What should I buy: WD20EZRZ (WD 2TB Blue), WD1003FZEX (WD 1TB Black), Seagate Baracuda (2-3TB), Toshiba P300 (2-3TB)?

[Landstander]

Edited:
My current setup includes a Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB (for Windows and Games), Western Digital Blue WD10EALX 1TB (for media and backup data storage), and a 500gb Hitachi DeskStar (for overflow) that is 10+ years old.

I was getting antsy about how old the DeskStar is and did some testing... only to discover that the WD10EALX fails LifeGuard diagnostics.

Price is important. The WD Black 2TB is my ideal, but a hard stretch to my budget (probably $80 or less).

I'm concerned that the new WD Blue 2TB is 5400RPM, that kinda stinks. I'm pretty sure it's a Green with a Blue badge slapped on it. To reduce size to a 1TB for the speed is a sideways move. I'd hoped to replace the failing WD AND the DeskStar together.

Thoughts? My last non-WD drive purchase WAS that Hitachi and I don't think I've run a Seagate this century.

Added: I suppose the Seagate Barracuda and the Toshiba P300 are contenders as well, but I'm not familiar with how reliable they've been lately, or if their drives are up to speed.

 

[jacobweaver800]

"Comes with Optane" is intended to sound like it is physically included. A less intentionally misleading statement would be "Compatible with Optane". Companies have been sued for much less.

Like I said above, the Barracuda according to supposed 'real world' testing is comparable to the WD Black at a much lower price point (as is the Toshiba P300). In benchmarks they are both STILL faster than the WD Blue.

That said, I'm hesitant to by non-WD. It's been so long and I have no idea how reliable they are. Hitachi and WD drives seem to last forever.

Western Digital and Seagate are by FAR the best drive makers out there.

 

[madmatt30]

I have 4 Toshiba drivea , 2 x p300s & 2 x dtac01s .
In both 2 & 3tb iterations.

Quite simply I wouldn't buy any other platter based drive now , these drives have just been rock solid for me.

The dt01 have beem running 3-4 years , the p300 about 18 months, not a single issue.

 

[mdd1963]

the backblaze failure stats will show which ones tend to have failure rates higher than .5-1% in heavy usage....

 

[jacobweaver800]

My current setup includes a Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB (for Windows and Games), Western Digital Blue WD10EALX 1TB (for media and backup data storage), and a 500gb Hitachi DeskStar (for overflow) that is 10+ years old.

I was getting antsy about how old the DeskStar is and did some testing... only to discover that the WD10EALX fails LifeGuard diagnostics.

Price is important. The WD Black 2TB is my ideal, but a hard stretch to my budget.

I'm concerned that the new WD Blue 2TB is 5400RPM, that kinda stinks. I'm pretty sure it's a Green with a Blue badge slapped on it. To reduce size to a 1TB for the speed is a sideways move. I'd hoped to replace the failing WD AND the DeskStar together.

I've seen the Seagate Firecuda mentioned and I'm wondering if that isn't a reasonable compromise. I could move my Windows install to that and get a performance bump(?) while increasing my overall system size and save a few dollars.

Thoughts? My last non-WD drive purchase WAS that Hitachi and I don't think I've run a Seagate this century.

Your setup with the drives is interesting, what exactly is your budget for a new drive? Seagate has Ironwolf and Ironwolf Pro drives that have very large capacities at 7200RPM, you could consider one of those for your boot and games and the 2tb 5400 rpm for overflow storage. The ironwolf drives come in 1tb, 2tb, 3tb, 4tb, 6tb, 8tb, 10tb, and 12tb capacities. And there about 80 USD for the 2tb drive.

 

[photonboy]

Larger capacity can offset a lower RPM.

The inner edge access is about 50% of the outer edge. So if you had a 1TB HDD the inner edge is half speed, but... if you had a 2TB HDD with only 1TB used (and defragged) the data that's at the worst-case might be roughly 75% of the performance of the outer edge.

Also RPM is not a direct indicator of performance. Plenty of older 7200RPM HDD's of same capacity as newer HDD's that run slower because the SEEK TIMES (head movement) and other changes factor in as well.

This $60USD 2TB Seagate is 7200RPM so what's wrong with it?
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/CbL7YJ/seagate-barracuda-2tb-35-7200rpm-internal-hard-drive-st2000dm006

FIRECUDA is an SSHD not an HDD and thus costs more than a similarly sized HDD... you seem to be on a tight budget so I'm not sure why you mention it.... the 3.5" version is $100 so it's basically identical to the $60 drive except for when the SSD portion is accessed.

