WHich 2TB is more reliable: Seagate LP or WD Green?

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lobski2

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I need to get a cheap 2TB soon. The non "green" version is rather out of my price range. The Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB and WD Green 2TB is something I can afford.


Out of the two, which is better and more reliable?
 
The LP and Green 2 TB drives are too new to say for sure which one is more reliable. I have both and both are, so far, working fine. The Seagate LP drives run a little cooler than the WD Green drives.
 
The WD Green consumes less power than the Seagate LP I believe. One thing that's a bit iffy on the WD Green series is that they park their heads ALOT, after 8 seconds of inactivity to save power. Might be a concern for some, but I havent read anything that proves this could leave to shorter life.
 
dydx said:
The WD Green consumes less power than the Seagate LP I believe. One thing that's a bit iffy on the WD Green series is that they park their heads ALOT, after 8 seconds of inactivity to save power. Might be a concern for some, but I havent read anything that proves this could leave to shorter life.
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Code: 
model           size  read/write  idle   notes

ST32000542AS     2tb    6.8      5.5    Barracuda LP, 5900rpm, 32mb, 3yr

WD20EADS         2tb    6.0      3.7    WD Green, 5400rpm, 32mb, 3yr

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1442303
 
I purchased 2 2gig LPs from Fry's for the cheap price of 160ea about a month ago. They're the retail units which come with a 5yr warranty. Today I posted this Seagate Case request:

Having investigate the source of clicking with intervals of 15 minutes I've confirmed through various means of testing that when a SMART query is performed on this drive ST320005N4A1AS-RK, it makes an audible click. The 15 min interval corresponds to the SMART query interval used in iStat Pro OSX widget. By disabling iStat's SMART query and using TechTool Pro 5 to query at will I was able to reproduce the click at will a 100% of the time.

I've read numerous reports citing this 'click' as the "Click of Death", a precursor to failure. I need to know if this drive should be replaced.
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Whenever I buy a Seagate drive I feel like I'm gambling. I know this isn't logical as forums are typically filled with complaints potentially inflating perception of problems. Regardless I've never run into issue with WD; I have first gen 74gig Raptors still in use nearing their 5 year warranty, and 400gig RE2 that have lasted ages.

My hope is the click is benign. If not I'm prepared, I always buy a spare, and these drives are data backups.

My recommendation is choose the cheapest or WD.
 
lobski2 said:
So, do you guys think I should wait for a few more... months?
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For what? Christmas:) These drives are as good or bad as any other drive out in the wild now. I've had mine for about 6 months. I've not had any problems with any of them, but that's not to say that any one of them could go bad tomorrow. And again, that would not say anything to me about long term reliability of the LP/GP drives in general.
 
I have the 1TB for each brand but I don't really like the WD green - there's a lot of 'pause' if the drive is not accessed. After that it's fine. It's annoying and it's for what...2 or 3 watts?

My 320GB runs at 39C
The other drives (1tb seagate, wd green, 500gb caviar) all run at 31C.

My vote is on seagate.
 
What do you plan to use this hard drive for? As a main OS/apps drive, I wouldn't suggest using a Green drive. For storage, the Western Digital Green drives are very good and reliable. I have 2 of the 1TB drives myself.
 
i have 20 of the WD20EADS - only 1 failed so far (after 1 day of use 4 months ago) and these have been up 24/7 for 4 months.

i have had over 50% failure rate in 12 drives of the WD15EADS, though.
 
Whenever I buy a Seagate drive I feel like I'm gambling. I know this isn't logical as forums are typically filled with complaints potentially inflating perception of problems. Regardless I've never run into issue with WD; I have first gen 74gig Raptors still in use nearing their 5 year warranty, and 400gig RE2 that have lasted ages.
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After their firmware fiasco i am in this same boat, i will not buy any Seagate drives until they can prove themselves to be competent again
 
MrGuvernment said:
After their firmware fiasco i am in this same boat, i will not buy any Seagate drives until they can prove themselves to be competent again
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Unfortunately, I think Seagate's reputation took a big hit as a result of that. A few years ago, I was constantly regarding Seagate drives as the best-in-class and they were always one of the brands I would look at first when buying a HDD. Now, two factors have come into play: Western Digital (and other brands) stepping up their game and improving drive reliability/segmentation/quality and Seagate's firmware fiasco.
 
