The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

having RMAd both my 640GB HDDs a month a go ( one WD and one a samsung) atleast in the uk, their RMA procedure is exactly the same for me. Both i sent on the same day, and both 4 days later i got a replacement at my door.

as with all components, companies will have duff drives, and the most out spoken people are the negative ones. Iicr seagate still sells the most hdds a year, so i would look to them aswell.

and really, using newegg to back ones argument up? I thoigt we proved years ago that 90% of their reviews are done by numpties?

 

The problem I think comes in the form of Support, versus RMA.

Perhaps Samsung are easy to RMA drives with, but when I wanted to find out what the manufacturer specific SMART code was that my F1 had picked up, I had to speak to Thirteen different organisations before finally getting an answer, a process costing about £20 in phone calls and taking about a week.

Newegg reviews are generally published by idiots, but there are a lot of comments on there that complain about more specific problems, and I don't really see how 'started making very loud clicking noises and stopped PC from POSTing until it was removed' could be an idiot mistaking a faulty drive for something else. There are a few reviews that are obviously people being retarded and I've actually omitted those from the chart I wrote above. When you have 300 reviews, no matter who's submitting them, trends do appear.

 

mmm weird, i have called btoh companies, but only for an rma, not support, so fair enough. Ps the newegg comment what also a shot at russ

wait, you actually combed through all of the reviews? Damn, someones nored?

 

Not nored, or bored P) but simply decided to investigate just how much of a difference there is between the drives.

 

I've sat here and just read reviews before. It was rather interesting

 

Russ: Quote:
It's not the claims they make for their personal level of technology. The can put down whatever they want. It's very easy for me to weed those out! I call it "The Idiot Factor"! When it comes to Large drives, the majority who buy them are very knowledgeable. The average person with no knowledge, wouldn't be talking about sector size or Raid configurations! I'm not saying that there were no Idiots, but I took those into account. Drive failures were far more prevalent than DOAs, by a very wide margin!
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AMEN Russ!

 

Unfortunately though, I disproved that categorically - WDs are far more likely to be DOA, but less likely to fail after the initial period, the opposite of Russ' argument.

 

Why am I not suprised, lol.

 

ddp : Don't really know what your talking about, or where to find that item

 

Scaff,
I don't know if Sam read them all, but I actually did read them all! I was bored! LOL!! Sam's statistics pretty much mirror my own. We both must use the same "Idiot Factor" filter! ROFLMAO!! Basically what it boils down to is with the WD, 40 out of 100 will likely be DOA, but only 4 out of 100 will fail in use. With the Sammy 30 out of 100 will be DOA, but 9 out of 100 will fail in use. Overall failures WD 44% and Samsung 39%, so the samsung is roughly 5% less likely to be DOA or fail. I know Rick has had good results with Samsung. I know he told me that the Samsung's ran cooler than the WDs in his external enclosures, so I would still be inclined to give them a try!

My own track record with Samsung has been very good. I bought their first IDE drive, way back in the early to mid 90s. I think it was a 100 or 200MB drive! I remember I bought it because of a test of the "Five top drives" in PC Magazine. While the Samsung didn't win a single individual test, when the numbers were totaled, it finished a solid and surprising second place. A very solid and quiet drive as well, as I recall!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I wonder who builds samsungs drives. If they build their own, clearly I've underestimated the company. But I do hold Samsung in HIGH regard Samsung just seems like some of the other companies. E.g. Lite-on. Buying Optiarc drives, and slapping their name on them I like optiarcs. But damnit. When I buy a drive/device, I want to know what the heck I'm friggin getting! Much like when we shop for food. I don't know about the rest of you, but lately I've been obsessed with what is in my food! With all the diseases and conditions this day in age. I think consumers have a right to know!

 

Oman7,
Since Samsung is the only Hard Drive Company in Korea, and they are made in Korea, they either make them themselves, or a company/Division owned by Samsung, makes them to Samsung's specs. The parent company is responsible for the design and development of all their HDDs! They are a major player in the hard drive market for surveillance video equipment, as well!

Russ

 

Russ, that's very interesting. Thank you If that information is correct, Samsung is obviously well practiced. I guess I'm not too surprised. But I am impressed. However, I still want to try one of the WD drives. Not to prove anyone wrong, like you may be thinking. I don't work that way. I want to put the speculation to rest. Nothing more. If my drive survives the complete long format, then there's a strong chance it will survive along with my multiple other drives. I will monitor its performance throughout the course of 90 days. Once a week, I will benchmark the drive. Much like testing the Seagate drive that I did. I was very unimpressed by the Seagate! I will be purchasing it sunday night more than likely.

 

Oman7,
I remember reading a test, about 3 years ago where someone developed a rating system for hard drives. I seem to remember that it was an article on ZD.net. According to it, in July of 07, Samsung (9%), Toshiba (9%) and Fujitsu (7%) were the best rated drives. How is that explained? Easy, the 3 companies combined didn't equal the market share of Seagate, who was on top at the time! The trio combined had 25% of the total sales, against 29% for Seagate and 19% for WD! Seagate and WD sold almost twice as many drives for the same time period studied, 48% vs 25%! These figures include the OEM market, as it's factored in, as well, although the leading OEM manufacturer that year, was Hitachi at 14%! I do seem to remember that they had a large contract with IBM for drives for IBM systems for a number of years.

