# Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 , WD Caviar Black or Hitachi 7K1000.D



## Rolley

Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 , WD Caviar Black or Hitachi 7K1000.D

All 1TB Seagate new model Barracuda - $110
Hitachi 7K1000.D - $110
WD Caviar Black $130


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## Kramy

Which country are you in? There might be better deals somewhere.









The 3TB Seagate is the newest fastest one - I don't believe the 1Tb is quite as fast. I'd probably go for the WD 1TB Black, unless price is an issue - then I'd go for the Hitachi 7K1000.D


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## Rolley

Well how about the 2TB Seagate because that's only $120-130
Oh and I live in Australia


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## Kramy

Larger drives generally have a performance edge over smaller drives. That's because data is located physically closer. If your 2TB drive has to seek 400GB in, that's only 20% across the platters... but if a 1TB drive does, it has to go 40% across. 500GB... 80% across.

Guess which is faster?









If you can get a 2TB or 3TB for roughly the same price, then go for it. The bigger the better, since the unused space effectively becomes bonus speed.


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## Rolley

Does anyone know if Seagate is reliable? I've heard wonderful things about the 2TB Barracuda performance but some people are saying they get it DOA etc or they hate Seagate or something. Any opinions?


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## james_ant

I've had both Seagate and WD drives for years. I actually just bought a ST1000DM003 and it seems to be giving me great performance.

I haven't run any benchmarks yet, maybe I will do that and report back.

Anyways larger drives should not give better performance since these are 1tb per platter. So the 2tb drive would have two platters, the 3tb drive would have 3 platters. The data would not be physically closer as all platters have the same density.


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## Rolley

Have you ever experienced problems or issues with Seagate?


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## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Rolley*
> 
> Does anyone know if Seagate is reliable? I've heard wonderful things about the 2TB Barracuda performance but some people are saying they get it DOA etc or they hate Seagate or something. Any opinions?


I've had absolutely horrible luck with Seagate and won't touch their drives with a ten foot pole. None of my PCs or the PCs I build come with them.

That said, I am interested in their Momentus XT line, and I like what they're doing with their new generation. (Getting rid of "Green" lines and focusing on a single core lineup.) The only downside is their reduced warranty, which given my history with their drives means I won't be trying their new ones. (Momentus XT has a longer warranty - I might try them when I get a laptop.)

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *james_ant*
> 
> Anyways larger drives should not give better performance since these are 1tb per platter. So the 2tb drive would have two platters, the 3tb drive would have 3 platters. The data would not be physically closer as all platters have the same density.


Drives alternate between tracks on different sides of different platters.

So yes, the data will be physically closer to the edge of the drive. On a 2TB drive the data 200GB in will be accessed as fast as the data 100GB in on a 1TB drive, and quite a bit faster than the data 200GB in on that 1TB drive.

As you near the end of the drive (where performance really arcs downward) the difference becomes even more pronounced. Somewhere around 800GB-1000GB the 2TB drive will be almost twice as fast as the 1TB drive (sequential performance), in addition to having faster seek times.


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## james_ant

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Rolley*
> 
> Have you ever experienced problems or issues with Seagate?


I have a 2tb storage drive, two 1tb drives, and the latest 1tb per platter drive that is in question here. I have never had a problem with them. The reason seagate has a bad rap is because they had some problems with with some of their older drives a couple years back. I don't remember the specifics and it never effected me because I never bought any of the problem drives.

Anyway I ran a benchmark on my new ST1000DM003 and the results are very impressive to me.


Here's a review to compare it to the WD drive, this review. The Seagate is a newer drive so it shouldn't be surprising that it beats WD.

Another thing to note is that its a very quiet drive, much quieter than my old 640gb black drive that I replaced with it.


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## LongRod

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *james_ant*
> 
> Quote:
> 
> 
> 
> Originally Posted by *Rolley*
> 
> Have you ever experienced problems or issues with Seagate?
> 
> 
> 
> I have a 2tb storage drive, two 1tb drives, and the latest 1tb per platter drive that is in question here. I have never had a problem with them. The reason seagate has a bad rap is because they had some problems with with some of their older drives a couple years back. I don't remember the specifics and it never effected me because I never bought any of the problem drives.
> 
> Anyway I ran a benchmark on my new ST1000DM003 and the results are very impressive to me.
> 
> 
> Here's a review to compare it to the WD drive, this review. The Seagate is a newer drive so it shouldn't be surprising that it beats WD.
> 
> Another thing to note is that its a very quiet drive, much quieter than my old 640gb black drive that I replaced with it.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Recently, my WD Green 500GB **** out on me, and I needed an HD until I got it back from WD, and got the ST1000DM003, and I must say, the performance jump was insane.

