RealityRipple

My current 400 GB hard drive is out of space, and I've had to start saving to a 160 GB backup drive. I've been watching the 1 and 1.5 TB market for a while now, and prices haven't been dropping much. Before I make a purchase, I'd like to know if any new drives will be coming out soon that may drop the prices of the current drives. Also, are there any drives to avoid? I've heard a lot about Seagate's firmware issues, but they seem to be focused on RAID, which I won't be using.

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Tipstaff

The Seagate drive issues aren't related to RAID. They are drive, or rather firmware specific regardless of how you use them. Personally, I haven't had any TB drives from them come back yet (knock on wood). As for other manufacturers, the one and only Samsung 1TB drive I sold, that customer brought it back within a month (DOA). Plus, I've repalced 2 WD 1TB and 1 1.5TB drive. However, the one that I've yet to have any issues with are the Hitachi drives. They aren't fast, but so far, very reliable.

Of note, there is also WDs 2TB drives, but I've only seen them as Cavier Green drives, and personally I won't touch that shit. I've never had positive experiences with any WD Green drive I've ever bought personally or sold (can you believe they even make Enterprise Green drives?).

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Judas

I've been pretty much sticking with seagate 500gb drives.... and 320gb Western Digital Drives for my build.

Out of all the seagate drives i've sold, i've only 1 Seagate 7200.10 that failed out of i'm guessing about 20+, and it failed almost emediately, but it's been replaced.... took 5 months for the RMA to make it to seagate.. but only a matter of a month to come back to me as a replacement.

the 500gb seagate 7200.11's are DIRT cheap.... way cheaper buying 3 of those rather then a single 1.5tb

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Mac Daddy

Both Seagate and WD make excellent drives my last purchase was a WD 640G and very happy with it.

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BlueMak

I never had a problem with my Seagates. Ever.
The current one in this PC is one of the affected ones. I upgraded the firmware and no problems so far. The PC is on almost 24/7 with medium to heavy load. If you are going to buy a Seagate I suggest you make sure that (after you bought it) you have the latest firmware for it, just to be on the safe side. And as Tipstaff said, it has nothing to do with RAID.

I am not aware of any incoming new drives that will drop the price of current ones.

The problem with the very large ones 1 and 1.5 TB is that if they die on you, you lose hell of a lot of data in one go. Make sure you have backups.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

RealityRipple

Good, I've always loved Seagate, and I was really hoping this wouldn't come between us .


@Tipstaff: I've read Seagate's coming out with its own "green" series, but the 1 TB will be nearly 120 bucks, and my computer's efficient enough already, taking only 150 watts with surround sound speakers. My first hard drive was a WD Caviar and it literally caught on fire. I've avoided them ever since.
This Hitachi is very well priced, but the 16 MB cache sort of bothers me. My current UDMA drive has that much cache, and it's really not enough for some things. Will the upgrade from UDMA to SATA 3 be enough of a boost to negate the cache size not changing, especially on a hard drive over twice the size?


@Judas: Do you have a link to these cheap drives? No price I see will get me a better deal than a single 1 or 1.5 TB for equal capacity.


@BlueMak: Most of my important stuff is stored on my webserver as well as backup DVDs. I'll also have my 400 gig and 160 gig hard drives available as backup when I get a 1+ TB drive.

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isaak

I've got a 1TB Samsung and 1TB WD in my computer, no problems whatsoever for either of them.

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Judas

i don't buy online.... but where i buy them, a 1tb drive is nearly 200 bucks and a 1.5tb drive is over almost 300.... where as the 500gb drives are only about 60-75 bucks that's my wholesale cost

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comp_ali

How is that , WD 1TB here is for 580 EP= 110 $ american. On the other hand i7 920 sells for 1900 EP = 380 $.That makes me suspecious.

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Judas

i can get a i7 920 for 384 wholesale

these are canadian prices

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Zelig

FWIW, Hitachi makes some low-energy drives too, I've been running a pair of 500GB ones in RAID for a couple years now.

Judas just likes ordering from expensive suppliers, I see 1TB drives available for $99 CAD/$82 USD.

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BlueMak

yea, I keep getting this idea about Judas as well.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

RealityRipple

A TB for 200 bucks? Ouch.

Ok, so it looks like my best price would be the 1 TB Hitachi, but that cache size is a bit of a deterrent for me. If I could find a 1.5 TB 32 MB cache drive for cheaper than $130, or one that comes from an online supplier that doesn't tax California residents at about the same price, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. As it stands, I'm leaning toward this one.

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Judas

i don't like ordering from more expensive suppliers... i don't have a frigen choice... as if i order from other suppliers.... the amount of time for them to ship it is horrible, the chances of damage done to it is 100% increased, and the shipping ends up making it cost more then if i were to order it from the more expensive supplier anyways.

i mean nearly 70 bucks alone to ship a small 12x15x6 inch box that isn't exactly that heavy.... nearly 5 weeks to receive it.... could you imagine how much i would have to pay if i were to put in a relatively large order and asked for sooner then 2 week shipping...