Russ

 

That's certainly a matter of opinion. I asked a shop in 2006 what was the best recommended drive, and they said Western Digital. I've been highly anal about that ever since. I was quick to trust them too, since my 2001 HP had a WD drive

I really hate that this is becoming Fanboyism. Please readers, understand that Western Digital is 90% of what i've used. And I firmly believe if it isn't broke, don't fix it. If the green drive that I buy in the near future fails, I'll adjust my beliefs accordingly. Though their black drives are certainly the models that deserve praise

 

Russ: The reason Samsung drives run 'cooler' is the temperature sensors are calibrated to show a lower temperature than the drive is actually running at. I measured both the metal casing and the control board underneath of a drive, and I got results looking something like this:
WD drive: Sensor 47ºC casing 45ºC logic board 39ºC
Samsung drive: Sensor 36ºC casing 44ºC logic board 41ºC
I'll have to run the tests again some time, as that's from memory from a very long time ago, but either way, Samsung drives running cool is a ruse. It ain't true
Many other companies have come and go, such as Miniscribe, Kalok, and more recently Quantum and IBM (the prior two a bit before my time) but the current crop of HDD manufacturers have all been in the business for a long time, WD, Samsung and Seagate have been around for donkeys', and Hitachi of course took over IBM's hard disk division.
Samsung drives always used to be pretty good, up until the T-series inclusive. When the F1 series came out, their quality took a marked turn for the worse, and they've produced several 'lemon' models since then. Fortunately for them, Unfortunately for us, 'lemon' models in high capacity drives seem de rigueur now, so you can't really tell them off for it. Either way though, the 1TB Samsung F1 goes in the HDD reliability hall of shame, along with some of the latter IBM Deskstars and the Maxtor Diamondmax +10.
Seagate did indeed used to have a ridiculous market share, everything was Seagate back in the old days, and they took over a fair few companies. Despite that though, plus the takeover of Maxtor, I see less Seagate stuff in PCs now than I do Samsungs and WDs.
For me personally I've primarily bought WD drives because that's what I've had since the get go, my last modern prebuilt PC had a WD drive in it, so I bought another, and then two more. The gaming PC I had built in 2006 actually had a WD Raptor and a Seagate 7200.9 in it, which was fine, but since I was on a silencing drive shortly after, and the 7200.9 was one of the loudest drives in history, I decided to pursue the Samsung/WD lines further. Occasionally people I know sell off their old HDDs, that's why I've got two 750GB F1s, it's why I've got a 750GB 7200.10, and it's why I've got four of my WD10EACS drives. Had the drives he was selling been a different green drive brand, I would probably own those too. Difference is though, those were original WD Green drives, 'GreenPower' not Caviar Green, and back then, there weren't any other 5400rpm drives

 

Oman7,
No fanboyism at all, just the stats applicable at the time. I used Maxtors, then Seagate, and finally WD over the last 7 years. You really just have to go with who is making the best drives at the time of purchase. I have a Seagate 160 (my first Sata) as my boot drive, a Seagate 250 as my second drive, and a WD 500 for my storage. The seagate 160 is 5+ years old, the Seagate 250 3 years, and the WD Black 500 AALS is about 8 months old. All were thoroughly researched before I purchased them. I've had no problems with any of them outside of the 160 had to be wiped clean due to corrupted files, caused by a bad 750 Southbridge chip. SMART reports all of them in good shape! Since my computer see's more use than average, I would say that I made the right choices at the time. Presently, if my 500 AALS was full, I would get another. That doesn't mean that I would make the same choice 6 months from now.

BTW, I did discover something interesting while reading all the Newegg reviews. Newegg doesn't factor in multiple RMAs, they just count the initial purchases. I count them, because it's a question of reliability! Here are a total of the 3 lowest ratings. First time I ever saw 3 eggs that were RMA'd! There were 24 3eggs, 20 2 eggs and 61 4 eggs, for a total of 105 purchasers that RMA'd or sent back 71 of the EARS. I didn't count the 5 one person bought, because he bought 6 other drives as well, and never said which of the drives failed. Still 71 out of 301 total purchases went south, pretty close to 24%, but there are other WDs, as well as other brands that are far worse.

This drive intrigues me!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ackTab=true&Keywords=(keywords)#scrollReviews
I noticed it when there were 5 reviews, all 4 and 5 eggs. It was the same way at 10, and is still the same at 18. That's a bit of a rarity! There are many drives on Newegg with a lot less reviews that are 4 or even 3 eggs. I guess I've been waiting for one of them to fail, but so far it does look good! Some claim it runs hot, but the "Idiot Factor" seems high with the ones complaining!

Another thing I would like to mention, is that Once I'm interested in a drive, I thoroughly research them. All the review sites, other forums and so on. I could have had any 500GB drive I wanted, but I chose the AALS based on everything I researched! It's a single 500GB platter, so it's very smooth running, makes very little noise that you can hear, only if the case cover is off. It runs cool and quiet, and does the job intended. Can't ask for more than that!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I actually factored in multiple failures of multiple drives out of one user, on the basis that, you know I honestly can't remember what the basis for it was. There was going to be a reason for it...

Hitachi drive is interesting, but it's early days yet, I heard that Hitachi drives are most prone to failure long-term.