Everything responds much faster, and it's not a fresh windows install, because the Seagate drive already has 500GB used, but it just responds MUCH faster.

It's a bit louder then I'd like when I game, but it doesn't bother me when my CM Hyper 212 kicks in.

All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with this Seagate drive, they get a bad rap or dying, but they feel very fast.


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## MGX1016

I have had abs horrible luck with Seagate too, not coming near my PCs.. I even just lost a RAID 5 that someone built with Seagates..

I had 3-4 WD drives (Blues) crap out on my last month and looks like another one is dying now.. RMA is a cakewalk, they even honored the HDD sent in an envelope and they usually upgrade your drive!


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## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *LongRod*
> 
> Yeah. Recently, my WD Green 500GB **** out on me, and I needed an HD until I got it back from WD, and got the ST1000DM003, and I must say, the performance jump was insane.
> 
> Everything responds much faster, and it's not a fresh windows install, because the Seagate drive already has 500GB used, but it just responds MUCH faster.
> 
> It's a bit louder then I'd like when I game, but it doesn't bother me when my CM Hyper 212 kicks in.
> 
> All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with this Seagate drive, they get a bad rap or dying, but they feel very fast.


Going from a lowly WD Green (which probably had 2 or 3 platters, and maxed out somewhere around 60MB/sec sequential? Oh, with 18ms+ access times?







) to a Seagate drive with more than triple the speed and faster access times... oh heck yes, you'll feel it.

My Steam games drive (which I got roughly 2 years ago) is a Hitachi 7200RPM 2TB drive. Sequential speeds are much closer to that Seagate drive, so I doubt I'd notice much of an improvement. But anyone upgrading from older tech will definitely feel the difference.


















Edit: That Seagate drive is 1TB, so this graph is easier to compare with:


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## Baasha

I am about to buy a few 2TB drives for a NAS array and am considering either the WD 2TB Caviar Black or the Seagate Barracuda 2TB (both 7200RPM 64MB cache).

The question I have is why is the Seagate 2TB only $119.99 per drive while the Caviar Black 2TB is almost DOUBLE the cost at $213.99?!? Both seem to have the same specs (2TB, 7200RPM, 64MB Cache) so it's very strange that one drive is almost $100 more than the other. Am I missing something regarding the specs that separates these drives from one another?

I want the best performance and reliability so which one do you guys recommend?


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## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Baasha*
> 
> I am about to buy a few 2TB drives for a NAS array and am considering either the WD 2TB Caviar Black or the Seagate Barracuda 2TB (both 7200RPM 64MB cache).
> 
> The question I have is why is the Seagate 2TB only $119.99 per drive while the Caviar Black 2TB is almost DOUBLE the cost at $213.99?!? Both seem to have the same specs (2TB, 7200RPM, 64MB Cache) so it's very strange that one drive is almost $100 more than the other. Am I missing something regarding the specs that separates these drives from one another?
> 
> *I want the best performance and reliability so which one do you guys recommend?*


Part of the price difference is because WD was the hardest hit by the Thailand flooding - their prices increased the most.

I would actually recommend Hitachi 2TB drives instead. Here's my reasoning...

WD's Blacks have had incredible reliability on their side for a while. Many years. Great warranties too. When 2TB Blacks dropped to around $130 sometime last year, lots of people jumped on them.

But from what I've heard, the 2TB Blacks haven't been as reliable as WD's other Blacks. (640GB and 1TB in particular are supremely reliable.) The 2TB Blacks are not awful, but it is more common that people have issues with them. I suspect it may have something to do with the platter count - I observed that WD's first Green drives also had issues, but they were all 4-platter. People with 3-platter Greens (the norm, now) report that they've been working perfectly. The 2TB Black is a 4-platter drive, so that may have something to do with its decreased reliability.

The ST2000DM001 is a 2-platter drive, so it should be highly reliable. But it's also a Seagate. Seagate bungled the launch batches of their 7200.10, 7200.12, Momentus XT, LP 5900, and Momentus 7200 drives. The 7200.11 generation was completely bad due to a firmware glitch which can brick the drives. The ST2000DM001 is a relatively new drive - the highest platter density of any drive so far, and also the fastest - but it is new. Do you like to gamble?







