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17 Serial ATA Hard Drives Compared
TheRaindog writes "The Tech Report has an in-depth look at Maxtor's DiamondMax 11 hard drive that provides some interesting insight on how Seagate's recent acquisition can improve deficiencies in its own drives. More valuable, however, is the fact that the review offers a detailed comparison of 17 different Serial ATA drives from Hitachi, Maxtor, Samsung, Seagate, and Western Digital. Performance is compared across a wide range of typical desktop, multitasking, and multi-user loads, and noise levels and power consumption tests also provide interesting results. Definitely worth a look for anyone in the market for a new hard drive."
These things are loud, especially under load. As quiet as rainfall and as loud as normal conversation?
I'm in the market for one of these -- SATA 500, to match an existing RAID array. Unfortunately, these benchmark numbers just don't tell the whole story. While WD's 500GB RE2 has some of the best stats on the charts, the reliability reviews (at least on Newegg) are dismal. Sadly, this matches with my own experiences with WD.
I'll gladly sacrifice a few percentage points of performance if it means increased reliability, especially when we're talking HD's. I already don't trust the things farther than I can throw 'em (thus the RAID-5).
What you want is irrelevant; what you've chosen is at hand! - Spock, ST VI
More valuable, however, is the fact that the review offers a detailed comparison of 17 different Serial ATA drives from Hitachi, Maxtor, Samsung, Seagate, and Western Digital. Performance is compared across a wide range of typical desktop, multitasking, and multi-user loads, and noise levels and power consumption tests also provide interesting results. Definitely worth a look for anyone in the market for a new hard drive.
It would have been interesting had they done a comparison with one of the Asus Z62F solid state machines that uses flash ram as a hard drive.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Also included: a comparison of fireproof suits with shock wave absorbers.
The Tech Report has an in-depth look at Maxtor's DiamondMax 11 hard drive that provides some interesting insight on how Seagate's recent acquisition can improve deficiencies in its own drives.
Like better SMART support on Seagate's side? I was stunned at how much more SMART capabilities Maxtor drives have compared to Seagates and others. It should almost be a crime to produce a drive that doesn't have a SMART compatible error log (which Maxtors have- you can query it and see when+what the last errors were, for starters.)
I've also been stunned at how BAD modern drives are; a client lost FOUR maxtor drives out of a 12 drive array in the space of 2-3 months, and we literally couldn't replace them fast enough (also, the idiots that he bought the system from TURNED OFF autoverify on the 3ware controller, didn't install the linux drivers, didn't bother updating the card's firmware, etc. That'd be PCs4everyone in Boston, FYI.) I had a Seagate PATA drive with barely a dozen hours on it that started clonking like crazy if you wrote data at high speed to it for too long (no, this was not the 7200.8, which had similar issues, relating to a motor driver circuit overheating. This was a 7200.9!) Seriously- the drive would completely stop writing data if you wrote to it continuously for about 40-50GB. The only thing that let me successfully complete the imaging was a borrowed fan directly cooling the drive.
I'm not too optimistic that Maxtor and Seagate will benefit each other in terms of technology the end user will care about; what is more likely is that Seagate will go enterprise, and Maxtor will go consumer, since that is what each brand is best known for.
Please help metamoderate.
No they're not really. As a recording engineer and programmer HD noise is a concern of mine. My system has 4x Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 and they really are quiet. I've used Barracudas for about 5 years now and this choice was based on HD noise figures from that time. 5 years ago the Barracudas were the quietist thing on the market and beat the competition hands down. Seems like now all the brands are pretty good - actually I'm pleasantly suprised how much improvement there's been judging by the figures. An increase of 3dB is not very much under load and nothing to get upset about. Some of my older drives would probably come in at 60-65dBA which was too loud. My PSU fan has to be the main culprit in any acoustic noise generated nowadays. As for the linked noise centre guides, these are the standard examples given everytime I've seen and there's no way the Barracuda 7200.9 is the same level as a normal conversation. To get this figure they probably average in all the normal silence of speech too I would guess. The band 50-60dBA is actually quite large in terms of SPL - every 6dB gain represents a doubling in power, every 12dB a quadrupling, so it's quite a big range.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Besides price per Gig, my next main concern is, "How long will it last?". Throughput speed and power consumption are important but long life usually beats those criteria. Warranties don't mean much when your data gets hosed from a drive's early death. A five year design life is a nice thing to have but I'd be a bit more comfortable if their warranty extended for that duration.
I've had mixed reliability results from both Seagate and Maxtor. Hopefully this union will take the best from both and result in new drives that regularly surpass the five year design.
