WD Green vs. Seagate

_SBradley_ · 29 Jan 2014 at 09:37

Hi guys,

I haven't been following the storage industry recently, but I'm now in the position of wanting to buy a bunch of 4 TB drives (possibly up to eight of 'em).

I have access to WD Green WD40EZRX and Seagate Barracuda ST4000DM000. They're the same price. I have Seagate drives at the moment, and they've been flawless, but I've read a number of negative reviews. So I'm thinking about going for the WD Greens instead. Question, though:

Do these EZRX drives suffer from the "head parking issue" that used to plague the old EARS drives? I cannot find a definitive answer on this. Some people say it's no longer an issue; others post screenshots of the LCC value increasing rapidly. Apparently, wdidle3 is not supported for this drive.

So, basically, I'm after opinions. Seagate or WD? Is the WD head parking issue a concern? How is Seagate reliability these days? If anyone cares to offer their opinion, I'm open.

Thanks,
Simon

ANDARIAL · 29 Jan 2014 at 10:08

Western Digital have a longer warranty I think.I usually go for WD for this reason,also I have found their RMA process to be easy

edit:Just noticed your in AUS dunno about RMA from there

LFletcher · 29 Jan 2014 at 11:34

I wouldn't touch WD Green's with a barge pole. Always had issues with the ones I've had.

I've not used the Seagate ST4000DM000, but have read enough decent things about them from sources I trust to recommend those over the green's. Personally use the 4TB Hitachi's (have around 20 of those) and haven't had any real issues.

malachi · 29 Jan 2014 at 12:31

Used to always buy WD but over the passed 18 months I have had 8 fail out of the 20 Ive brought. A mixure of blues and green's. Some only had 1 year warrenty so I couldn't RMA them.

Before then it was Samsung\Seagate but again, I've had my personal 2tb die on me 3 times so when I brought my 3tb before Christmas I went for Toshiba.

hawkhench · 29 Jan 2014 at 13:06

I've never had issues with my Seagate drives, the only drive I've personally ever had fail on me is a WD Green drive (13 months after buying and out of warranty apparently :mad:

).

I'd go with Seagate and never buy WD again, but I seem to be in a minority based on reviews.

demon8991 · 30 Jan 2014 at 21:58

My suggestion would be neither of these drives, go with a Western Digital Red as these have a better warranty and all in all are a better drive than the Green equivalent.

I have had terrible problems with Seagate drives in the past and from recent reviews I have read it doesn’t look like they have got any better. I have only ever had one Western Digital drive fail on me in the last 15 years and the RMA was faultless. The most reliable hard drive brands I have owned have been Samsung and Western Digital, just a shame Samsung left the HDD market.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Western Digital Caviar Red 4TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD40EFRX - OEM HDD £161.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Red 3TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD30EFRX - OEM HDD £119.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Red 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD20EFRX - OEM HDD £89.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Red 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD10EFRX - OEM HDD £53.99
Total : £435.55 (includes shipping : £8.00).

AtaRo · 31 Jan 2014 at 17:21

What Hard Drive Should I Buy?

Most of my storage drives are 3TB green, the thing with the green drives is you need to set the llc to 5min. or else the drive will crazily park the head every 5 seconds.

Loxa · 31 Jan 2014 at 18:18

I've had a lot of Seagate drives in my times and I have never had any issues, I till have some from 7 years ago working as good now as they did then.

_SBradley_ · 4 Feb 2014 at 02:16

Thanks for the opinions, everyone. It looks like a lot of it might come down to your luck at the time. Some people have had bad experiences with both companies.

I agree about Samsung, though: that's what I'm using now (8 x HD204UI). If only there were an HD404UI, I would snap them up in a heartbeat.

One thought that crossed my mind is that I could cover my bases by going for four of each. The way they'll be set up will be four in one server, and the other four in a second server, with a weekly mirror (or on demand, if there's something in particular that should be backed up immediately). I could use, say, Seagate in the primary server and WD in the backup. (The WDs would then be sleeping most of the time, which should also mitigate their possible head parking issues.)

I'll let you know what I decide, and how the upgrade goes.

Thanks,
Simon

wonko · 4 Feb 2014 at 10:07

It might be worth noting that the Seagate Desktop ST4000DM000 seem to have a fairly aggressive head parking design too (I have a couple that were doing 22 unload cycles/hour for a short while). I would suggest going for the Seagate NAS drives or the WD Red.

Edit: Probably stating the obvious here, but depending on your server OS and what you have running on it, it can be difficult to stop disks being accessed frequently by indexers looking for new media etc.

demon8991 · 4 Feb 2014 at 11:12

_SBradley_ said:
Thanks for the opinions, everyone. It looks like a lot of it might come down to your luck at the time. Some people have had bad experiences with both companies.

I agree about Samsung, though: that's what I'm using now (8 x HD204UI). If only there were an HD404UI, I would snap them up in a heartbeat.

One thought that crossed my mind is that I could cover my bases by going for four of each. The way they'll be set up will be four in one server, and the other four in a second server, with a weekly mirror (or on demand, if there's something in particular that should be backed up immediately). I could use, say, Seagate in the primary server and WD in the backup. (The WDs would then be sleeping most of the time, which should also mitigate their possible head parking issues.)

I'll let you know what I decide, and how the upgrade goes.

Thanks,
Simon

As I suggested previously you are best off getting the WD Red drives they have a better warranty and are designed for prolonged usage.

_SBradley_ · 4 Feb 2014 at 13:50

demon8991 said:
As I suggested previously you are best off getting the WD Red drives they have a better warranty and are designed for prolonged usage.

I'll take a look and see what the price difference is. I shan't be using any form of RAID, but I assume there's a utility to (permanently) disable TLER on the WD Reds.

demon8991 · 4 Feb 2014 at 21:45

_SBradley_ said:
I'll take a look and see what the price difference is. I shan't be using any form of RAID, but I assume there's a utility to (permanently) disable TLER on the WD Reds.

That's fine I don't use my reds in raid either they are just mirrored currently using the simple windows setting.

Also there is absolutely no need to turn off TLER and it will do nothing for you if you do.