To make it even more risky, Seagate slashed their warranty back.

Now, all that said, why do I recommend Hitachi? Well that's simple. First, my Steam games drive is a 7200RPM 2TB Hitachi, which has been working fine for a few years. I've installed a few for other people - no bad experiences here with new Hitachi drives.









Second, the guys over at BackBlaze.com (building a huge cloud storage array out of consumer parts) said that after testing Seagate, WD, and Hitachi drives, the Hitachi drives had the lowest failure rate so far.
http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v2-0revealing-more-secrets/

All signs point to Hitachi being the king of reliability on 2-3TB drives for the time being.

The Seagate drives may prove to be just as reliable, but we won't know for a few years. If they do have a shorter than average lifespan, the newly cut warranty makes it likely that you won't be able to RMA the drives. That is probably how they can offer the prices that they currently offer.


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## jrl1357

All the stxxxxdm00x models have 1tb per platter density, so they should be a bit faster then the 500gb/platter blacks. My seagate external drive is running fine, but i think my wd is clicking....


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## jrl1357

Ive also heard that out of wd seagate and hitici hitici is the least reliable, and slowest. Im no storage master, but simply the rateing on newegg suggest the seagates and wds are much better then the hitichis. I would get the st1000dm003 or the 2 or 3tb versions of it. The 3tb for $160 has to be yhe best bang for buck out there today.


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## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *jrl1357*
> 
> Ive also heard that out of wd seagate and hitici hitici is the least reliable, and slowest.


Up until 7K1000.D, that was true. 7K1000.C drives were slower than 1TB Seagate/WD drives, and may have been less reliable. (7K1000.B were)

But out of the large capacity drives, Hitachi has so far been very solid. Things change generation by generation - it's hard to keep up.


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## LongRod

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Going from a lowly WD Green (which probably had 2 or 3 platters, and maxed out somewhere around 60MB/sec sequential? Oh, with 18ms+ access times?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ) to a Seagate drive with more than triple the speed and faster access times... oh heck yes, you'll feel it.
> My Steam games drive (which I got roughly 2 years ago) is a Hitachi 7200RPM 2TB drive. Sequential speeds are much closer to that Seagate drive, so I doubt I'd notice much of an improvement. But anyone upgrading from older tech will definitely feel the difference.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Edit: That Seagate drive is 1TB, so this graph is easier to compare with:


Yeah, I guess you could say that I felt a difference, a MAJOR one in fact. I never though that my HD was that old, but then again, it was 4 years old... xD

Best part about this new drive, is that games load INSANELY fast now, compared to my last drive.

I now see the importance of upgrading HD's, as new technology comes out, because EVERYTHING is snappier. Guess HD's were the only computer part I took for granted.


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## jrl1357

Ive used tons of seagates, while there have been bad ones no more then the bad wds ive. Like kramy pointed out about the hiitchis things change so fast its hard to keep up, all companys seem to be improving on reliablity. My vote is still on the stxxxdm00x, there the fastest pure 7200 rpm drives out there (of chrose the velocitapor and for cached data the momentus xt (thou a bit slower on non-cached data) are faster, there also more expensive, out of this budget for what you want storage wise) in pure harddrives, the newest barracuda line cant be beaten


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## Abs.exe

I would recommend you to stay away from Seagate.

Just like staying away from Acer, there is no real reason why, just my opinion.
Seagate is always the cheapest and there is a reason for that.

WD Blacks are worth the premium.
One client build I went from a WD Blue 1TB to a WD Black 1TB and it was much faster to boot.


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## jrl1357

The seagates are cheaper cause wd overcharges for its cavier blacks. They great drives, faster then cavier blacks and in my experince not as 'unreliable' as they are being made here. The reason people like you stay a way from seagtes is the same reason people stay away from acer, the same reason dell uses manly intels and the same reason people buy ms office. Branding. Its stupid, uninformed and dosnt belong here. If someone has a reason to stay away from seagate, i respect that. But this 'no real reason' is just bs.


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## MGX1016

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *jrl1357*
> 
> The seagates are cheaper cause wd overcharges for its cavier blacks. They great drives, faster then cavier blacks and in my experince not as 'unreliable' as they are being made here. The reason people like you stay a way from seagtes is the same reason people stay away from acer, the same reason dell uses manly intels and the same reason people buy ms office. Branding. Its stupid, uninformed and dosnt belong here. If someone has a reason to stay away from seagate, i respect that. But this 'no real reason' is just bs.