I only own WD hard drives, so regardless of what you're looking for, get the WD Green. :)
 
PC_User said:
Unfortunately, I think Seagate's reputation took a big hit as a result of that. A few years ago, I was constantly regarding Seagate drives as the best-in-class and they were always one of the brands I would look at first when buying a HDD. Now, two factors have come into play: Western Digital (and other brands) stepping up their game and improving drive reliability/segmentation/quality and Seagate's firmware fiasco.
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Same boat, i always bought Segate drives, now i will say their ES2 line is awsome, i have 8 500G in a raid 10 at work and not one has failed in about a years time.,
 
So what IS the deal with WD's head parking controversy? Has there been real evidence that it can shorten the mean time before failure?
 
i'll tell you one thing that is interesting...

the drives originally came with an 8s time period for the head park.

now the drives come with 12.8s time period.

doesn't matter for me since i set all of my wd idle times to 25.5s.
 
pgjensen said:
i'll tell you one thing that is interesting...

the drives originally came with an 8s time period for the head park.

now the drives come with 12.8s time period.

doesn't matter for me since i set all of my wd idle times to 25.5s.
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What do you mean? Where do you set that time and why?
 
^Isnt that designed only for certain models of WD drives? Surely the head parking thing can't be too big of an issue. I would hope that the WD engineers know what they are doing. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can shed some insight on the issue.
 
I'm using 6 of the Seagate ST32000542AS (firmware CC32) in a RAID6 in a NAS.

Of course, I read plenty of ugly reviews between the WD green and this LP, finally went with the Seagate after reading simply about the head parking after brief no access.

I have a 1TB green in an external enclosure and notice large access times if it's idle (as previous post mentioned)

That said, I prolly woulda gone with the WD greens (price, noise, heat, power) - If they weren't for a raid set up

Anyways, I bought 2 spares when I installed them, but so far so good :)

[~] # uptime
09:53:47 up 25 days, 9:34, load average: 0.08, 0.05, 0.00
 
I bought two of the original 750GB WD GP drives 18 months ago, and despite the aggressive head parking, there's no reliability problems with either drive yet. And I use one for data backup, and the other for a boot drive in a main machine.

If you're just selecting a data/backup drive, you've got no worries with GP because it will only load/unload those heads a couple times a day. I guess you might be worried if this is for a boot drive, but here is a thread on SPCR with more detailed information (they tend to get into these silent drives more).

http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=51401&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

My take from the above thread: most people are seeing well under 1000 cycles per-week, and that means they won't hit the design life for 5 years or more. Since very few hard disks are used for this long (they start to get too slow to be useful, or fail), 5+ years life on start/restart is reasonable.
 
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Decided to get a WD Green 2TB. Hopefully heavy torrenting on it doesn't harm it too much..
 
lobski2 said:
I'm still worried about the (slight) "myth" with head parking.
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I think its either a myth or the issue has been resolved. I have 2 WD10EADS drives. The one that I have had for almost a year (power on time of 2040 hours) shows a Load Cycle Count of 404, which isn't nearly as high as others have been reporting.
 
Whether you are able to completely disable the spin-down using wdidle3 depends on the version of the drive you have.

From my experience:

WD20EADS 00s2b0, firmware version 04.05G04: was able to disable park timer completely
WD20EADS 00R6B0, firmware version 01.00A01: when attempting to disable timer, simply lowers it from 8s to 6.3s.

The first 3 drives in my array are 00s2b0. I disabled the spin down and haven't seen any problems in my RAID array. I just got a fourth drive in which is 00R6b0, and have set the time timer to 25.5 seconds (max allowed). We'll see if I have as good luck with this one! From what I've heard, people have had better results with the 00R6b0 models.
 
I read on a forum somewhere that using WDIDLE on consumer green drives voids the warranty. Is there any truth to that?
 
I am a MAXIMUM supporter of WDC drives.I have experienced so many failures and issues with almost all Seagate 7200rpm drives and have never ever taken a liking to Hitachi or Samsung for poor RMA's and lackluster speed/reliability.

I personally own 70 WDC hard drives, not all can be listed, the biggest are in my sig.
I have 6 1TB WD10EAVS (8mb cache) in a RAID5 with no issues. (drives are stock with no TLED manually set)
Out of around 18 WD5000AAKS-00TMA and one or two 00YGA's I have only had 1 failure in the 2-3years I have owned these 500's.
I have never had a Raptor failure.

So that is my conclusion, based on lots of drives and little failures and no DOA's and *no* faulty firmware (Seagate grrr) and dramatically improving reliability (after a small slump in late 2006-2007). Western Digital drives are all I will *ever* trust my data on.
 
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