I recently bought a Drobo, but I don't have any drives for it yet. I'm wondering which is better, Seagate or Western Digital?

The drives I'm looking at are:

Western Digital WD10EADS Caviar Green 1TB SATA 32MB Cache 3.5IN Hard Drive OEM

WD 1TB Caviar Green

OR

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA2 3.5IN 8.5MS 7200RPM 32MB Hard Drive OEM *3YR MFR Warranty*

Seagate 1TB Barracuda

I know there are reviews on that site, but I'd like to get more opinions on here.

Let me know.

Thanks!

Hey, unless there's specific indications in the reviews that certain drives do not work with your Drobo it's only the matter of preference. 1TB drives proven to be reliable. though you might be careful using "green" drives in RAID, or applications that might require instant or uninterrupted access to the data(stream). Also checkout reviews at newegg.com

Good luck
Alex

I'll keep that in mind. Thanks for your reply!

Nowadays I use WD. I used to buy Seagate only until I found out it acquired Maxtor. I have a stack of failed Maxtor HDs at home. So now I stay away from Maxtor as far away as possible.

There are more anecdotal, small sample-size stories on HD brands than you can imagine. It reaches the level of mythology... in other words, unless there's a particular model with a bad manufacturing series or design fault (and the companies often release this info)... either should be fine.

No difference between the two or between the majority of the major manufacturers of these drive. They are all manufactured in Japan from the same parts. Just go with the one that is highest rated and most affordable.

I use WD Caviar Greens in my Drobo 2.

E-Vener wrote:
I use WD Caviar Greens in my Drobo 2.



Just the answer I was looking for!

Thanks for the replies everyone. I'm going to order a couple of drives tonight.

Here at work (IT for the City Of Portland) we have had nothing but trouble from the Seagates lately (over 10 failures in the last year) and still none from our Western Digital drives.

I have also had two Seagate failures over the last year at home too.

Western Digital isnt perfect...none are, but they have my trust so far.

Roman

I WAS a fan of Seagate until I bought three 500gb SATA drives for a RAID5 configuration.

Two of these drives have failed, one of the origianal drives and one replacement from Seagate! Seagate has a three year waranty for a good reason.

I had to buy a fourth drive for when one fails and needs to go back to Seagate, it's about a 2 week turnaround when one fails, then about 4 hours to rebuild the RAID5.

I would be hard pressed to buy Seagate again.

Same story here, I've got a dead Seagate Barracuda drive sitting on my shelf.

Been using Western Digital since. Specifically I've been using the Western Digital RE3 drives specifically built for RAID applications. The Western Digital RE3 1 TB drive is very fast and very reliable.

Seagate has a slew of firmware problems right now. I would say your safest bet would be to use the WD drives.

just as an FYI I generally find my drives on Pricewatch They have ratings on their resellers. I have purchased from many of the companies several times you just have to watch to see if the item is a refurb or not.

mdude85 wrote:
They are all manufactured in Japan from the same parts. Just go with the one that is highest rated and most affordable.

The Seagate 500GB that I bought two days ago was manufactured in China. And it is replacing a Western Digital that totally destroyed itself one night while the computer was off. Really weird.

There will be problems with any brand of hard drives. Name a brand, and someone will come in this thread and say they have a dead one sitting in a closet. Just back your stuff up regularly

drives are only as good as the last one that failed. Now having said that, I have a DROBO with one 1TB Seagate, one 1TB Hitachi, one 1TB WD Green, and one 750 gig Seagate. My advice, spread the risk around, and just for the sake of paranoia, don't get two drives from the same batch.

I use both in my drobo.
That is the point of it right. You can use any drives you want and if one goes, just replace it with no data loss.

Seagate rocked back in the day. Since the maxtor merger, they're terrible.

I was loyal to Seagate and had 3 drives fail in 14 months. (RAID 5 so I was ok)

I'm a WD fan again.

So it looks like my speculation about Seagate is not far fetched. Everytime there is a a HD failure, open it up, no surprise, it's a Maxtor. I don't have a bad Seagate yet, because I haven't bought them since I found out about their merger with Maxtor.

You should only get the raid edition versions because it is not recommend to raid the regular versions. I usually buy an extra drive and just store the exact data on the second drive. Its cheaper this way because you don't have to buy a network storage like a drobo.

mdude85 wrote:
No difference between the two or between the majority of the major manufacturers of these drive. They are all manufactured in Japan from the same parts. Just go with the one that is highest rated and most affordable.

If only they were made in Japan. It seems most have been sourced to China, for better or worse. The last few drives I bought (4 years ago) were enterprise class, which used to be an indicator of better quality or at least more thorough testing. Not sure if that still holds true.

Same story here, I've got a dead Seagate Barracuda drive sitting on my shelf.
Ditto for my 500GB from Seagate. Dead only after 6 mos.!

Sam tran wrote:
Same story here, I've got a dead Seagate Barracuda drive sitting on my shelf.
Ditto for my 500GB from Seagate. Dead only after 6 mos.!

+1, not only a 1T Seagate Barracuda, but also a 1T Western Digital. Both died this summer.

Seagate and WD through the decades have been like Canon and Nikon. They leap frog each other in technology, neither ever has a decisive technological edge (at least not for long), and each will occasionally take a misstep.

I have 11 or 12 Western Digital My Book external drives, both 500MB and 1TB

they are durable, reliable & fast
and I'm an equipment abuser

every weekend I set up my laptop and a drive in a dusty arena, shoot dog agility, dump my cards on to the drive ... often a drive will travel with me to 8 - 10 different arenas before it retires to my desk

I dump 1000's of images every weekend onto it, batch these images while dumping more, am using LR to show more images to clients, and the drives never slow down

at home, I'm sorting then uploading while editing other images on the drives
I've dropped them, they've been so dusty you begin to worry about them and they keep on ticking

knocking on wood, but have never had one totally fail, the oldest one is tempermental about accessing it, but once I find a way in, everything works fine

only the newest 2 or 3 are plugged in all the time, the rest just sit on a shelf ready to be hooked up again when I need images off of them.

http://www.staples.com/Western-Digital-My-Book-Essential-1TB-Edition-External-Hard-Drive/product_819934?cmArea=SEARCH

I choose WD cuz I had Maxtor and Seagate in the past and they both fried up meanwhile WD is still working until I sent it to recycle station.

+1 WD

I have 4 1TB WD greens in my Drobo and they have worked great.
I am amazed how cool and quiet the Drobo is