Now that's actually going to make some difference in boot time and general Windows responsiveness if it's the main OS drive but at $40 more you can actually find 120GB SSD's for $40+ so I just don't see the point... I'd rather a 120GB SSD + 2TB HDD than a single 2TB SSHD.

Here's what I'd recommend considering the budget:
1) buy the $60 Seagate HDD (or similar) 7200RPM
2) clone or do a clean install of Windows to it
(if you do a CLEAN INSTALL then during Windows install create the first partition at 200GB or 200,000MB then the remainder as partition 2, then install to the 200GB partition)

3) later get a 250GB SSD (hence the 200GB partition idea above for Windows so you can easily clone that partion only)
4) also, make a backup IMAGE of the Windows partition if you've not done so (i.e. Acronis True Image)

Note you can MOVE Steam games folders really easily (and UPlay, Blizzard, even Origin is not bad but it's a bit tricky)... for example if you have Windows now on a 2TB HDD, install/reinstall Steam then create a library folder as say "E\Steam" where "E" is the 2nd partition of the same 2TB HDD.

Then cut/paste from the old 1TB HDD to the new E:\Steam folder. Restart Steam and games should work from the new drive... then I'd move over or delete stuff to empty the 1TB HDD so you can then do a FULL NTFS FORMAT (which builds a bad sector table) test it again then move stuff back or at least make a backup Image of C-drive to it.

 

[Landstander]

photonboy, that may be a good idea for a later date, but ATM I don't choose to reinstall windows.

To my memory, this is the first WD drive I've had go bad before it was too small to use... and it's also the first Blue.

So, I'm currently leaning towards the WD Black in 1TB. It's only a little more than the Blue 2TB and gains performance, reliability and warranty.

It's not ideal, I'd like the extra storage space as well, but $38 for the second TB makes no sense.
I could make a 2TB Blue RAID for the almost same price. (I'm not saying I will, but it makes you wonder who is pricing the WD drives.)

 

[jacobweaver800]

photonboy, that may be a good idea for a later date, but ATM I don't choose to reinstall windows.

To my memory, this is the first WD drive I've had go bad before it was too small to use... and it's also the first Blue.

So, I'm currently leaning towards the WD Black in 1TB. It's only a little more than the Blue 2TB and gains performance, reliability and warranty.

It's not ideal, I'd like the extra storage space as well, but $38 for the second TB makes no sense.
I could make a 2TB Blue RAID for the almost same price. (I'm not saying I will, but it makes you wonder who is pricing the WD drives.)

I wouldn't recommend RAID without a RAID card since software raid is not very good. (If you choose too) I have had very good luck with WD Blue drives, I had one that just hit 9 years old and it just died end of last year. It was even getting to be a bit small at only 640gb's, I would get a WD Blue drive but that's just me, my 4 year old WD Blue 1tb has been running perfectly fine under what I would call more than average usage since I like to edit videos off of it and I tend to move A LOT of data around on it. You idea for a WD Black should do well.

 

[mdd1963]

Black, if you can, blue if you must have something and cant afford black....

 

[Landstander]

The new Blue is significantly faster than the older model Blue I'm replacing, but that still doesn't make me happy. The performance of the larger ones take an unnecessary performance hit from the slower spin rate.

Merging the Blue and Green series is the cheesiest thing WD could have done. It made a mess of their line-up.

I'd consider another brand, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of choices. I keep coming across bad stuff about Seagate and pretty much nothing about Toshiba.

Edit: I'm now considering a Toshiba P300 (2 or 3TB) or Seagate Barracuda (2 or 3TB). Both seem to benchmark between the WD Blue and Black and have "real world" speed fairly close to the WD Black (if userbenchmark.com is to be trusted). Best of all the price for a 3TB falls between the price of the two WD 2TB drives.

So, Seagate and Toshiba? As good as userbenchmark claims? Data disaster waiting to happen or reliable? Bite the bullet and stick with WD?

 

[Landstander]

"Comes with Optane Technology" what a wonderfully misleading phrase. If some chips aren't in the drive or a stick actually included in the box, this is as close to a lie as you can get without lying.

*plink* Seagate just got lower on my list. Thank you, seagate_surfer, for telling me how your company does business.

Btw, the system is AMD based.

 

[jacobweaver800]

"Comes with Optane Technology" what a wonderfully misleading phrase. If some chips aren't in the drive or a stick actually included in the box, this is as close to a lie as you can get without lying.

