heard that there will be some incompatibility problems with the Microserver. So now looking at 2TB variants. For the same price, I can either get the Hitachi 2TB or the WD Red. I believe warranty wise both are the same. The only thing that is pulling me back is the Red is 5400rpm while the Hitachi is 7200rpm.

Not required. The Red is already built for NAS environment albeit only for home and small office/home office usage.

It used to be Hitachi but at the moment there's only Seagate and WD with very little involvement from Toshiba to carry on what's left off Hitachi. If you want Seagate's reliable line of drives, look at their Constellation series. For WD, it's their Black series or their RE4 series. Both are expensive but reliable.

But then again if you're looking at storing and keeping the hardisk locked away after one time use, any decent brand would be fine.

Hardisk would be fine for long term storage if you take into consideration the price per GB and the speed. Tape is expensive while still slow.

If the data is very important, make an exact copy of your backup in another hardisk and keep it somewhere else. From time to time, take the hardisk out and check the files at random to see if the hardisk is ok.

This post has been edited by jchue73: Aug 14 2012, 10:44 PM

just checked the RE4 price it is very expensive compare to Black. dilemma
I am looking also at blu-ray disk, would the disc be durable for long term storage compare to hdd?

Ignore the RPM. 5400RPM may seem slow, but it is perfectly serviceable for most needs. Furthemore, gigabit ethernet has a speed limit of 100MB/s, which 5400RPM drives can exceed.

Blu-ray is likely to be more fragile than DVD. You know how SSD's write lifespan has reduced as they keep on shrinking the circuitry? Blu-ray has a lot tinier data holes than DVD do. Unless they have some new technique to maintain or improve on the lifespan I wouldn't bet my family photo albums on it.

I would buy the Reds instead of RE4 or Black. Much lower initial cost and replacing failed drives would be a lot less painful. You could buy two Reds for almost the price of one RE4, with which you could RAID-1!

u looking for 500gb or 1tb? i just bought myself re4 500gb last yr, while 2 of my neighbour got themselves each 500gb re4 as well. re4 got 5yr wrty if not mistaken, really worth it actually.

This post has been edited by super macgyver: Aug 15 2012, 03:16 PM

Do you know what is the idle time for red drives to park their heads? 300s?

People are actually backing up their Blurays onto hardisk. What does that tell you?

Actually, the choice to use RE4 or Black depends on whether you use it with RAID or standalone. The RE4 is specifically for use with RAID array and if you're not going to use RAID, Black series is better. If you use the RE4 as a standalone drive, they have very short write recovery times (TLER = 7 seconds), which can result in data corruption if they not used with a write caching RAID controller. The short write recovery times also ensure that the drives would never get into a lock up for long time for the RAID controller to register an error and subsequently drop them out of the array.

Black series is RE4 with longer TLER (approx 180 seconds). Having said that, a lot od people use the Black series in RAID arrays and don't encounter problems.

Yeah, I'm aware that current geenration 5400 rpm drives are speedy. I'm actually using 8 x 2TB Samsung HD204UI and I love them because it's silent and they are as fast as (if not faster than) other 7200 rpm drives. The thing is I plan to go beyond 1Gb/s in the near future and it would be nice if the drives could cope. Having said that, I think the Red in a RAID array would still able to cope beyond Gigabit. Aiming for 300 to 400 MB/s transfer speeds in a RAID array.

Agreed. But I think it's not exactly 2 times the price. Black series is generally about 40% more expensive than Red. 5 years vs 3 years warranty makes the difference too.

Sorry. No idea. I'm guessing it's much shorter like the RE4 (TLER = 7 seconds).

great info bro...haih bluray disc also so fragile...

looking to backup about 8-10TB of data..preferbly 2TB, or 3TB drives..but if too big, failure will cost more data loss...mmm

wow..u seems like expert
i am also using 3 x HD204UI..yeah very quiet, cooler and speedy..compared it to my old WD Green, the WD will have lagging when trying to access some files...
i dun use Raid setup..so can i conclude that Black is the way to go ? if budget wise, the next best choice to go will be WD green right? or seagate?

7s is quite short...that's what that's causing high LLC for green HD...

maybe i'll still use wdidle to change the settings for Red drives then...

Been sent my Samsung drive to Seagate for 3weeks but until now still do not have any news for it. What number should I call to check with them ?