Most people generally post when things go wrong or bad; very few seem to post when there is nothing wrong. You get a DOA drive, you're gonna bitch about it because it can't use it. I fit right there as well. I got a WD RE2 drive from newegg for my tivo S3 and it is working like a champ. It's quiet, fast and gives me 60+ hr of HD recording time. But did I post a positive review at newegg?...nope, I didn't. I was too busy using my new toy.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Actually, Storage Review is dying. It's only had two individual reviews this calendar year, plus one 'roundup' and one 'recap' review (as opposed to 12 reviews last year, and down from 56! in 2001.) I'm a big SR fan (at least, I used to be,) but it seems to have gone from a business to a hobby for the creator. You just can't rely on SR to provide timely reviews any more.
As for the notion that they have already reviewed all of these drives? They haven't. Not even in the 'roundup' review.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
So far, I'm not too impressed with SATA drives at all.
Of the four I've bought in the last year and a half, two have failed. I've already replaced one and need to send the other back for a warranty replacement.
Failure seem high on those SATA drives that other people I know have, too.
Maxtor drives are not reliable and I just wouldn't use them. Maybe this is why they have such detailed SMART stats? I don't know but just don't touch them. Great example of false economy as your story shows.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Ok, I'll Bite.
:p
Over 400 g5's deployed at my site over the last 2 years, all with SATA drives. There has been only one drive failure so far,
and it was premature so it was probably a bad unit or the movers roughed up his computer when he changed
offices, because it coincided with that event. We had a bunch of the last edition of the grey g4's with maxtor
hard drives that all seemed to fail within a few months of each other a 3 years back. We also
had a run of bad Maxtors in a batch of small form factor Dell desktops. We lost about 10 in one month.
Hooray for 3 year service plans !
the "Super"drives are dropping like flies though...I keep a stock of replacements in the closet. Good thing
a replacement with dual layer and lightscribe is around 60 bucks these days.
This is all highly subjective and anecdotal and not meant to slander maxtor in any way
music lover since 1969
Where are the 10K RPM SATA hard drives?
As of a year ago, Western Digital was the only one in the market. We need more competition for this so we can get cheap fast hard drives. SCSI is too expensive.
Remember FLASH drives degrade with repeated use. Ok for a digital camera - you can only take photos so fast. But for your important data? NAH! Ok. Upto 30,000 time seems ok, but run FILEMON (sysinternals.com) and you'll be blown away how frequently Windoze writes to your hard drive. All those silly background agents that many programs insist on installing (usually in the tray too) sit there and write to your HDD every 15 seconds.
I'll take a reliable mechanical drive over a FLASH drive, thanks.
(PS. Thanks for choosing this Story. HDDs are important to geeks!!!!! Most important part of their PC really!!!!)
Who else comes with a 5 year warranty standard, on almost all drives?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
This has been bugging me for a long time now. I have googled the question a lot of different ways and not come back with any clear benchmarks. Is someone knows a link, please post it. If not, any slashdotter with access to a proper test lab and drives could generate the info.
My Hypotheses is simple:
1. What really matters for a RAID implementation is Reliability, Size, cost and Speed. In that order.
2. SATA drives come close to SCSI drives in individual performance. Greater data densities help and lower spin rates hurt.
3. So how dose a 7 disk RAID 5 arrays comprised of 300 GB SCSI drives compare to one made up of 500 GB or 750 GB SATA drives ?
Comparisons should be based on High traffic storage intensive applications. Is there still a justification for the price premium on SCSI hard drives or is it now down to tradition?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I believe this has to do with the much weightier (relative to single-purpose devices) laser head arrangement that has the different types of lasers for each standard.
It also has to do with what you use the drive for. Eg: a drive that only ever reads or writes whole discs will last a lot longer than one constantly being used for random accesses.
I definitely think Maxtor gets bad batches as opposed to bad drives in general. I bought five 80Gb DiamondMax9 drives a couple of years ago and all failed within about a month, after moderate use for a year. I only bothered getting one replaced under warranty, and I'm still using that replacement today.
I don't think I'll ever go back to Maxtor, I think a lot of their problem was they were ATA133 not 100 like Seagate, the key to using Maxtors seems to be using them externally - I guess USB2/1394 doesn't push them too hard.
I've just got an Email from my web host, the Maxtor SCSI on my server is about to fail....
I've had one WD2000JS fail on me out of half a dozen 2500KS/2000JS drives I've bought in the last 2 years, so far SATA seems more reliable than IDE to me, I really don't care about performance.
I've had no problems with half a dozen 80Gb Seagate 7200.9 IDE's I've bought lately - typical the one with the best warranty has no problems!
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