Quote:


> The ST2000DM001 is a 2-platter drive, so it should be highly reliable. But it's also a Seagate. Seagate bungled the launch batches of their 7200.10, 7200.12, Momentus XT, LP 5900, and Momentus 7200 drives. The 7200.11 generation was completely bad due to a firmware glitch which can brick the drives. The ST2000DM001 is a relatively new drive - the highest platter density of any drive so far, and also the fastest - but it is new. Do you like to gamble? biggrin.gif To make it even more risky, Seagate slashed their warranty back.


I had a raid0 array fail, both seagates at the SAME TIME and when I went to RMA it said serial not found, aimlessly wandering their website, trying to contact them, emails... no luck. I ended up throwing out in warranty drives. WD RMA is amazing, next day air after they process your RMA, they can do an advanced RMA if you want and they usually upgrade your drive.. I don't get what else you want


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## jrl1357

if they failed at the same time it was likely not the drives and more likely the controller or some connecting problem. the odds of even the most unreliable drive failing at the exact same time is like 1/1000000000000


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## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *jrl1357*
> 
> if they failed at the same time it was likely not the drives and more likely the controller or some connecting problem. the odds of even the most unreliable drive failing at the exact same time is like 1/1000000000000


I had a RAID 0+1 array break because of two Seagates failing simultaneously. One was giving me I/O flatlines, so I RMA'd it and ordered another. (RMA's can take over a month in Canada) Within a few days (before I got a replacement in) another drive broke completely - failed to spin up, no SMART warning. Array dead.

With other companies I would say coincidence. With Seagate, there are enough people out there with bad experiences like that - I don't think it's coincidence. Something in their design is flawed or made cheaper than the other brands. There's also the issue that all my RMA'd Seagate drives failed again, and some failed a third time. After that unreliable streak, I relegated them to systems where they'd be idle rather than being put under any wear and tear. So far so good, but I still don't trust them.

All my RMA'd WD drives have not failed. WD sends me brand new drives, and Seagate sends repaired refurbs.







I use WD drives in any system that'll be under heavy load. Usually they outlast their warranties. (I had a Raptor last 9 years of 16/7/365 use - over 3 hours per day of heavy I/O.)


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## jrl1357

you your self said things change so fast you cant keep up, thats why you suggested the hitchi.... or are you implying a double standard? where hchichi gets to turn a new leaf and be reliable but seagates always not? you seem to be giving contradictory statements here. ive never, ever had a problem with a seagate, they're faster, cheaper, and seem to me from my experience of on-par reliability. in fact, i have a raid five array in my home sever running right now... 4 years and counting. dont get me wrong, wds a great brand and you cant go wrong with a black, but i don't think seagates being given enough credit here. it also amuses me how kramy, the one with the _OCZ_ ssd can be telling us what drives arnt and are reliable


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## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *jrl1357*
> 
> you your self said things change so fast you cant keep up, thats why you suggested the hitchi.... or are you implying a double standard?


No double standard. I tested both 7200.10 and 7200.12 (skipped the POS 7200.11's







) Will 7200.14 prove the same? Time will tell.









Seagate has really bad launches. Nearly all their newly released products end up having reliability/longevity issues. (7200.10, 7200.11, launch 7200.12's, launch Momentus XT 500GB's, LP 5900 drives, etc.) A generation or two might be a fluke, but 5+ generations or lines is not. There is an issue with their design, and we won't know if it has been corrected for a few years.







Quote:


> Originally Posted by *jrl1357*
> 
> where hchichi gets to turn a new leaf and be reliable but seagates always not? you seem to be giving contradictory statements here.


Hitachi was "turning over a new leaf" with their 7K1000.C generation - unlike the gens before then, there weren't many reports of drive failures. Of course, the .C didn't have the raw performance that it needed. 7K1000.D (and their 2TB/3TB drives) continue the trend of their drives being reliable while bringing performance way ahead. Seagate drives instead have had shaky launches, often die within warranty, etc.; they also just cut their warranties back, so that tells you how much faith they have in their products. The trend is bad.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *jrl1357*
> 
> ive never, ever had a problem with a seagate, they're faster, cheaper, and seem to me from my experience of on-par reliability. in fact, i have a raid five array in my home sever running right now... 4 years and counting. dont get me wrong, wds a great brand and you cant go wrong with a black, but i don't think seagates being given enough credit here. it also amuses me how kramy, the one with the _OCZ_ ssd can be telling us what drives arnt and are reliable


Good for you.