*plink* Seagate just got lower on my list. Thank you, seagate_surfer, for telling me how your company does business.

Btw, the system is AMD based.

Bruh, Seagate is still second on my list. As I recall you never specified your system specs, also they only stated that this drive works well with Optane, not that an Optane module comes in the box, and that's true since Seagate's BarraCuda drives actually play very nicely with Optane and tend to see a very nice boot with it.

 

[Landstander]

"Comes with Optane" is intended to sound like it is physically included. A less intentionally misleading statement would be "Compatible with Optane". Companies have been sued for much less.

Like I said above, the Barracuda according to supposed 'real world' testing is comparable to the WD Black at a much lower price point (as is the Toshiba P300). In benchmarks they are both STILL faster than the WD Blue.

That said, I'm hesitant to buy non-WD. It's been so long and I have no idea how reliable they are. Hitachi and WD drives seem to last forever.

 

[Landstander]

the backblaze failure stats will show which ones tend to have failure rates higher than .5-1% in heavy usage....

Good point. From their data I know Hitachi continues to have some of the lowest failure rates, but I'm not sure there is much available outside of Ultrastars now.
Toshiba appears to build fairly reliable drives, but they don't use a lot, so the data isn't considered accurate.
Seagate had a few really awful years. I'm aware things seem to have improved, but their track record seems to be the worst in the long run of all the major manufacturers.

Of course extrapolating that data across different models and sizes by the same manufacturer isn't very helpful. All you can get is a general trend.

 

[Landstander]

For those following, currently testing a 3Tb Seagate Baracuda. So far it's fast and flawless. Exceeding my expectations.

 

[jacobweaver800]

For those following, currently testing a 3Tb Seagate Baracuda. So far it's fast and flawless. Exceeding my expectations.

Seagate had a bit of a bad period, there drives are much much better and I believe you should be happy with them. I have two Seagate drives that are both about 14+ years old and only one of them died so far.

 

[Landstander]

Seven months on and my opinion of Seagate is again pretty low.

The drive has not failed, but about once a month it just disappears. Usually Windows Explorer just shows it missing. Occasionally the drive is present but attempting to access any file on the drive gives an error.

The motherboard on reboot shows the drive missing as does the BIOS.
Shutting the PC down completely (a reboot doesn't work) and restarting it brings the drive back online.

I've changed power and drive cables. I've connected it to different SATA ports on the motherboard, and yet the problem recurs.
Zero errors from SeaTools or CrystalDiskInfo.

I'll be replacing the drive with a Western Digital when finances allow.

 

[madmatt30]

I did say (& in numerous posts)
Once you go above 1tb the toshiba drives are the option to take imo.

 

[Landstander]

Yes you did and I will probably be doing that now.

Edit: And holy cow is their customer support crap. 404 Errors on their warranty pages and staff that read half an email before responding.
I think the drive is just going to end up in a drawer.

 

[Landstander]

Sorry to bump this, but 6 months later, it looks like the Seagate is toast (or at least medium well). I'll see what I can recover, but FFS.
Is the P300 still Hitachi's best or is there something newer now?

 

[mdd1963]

Spinning drives are for bulk storage...

Go with a Corsair MX500; a 1 TB SSD is only $119...half the price for double the capacity of 2.5 years ago...

If you have NVME M.2 as an option, Intel's 660P at 1 TB is equally inexpensive....

 

[Landstander]

What a coincidence, I'm looking for bulk storage. I suppose that's why I asked.

 

[popatim]

Btw. Hitachi was bought by WD and they used to make Toshiba's drives. The courts wouldn't allow the sale unless Toshiba was allowed to split off as it's own manufacturer so they truly do make their own drives now. I have no experience with the newer drives (P/X/N series) but the older ones were quite good for the price.

Do you have a budget in mind for this?

 

[mdd1963]

WD's Blue drives are not really normally thought of as 'heavy duty', as lots of techs report them failing within 2 years typically...

If our definition of 'bulk storage' is only 2 TB, I'd still look hard at Corsairs MX500 unless seriously budget constrained...

One can use a $60 external 2 TB drive for backups...

 

[Landstander]

Btw. Hitachi was bought by WD and they used to make Toshiba's drives. The courts wouldn't allow the sale unless Toshiba was allowed to split off as it's own manufacturer so they truly do make their own drives now. I have no experience with the newer drives (P/X/N series) but the older ones were quite good for the price.

Do you have a budget in mind for this?

When did this happen? I'm having trouble finding details about it. Toshiba does look like they've started a new naming scheme... that frankly looks more like WD's.