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nicnik

the prices for samsung 1tb f1's are dropping, at least in the UK they are. the lowest ive seen them for 5 months.

I've got 3 of them and they are great so far.

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RealityRipple

Newegg's Canadian branch has free shipping and good prices... For example, this 1TB drive is $110 with free shipping. I can't say how delivery would be, I suppose, but it'd be worth a shot to try, if you save nearly $100, wouldn't it?

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Judas

newegg canada takes one of the longest to ship....

i've ordered some cables from there.. and it took nearly 6 weeks and the box was split open when i received it....

when it comes to hardrives.... they'd be one of the last ones i'd order from.

even DHL was hard on the Dragon kit i received, looked like the box was squashed down hard enough that it was riding on the boxes inside the main dragon kit box.

DHL here has a history of destroying things while shipping.

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Zelig

I don't really understand how you can have such poor luck with shipping Judas. I order products from British Columbia using Canada Post ground shipping, and they usually make it to me in rural Nova Scotia within a week.

Of the dozens of orders I've placed, mostly with Canada Post and Purolator, I haven't received even a single damaged package.

And that's disregarding the fact that shipping time is dependent on the shipping company, and not the supplier.

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RealityRipple

Well, that sucks. Sorry to hear that, man.

It looks like my best bet is this Seagate. A TB for $85 sounds more than reasonable to me, especially with the 32 MB cache. Thank you guys, as usual!

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Judas

because far west and majority of eastern canada are high priority zones.... where as usually saskatchewan is just ignored..

i mean when i order my dell product, they told me 1 week for shipping.. to bad the sucker made it to ontario sat for about 4-5 days... then made it to winnipeg and sat there for nearly a week and a half, after which it went the short jaunt to regina and which point it never moved for ages.... it also switched shippers hands to.... from one company to another.

I know it's not the suppliers specifically, but unless they give you the choice of shipping, they tie your hands in that manner.

Like i've said before, Even our Postal code here starts with SOL


heres another halarious ordeal, For my sisters business, they are getting cards... the racks and whatnot come from PEI apparently and the cards from ontario..

The cards were shipped out a week earlier. The racks were shipped Purlator. The racks showed up 2 weeks later, the cards showed up 2 weeks after that. Explain how something smaller, lighter, and half the distance away took 3 weeks longer to arrive?

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Zelig

Really?

You're claiming packages from BC to rural Nova Scotia are somehow tagged as higher priority by Canada Post, Purolator, UPS and DHL than packages from BC to Saskatchewan?

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Judas

they aren't tagged.. it just works that way.. there is far more traffic between the fast western and eastern canada then in saskatchewan..... i wouldn't be serprised if the total amount of things shipped within just eastern canada alone in a single day exceeds what saskatchewan handles for shipped items in 6 months

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dj_stick

maybe it's a conspiracy, everyone's out to get Judas...

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BlueMak

I wouldn't blame them.

Perhaps it would be cheaper and faster to go yourself to one of those places and buy the stock and drive it yourself back to your place.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Zelig

This is ground shipping I'm talking about, they have to drive through Saskatchewan to get to the Nova Scotia...

And Saskatchewan has a slightly greater population than Nova Scotia, and is cheaper to ship to from Vancouver... why would there be any more stuff getting shipped out here?

Checking the Purolator site, they quote a four business day shipping time from Vancouver to Lucky Lake via ground shipping.

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Judas

they say.... but it never happens...

i'm lucky to get 2 day dilivery from saskatoon to lucky lake.... sometimes it's a bloody week

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Judas

cheaper... unlikely, but at least i'd likely get it sooner.

Warranty however i don't think i want to drive the stufff that far.

Bad enough i have to make a 80+ dollar round trip from where i'm getting it from now

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BlueMak

80 dollars is not much if you can get a single component that much cheaper. You obviously won't make a trip for single components...so basicaly you save money.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Tipstaff

Same here. I still use 500GB or lower drives for pretty much all my builds too, and sometimes go with 640GB drives from WD too. Any TB drive I sell, however, they are always from Hitachi.

Oh, I'm not complaining about the low-energy drive itself. It's a good technology, just that WDs Green series are shit. With the exception of the Enterprise drive I just sold, every single Green drive, or rather every machine that had a Green drive in it that I've sold over the last year has come back.

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Judas

that's why i make the occasion 80 dollar round trip myself...


if i were to drive out to some of these other places to get parts though... it's several hundred dollar round trips....

typically it's a 2+ day trip from here to the west coast of canada... or 3+ for the east coast.... that's a pile of miles... and a fair bit of fuel.

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