Don't get me started on OCZ SSDs. That company just doesn't grasp Firmware. Honestly, the company is a bit like Seagate - almost every product they launch has reliability issues for a while.







My Solid2 30GB (Indilinx) drive kept corrupting data until v1.7 firmware came out - getting it was more of a price based decision. At the time an Intel 80GB SSD cost about $300, so I couldn't turn down 30GB for under $90.

That said, it is a bit ironic - I installed some OCZ SSDs in some business PCs a few years back. Never installed any firmware updates, and have never had any issues. But after the debacle with my Indilinx SSD, I did research SSD firmware far more to try to understand how it works. I've been recommending M4's to people for a long time now - I started recommending them about 3 months before they became popular on Overclock.net. Back then everyone was saying, "No, go SF-2281!" (And everyone that did got to enjoy 6+ months of BSODs.







)

Edit: The way this thread is going, you're probably going to want examples, or you'll just ignore what I've written.

-7200.10's had a chirping issue. After the drives started chirping, they would fail within 6-24 months. (100% failure rate within my test batch of 8; different rigs, different controllers, different PSUs)
-7200.11's had the firmware issue which bricked the drive. (affected the entire generation)
-Many launch 7200.12's failed within a year or two, although subsequent batches were okay. That's how the Samsung F3 1TB's gained popularity here - so many people were having issues with Seagate drives, at the time...
-Launch Momentus XT 500GB's had their lockup issues, high power consumption, inadequate caching performance. (Their stable firmware scored about as bad as a Scorpio Black 500GB in games; bad, since the Momentus XT drives cost double.) Later Seagate released beta firmware and eventually corrected that. Oh, and the random death issues. (Lots of people were complaining on forums about their launch 500GB XT's dying without warning one day. It appears to be a firmware issue which bricks the drives. There is no SMART warning.) Few people with the Beta firmware complained about such bricking, but I can't say whether that's because the beta firmware corrected it, or just because of the percentage using "Stable" vs "Beta" firmware.
-LP 5900 drives had several bad launch batches. (bad as in "Paperweight") At one point the Newegg reviews were 90% 1-star. Some people had bought 6+ drives for RAID arrays, only to have 6/6 die within a month. Tons of the drives were just DOA, and their replacements died soon after. The issues were corrected within 2 months, but by then LP 5900 drives had an extremely bad rap. It's no surprise Seagate axed the line.

Now don't get me wrong. Other companies have flawed batches and generations too. WD, for example, seemed to have issues producing 4-platter drives. Their 4-platter Greens had very high 6-12 month failure rates. I'd guess that like the LP 5900 drives, their launch batches were up around 100%. The company replaced all RMA'd 4-platter Greens with brand new 3-platter Greens. And while 1TB Blacks (2-platter) were down around a 1-2% annual failure rate, their 2TB Blacks (4-platter) were up around 10%. That's a lot higher!

Still, it's not as bad as Seagate. And just because you lucked out doesn't mean other people will. People have posted threads asking which drives are the most reliable, and by far all the horror stories are Seagate ones. On overclock.net it seems that for every 2 people that had an issue with a WD/Samsung/Hitachi drive, there are 8 or more that have had issues with Seagate drives.


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## jrl1357

Haha yeah sf sucks. What are the percentages on these? Failure rates of western digital vs seagate drives? Wds might be better, but if seagates is already like .05 percent it might not matter and then i would say chose the barracuda for speed


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## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *jrl1357*
> 
> Haha yeah sf sucks. What are the percentages on these? Failure rates of western digital vs seagate drives? Wds might be better, but if seagates is already like .05 percent it might not matter and then i would say chose the barracuda for speed


Seagate's annual failure rate is apparently 1-2%. But it's been proven that not all RMA's count as failures, because the 7200.11 generation certainly did not have a 1-2% failure rate; nor did the 5900 LP's.








If you send a drive in and they repair it and send it out again, it's not considered a failure. Firmware issues aren't considered failures. That means most of the Momentus XT issues weren't "failures", because it wasn't mechanical failure. (Just firmware issues.)

By that definition, companies like OCZ must have a 0.05% annual failure rate?









