Quick question:

HITACHI UltraStar A7K1000 Enterprise SATA Drives - 7200 RPM - 1 TB
$419 CAD
5 year warranty

OR

HITACHI Deskstar 7K1000 SATA Drives - 7200 RPM - 1TB
$299 CAD
3 year warranty

OR

SEAGATE Barracuda 7200.11 -7200 RPM -1TB
$299 CAD
5 Year warranty

These drives will be in a FirmTek SeriTek/5PM. I'll need 5 of them.

Pick a drive and tell me why....

Quick question:

HITACHI UltraStar A7K1000 Enterprise SATA Drives - 7200 RPM - 1 TB
$419 CAD
5 year warranty

OR

HITACHI Deskstar 7K1000 SATA Drives - 7200 RPM - 1TB
$299 CAD
3 year warranty

OR

SEAGATE Barracuda 7200.11 -7200 RPM -1TB
$299 CAD
5 Year warranty

These drives will be in a FirmTek SeriTek/5PM. I'll need 5 of them.

Pick a drive and tell me why....

My choice is the enterprise class drives. I'm currently using the Seagate flavor. They aren't the fastest but I can say in my own experience they have been trouble free (Unlike the Maxtor or the WD drives I've had).

I have considered the Hitachi enterprise class drives. They are more expensive than the Seagate though.

For me reliability is more important than speed. Saving a few seconds on a render means nothing if you can't actually finish the project. ;)

You are only supposed to post a topic in one thread.

Thanks

SEAGATE Barracuda 7200.11 -7200 RPM -1TB
$299 CAD
5 Year warranty

Pick a drive and thell me why....

I only paid $179.00 for that drive from Best Buy.

Duplicate threads merged. Please don't cross-post on this site.

Sorry. Won't happen again :)

Fry's online has the Seagate drive down to $179.99, but I can't tell if it's the same one... definitely not the enterprise version, but all the specs look the same as the standard version other places...

Are these the same, or is that Fry's drive the 7200.10 version? I hate retailers who don't put all the information on the page. I think I read that 32MB buffers are all 7200.11, but the missing 3 in the model number bugs me... anyone have any idea?

Fry's:

http://shop4.frys.com/product/5478279?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Seagate 1TB Serial ATA/300 32MB Buffer ST1000340AS-RK

Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16822148274

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000340AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s

If you really want to drill into what drive is best for a particular use, the StorageReview.com site (http://www.storagereview.com/) provides excellent in-depth analysis of all drives currently on the market.

Another vote for the Seagate Enterprise Series drives.
Seagate has never let me down. I have heard good things about Hitachi drives also.

I have 35 Hitachi SATA drives here, in various states of use. Ranging from 250 to 750 gigs. Some are working striped RAIDS, some are mirrored RAIDS.

None have failed so far. And some are at least four or five years old.

For archive, I'm using the enterprise class drives.

Three HDD manufacturers stand out for reliablility (in no certain order): Hitachi, Seagate and Western Digital.

Currently the Seagate 7200.11 1TB drives w/32MB cache have the greatest single-drive constant throughput of just over 100MB/s which we've tested true (I posted samples of our drive tests a few months ago). The WD Raptors have incredibly fast *seek* times since they spin so fast, but they don't push out the data as fast as the Seagate's, only around 85MB/s maximum.

Any of the Enterprise-class drives from any of these manufacturers will do fine. I have (2) fiber arrays using "old" technology WD500's that have been rock-solid for almost 4 years now, not one failure. We just recently put (4) of the Seagates into our MacPro for daily use.

If I were going to build a new RAID array today regardless of form factor (SCSI, fiber or eSATA) I'd use the Seagates simply because they'll push out the most data per-drive which will turn into even greater output in an array.

The WD Raptor is still an excellent choice as a boot/OS drive because of it's blistering-fast seek times.

Very well said Robert. Big thanks!

Of course the drive is just the start. Heat kills drives over time, so any of them are subject to problems if they aren't in the right enclosure etc. Also the quality of the interface etc. matters.

A lot of video people I know swear by G-Tech products:

http://www.g-technology.com/Products/Products.cfm

They use Hitachi drives

I just went with this guy:

http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-5pm/

with 5 1TB HITACHI Deskstar 7K1000 SATA Drives - 7200 RPM

Fingers crossed!

You'll be fine with that setup; Firmtek is one of the very few eSATA enclosure manufacturers that actually do it right.

Awsome Robert! Thanks.

I sure hope so cause I'm going to be living and working in multiple countries over the next few years and I need rock solid dependibility.

I aganized a little over going with the Hitachi Ultrastar but the dealer felt it just was not worth the extra coin as I would not be leaving them run 24/7.

He also said the the Seagates did push faster transfers although they kind of went up and down like a heartbeat whereas the Hitachi were constant.

I'll be using the Mackbook Pro and so I'll be limited by its bus speed. I don't plan on using more that 2-3 video tracks so I heard that there won't be dropped frames.

Any thoughts on anything else I might need to be aware of?