Seagate vs. Western Digital 500GB Drives

[noxidius]

Right now, i have a 500gb WD Drive right now in the system, so far its been working out really good, and now its almost filled up, time to buy a second drive? And narrowed it down to those two brands, i can get a WD 500gb for $95ish, and a Seagate for $110ish, which is the better buy, ive been getting recommendations on getting the Seagate as they are very reliable, but the WD is super quiet, but Seagate had 5 year warranty opposed to 3 years.

[silentio]

Seeing how you are impartial to either one, and Seagate has a longer warranty, and WD 500 gigs have dif firmware - some of which gives crazy high read access times of around 19 ms, I would say pick the Seagate.

[Oversized Rooster]

Seeing how you are impartial to either one, and Seagate has a longer warranty, and WD 500 gigs have dif firmware - some of which gives crazy high read access times of around 19 ms, I would say pick the Seagate.

LOL the only drives that did that were those bought at the Black Friday event.

I own three WD5000AAKS drives and all of them have times around 13ms, not 19ms. My drives were each bought about 3 months apart from each other, so that's a healthy enough sample to show their performance.

Anyway, Western Digital over Seagate ANY DAY. You know how it is with Seagates...they seem to do well in synthetic benchmarks, but in real life they're not that great at all.

Go for a Western Digital HD EVERY time. They're cheaper, run quieter and make less heat.

I only run WD drives in all the machines in my household. This is how it is, and this how it will be.

Why pay Seagate an extra 20% premium each time? To help offset their Maxtor-purchase debt?

[noxidius]

yea i was looking at the access time thread, mine does like 13sec access time on 52% cpu usage, and there pretty cheap right now, so might as well go with wd.

[Oversized Rooster]

yea i was looking at the access time thread, mine does like 13sec access time on 52% cpu usage, and there pretty cheap right now, so might as well go with wd.

52% CPU usage?! I hope you meant 5.2%...

My three WD5000AAKS drives average like 2.5% CPU usage.

[Amourek]

Seagates are much too loud for me. I have 2 x WD5000AAKS and I will buy more when the need arises. $86 at Anitec right now.

[Topher]

Every WD drive that I've had has failed on me. Including the one replacement drive I had as well. I've never had a Seagate die on me, so that's what I buy now.

[hagbard]

So far, three of us are reporting 19ms or worse access time with the WD drives, I suspect there are a lot more (one guy has six such drives):



I emailed WD on Sunday night, updated them every day when I did additional testing and as yet, have gotten no replies. I think its either a screwy firmware (such as the Seagate AAK) and they don't want to discuss it, or a screwy chip. Either way, everyone who is reporting this bought during the Black Friday sale:

http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/s...d.php?t=519035

Don't know who's drives to trust as this point, since I also own one of those AAK Seagates.

[Oversized Rooster]

Don't know who's drives to trust as this point, since I also own one of those AAK Seagates.

Well then try the only remaining competition: Hitachi.

[hagbard]

Well then try the only remaining competition: Hitachi.

What about Fujitsu or Samsung? Anyway, I suspect they're all the same...just want to get a product out as fast as they can without any proper product testing.

[Silver Bullet]

I'm with Oversized Rooster, I have Seagate 500GB drives at home and they run hotter and a bit louder than my work 500GB WD AAKS.

My results .. drive was bought early last week (around nov ~20th).

[hagbard]

Oversized Rooster and Sliver Bullet, can you go into HD Tune and tell me your firmware versions? Mine is 12.01C02. Just got a message from yet another person with the same issue, his are also 12.01C02 on all the drives he bought (think he said six, not sure if he's the same guy from the NCIX forum??). He did call WD, and they offered to replace them with refurbs. He said they were not very helpful overall. I'm still waiting for a reply to my email to WD from Sunday!!

Update - the guy with the six drives is the same guy. But there is now another person reporting the same issue on the NCIX forum. That makes...ummm....five of us? Even though I put in for an RMA I'm not sure its worth bothering, I might just keep it for now and slap it in an external case later. I usually buy WD drives, but No more WD drives for me because of the crappy support they've shown (never needed it before).

[Silver Bullet]

Same as yours ...



You really noticing the 7ms difference ? I can't be that bad ?

[hagbard]

Okay, not firmware. What's interesting here is that almost everyone (accept those who bough during the sale) are getting 13ms, while there are four of us who are getting 19ms. No one is getting 14ms, 15ms, 16ms, 17ms, or 18ms. There is clearly a difference between the drives that get 13ms and those that get 19ms. Did they swap chips? Would be interesting to compare circuit boards.

[Oversized Rooster]

Two of my HDs are firmware 12.01C01. The third is 12.01C02.

By the way hagbard, why didn't you CALL WD instead of e-mailing? There is, of course, no excuse for the lack of response in your case. However, I've always received good treatment over the phone, and have never had to even explain too much why I want to RMA a drive.