WD's statistics are more accurate. I don't recall the exact numbers, but their mumbo jumbo in one of their long PDF reports had numbers from 1-2% for Blacks/Raptors, and around 4% for Blues. It was all statistics terminology, so I couldn't repeat it if I tried. That's annual failure rates within warranty.


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## jrl1357

they still look at least on par. as a side note, weren't most momentus xt issues fixed in the sen gen?


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## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *jrl1357*
> 
> they still look at least on par. as a side note, weren't most momentus xt issues fixed in the sen gen?


I haven't looked into them recently. But when I did, I didn't see any huge threads with people complaining and bashing the product. So yes, the Momentus XT 750GB Gen2's may be solid.


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## Blackbird_CaD_

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Kramy*
> 
> Drives alternate between tracks on different sides of different platters.
> So yes, the data will be physically closer to the edge of the drive. On a 2TB drive the data 200GB in will be accessed as fast as the data 100GB in on a 1TB drive, and quite a bit faster than the data 200GB in on that 1TB drive.
> As you near the end of the drive (where performance really arcs downward) the difference becomes even more pronounced. Somewhere around 800GB-1000GB the 2TB drive will be almost twice as fast as the 1TB drive (sequential performance), in addition to having faster seek times.


I don't understand the explanation.
I have read all reviews about the Barracuda HDD and they don't mention in any review that for example the 3TB version is faster than the 1TB version.
And here: http://images.anandtech.com/doci/5042/Screen%20Shot%202011-11-01%20at%201.20.26%20AM.png they perform identic.
And Kramy is the only one in this thread who have said this.

So.. nothing except Kramy's post indicate that 1TB is fast, 2TB faster, 3TB fastest.
Is the 3TB version REALLY faster than the other 2 HDD's?


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## RobotDevil666

I just want to chip in here , i got my Seagate ST1000DM003 and as far as it's really fast , big and had great price , thing is it has this annoying chirping sound issue.
It sounds like this :

http://vimeo.com/39254219

I also own Hitachi 3TB drive which does not have this issue .... .. just saying , thought it's a thing you might want to know.

Read more here:

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Barracuda-XT-Barracuda-Barracuda/3TB-Barracuda-STBD3000100-Making-Weird-quot-chirp-quot-Sound/td-p/156353


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## Kramy

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Blackbird_CaD_*
> 
> I have read all reviews about the Barracuda HDD and they don't mention in any review that for example the 3TB version is faster than the 1TB version.


Why would they? All HDD performance is position based.

Anandtech does mention it in their newest Velociraptor review, but most just skip over it. (Assumed knowledge)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5729/western-digital-velociraptor-1tb-wd1000dhtz-review/2
Quote:


> Although logical block addressing works linearly, hard drives are made up of one or more circular platters. Platters are written from the outside inward in order to maximize performance (you cover more data in a single rotation of an outer track vs an inner track). I used HDTach to characterize the new VelociRaptor's performance across all LBAs:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The inner most tracks on the VelociRaptor are still accessible at 123MB/s - faster than any 3.5" drive we've tested here. One benefit to using 2.5" platters is remarkably consistent performance across all tracks. Average performance across all tracks is 173MB/s.


Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Blackbird_CaD_*
> 
> And here: http://images.anandtech.com/doci/5042/Screen%20Shot%202011-11-01%20at%201.20.26%20AM.png they perform identic.
> And Kramy is the only one in this thread who have said this.


Yes. 33% into one drive is the same speed as 33% into another from the same generation.
Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Blackbird_CaD_*
> 
> So.. nothing except Kramy's post indicate that 1TB is fast, 2TB faster, 3TB fastest.
> Is the 3TB version REALLY faster than the other 2 HDD's?


Here, I'll make it easy to understand. HDTune tests the entire drive, so if you test all three of those drives, you should get roughly the same results for each one - except that one is 1TB, one is 2TB, and one is 3TB.

But if you take a larger drive and test a smaller portion of it, you'll see that the drive can access that smaller portion quicker than the smaller drive of identical performance. That's because the head doesn't have to travel as far physically, and you're reading off tracks closer to the edge. (faster)


























In this case I am using a 1.5TB drive and 1000/500GB tests to simulate how a 3TB drive would improve at 2TB and 1TB. The actual numbers aren't very important - it's how much they change. Access times drop, the average speed goes up. The exact same thing happens for the 3TB drive.


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