The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

MS did muck up the power plans but once you know what to tweak they work fine. Nice that you had the driver disc that would do it for you.

 

Oman7,

I don't know. It wouldn't start from the boot, but go right into windows, even if you used the F12 Boot from menu. It would start to read the disk, and then start windows. I never gave a thought to just erasing the files.

Russ

 

Agreed, I find Windows 7 a lot more stable and more resilient to false shutdowns etc. than XP ever was.

 

It's good to see devices supporting 3Tb externally.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817173042
I would much rather a dock though. Or perhaps simply a cable/adapter, with power supply. A dock is certainly the better choice in my case. But I can't seem to find any. The Rosewill is certainly a tempting buy though

Rosewill has one! Yes!!!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182237

Not liking the reviews though. I think I'll give them a bit more time. I just worry about running the 3Tb drives around the clock like I do LOL!

 

I've run 23 WD Green drives, all in a 24/7 environment, and so far so good with all of them. I don't see why the 3TB models would be any different.

 

Oman7,

This what you are looking for?

http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/Product.aspx?C=1346&ID=1895

Russ

 

Sam,

I just did a quick check on Newegg, checking the failure rate on 3TB drives. The 3 most popular drives from the 3 manufacturers. It's fair information because all that had one egg, involved at least one DOA. Surprisingly, Seagate had the lowest percentage of failures at 19% (13 of 70). Next came Hitachi at 20% (42 of 213). Last came WD at 37% (25 of 67).

This does not include replacement drives that arrived DOA, or went belly up shortly after installation. I see very good reason for Kevin to be concerned. I know I would be!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

67 reviews isn't exactly very many compared to other drives which may have thousands of reviews, and we still have to apply the newegg review bias.
I know for a fact that the 2TB drives I use carried a 35% 2 eggs or less rating at one stage, yet despite owning 11 of them, I've not had any issues with any.
There's always risks with buying any data storage product, but I see no evidence that the 3TB drives carry any higher risk than others.

 

Russ, They seem to contradict their statements. They say it supports up to 2Tb, but then they say the above, under 'specification'.
I already have a Thermaltake single dock. It supports my 2Tb greens. I bought it when 3Tb drives were eeking their way out on to the market. So it's highly unlikely that mine will support the 3Tb drives
Having had two Velociraptors go belly up, I'm a little concerned. Given they're not very old though, I won't worry too much just yet. I do see a curious hiccup with both 3Tb drives, when playing back Blu-ray's from the drives. RIGHT when I begin playing, it stutters. But then it doesn't do it anymore. I suppose it could be the way the player interacts with the drive though. It all amounts to coding I'm sure.
Hmm, apparently it doesn't wanna do it, now that I've said that :S Doesn't that figure LOL!

I worry, because I do a lot of video editing with high definition. Both of my green drives are busy in the process. One reads, the other writes and reads simultaneously. I alternate them for new processes. I plan on making my remaining black drive, the simultaneous read/write drive. Need to get my replacement raptor in the tower. At the very least, be sure I didn't get another lemon. Surely not! 3rd time has to be the charm

 

If you want my honest opinion, I don't think WD Velociraptors are very good. With the advent of modern SSDs and the hard disk famine, they're also now wholly redundant. I wouldn't judge the rest of WD's product lineup based on the success or failure of that range.

 

My raptor purchased in 2006 is still going strong. It used to be my OS drive, but is now a data drive, used for Blu-Ray ripping.

 

Yeah likewise my 37GB drives were excellent, but they're not velociraptors...

 

Yep, mine neither.

 

Sam,
There's no bias to consider. There were a total of 80 DOAs out of 350 sold. I didn't even bother to look at 2 eggs, but probably a few more DOAs there as well. Plus there were a good number that involved multiple RMAs. 3TB is not quite ready for "Prime Time" yet! Hell, I'm just starting to consider a 1TB for myself now. Right now the prices are very high, but they will come down because no one is buying much in the way of drives at the moment. I put a Price Notification on Newegg for a 1TB WD Black for $119, and a $79 one on the second place finisher Seagate. Which ever one get's to their price first, I buy!

BTW! I owe you an apology, about the BSODs. It was one of those posts that had a lot of replies, and you know how that can get. Sorry for the mistaken ID.

Russ

 

Where are you getting Newegg's official returns data, down to the specifics of DOA / long-term faults? I wouldn't have thought they'd disclose that information. Besides, they will have sold well in excess of 350 of the 3TB drives, more like thousands or tens of thousands. If you're just going by the reviews, again, you will find exactly the same statistics on pretty much every modern hard drive - reviews suggest a 25% DOA rate - the reality is actually much lower, due to the silent majority that do not bother to write a review of a functional product.

If this level of fault rate dictated 'not ready for prime time' then nobody should ever buy a single mechanical disk drive, as none of them would be...

 

TigerDirect has a Seagate 1.5GB for $69.99, which I just purchased.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5372532&sku=TSD-1500AS2

 

Must be an old item number they forgot to change the price of, you don't see drives that cheap any more!

 

People on NewEgg tend to be boneheads so I NEVER rely on there reviews. If you look at the manufacturer failure rates they are all below 1%. Now those numbers could be skewed but still that is excellent for their warranted period. It can be a problem though after that warranty period.

It is true that WD VR's can be a problem I build plenty of servers for customers that would only use Seagate Enterprise drives after having all sorts of problems with Velociraptors.

I hate to agree with Sam as we don't seem to see things the same but I must here. LOL

Sorry Russ,
Stevo

 

I used an old raptor for transferring of blu-ray files before. I ended up selling it on leachbay.
I imagine the failure rate of a drive surpassing 3 months is fairly low. I just hope I can get more drives for redundancy before they do fail. Failure is inevitable. Just a matter of when. 10yrs? I can certainly hope

 

If you run the higher speed drives 24/7 I would be ready to replace them every 5-6 years which is when they get out of warranty and start to have problems.