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  • #2138757

    Upgrading hard drive, should it be Seagate or Western Digital?

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    by gary5646 ·

    I have an HP DV2000 and I am stuck in between the following two upgrades:

    http://www.cpumedics.com/534129-001.html
    http://www.cpumedics.com/575402-001.html

    They are the same price, same specs just different brand. I don’t know too much about hard drives, I just need an opinion of an experienced owner of either drive.

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    • #2886457

      Clarifications

      by gary5646 ·

      In reply to Upgrading hard drive, should it be Seagate or Western Digital?

      Clarifications

    • #2886455

      Both are the same speed

      by oh smeg ·

      In reply to Upgrading hard drive, should it be Seagate or Western Digital?

      And price so all other things being equal I would chose the Seagate Drive. They come with a 3 year warranty and that is why I would go with Seagate.

      Col

    • #2886450

      Western Digital has longer warranties and a great website

      by david.paige ·

      In reply to Upgrading hard drive, should it be Seagate or Western Digital?

      Western Digital Caviar (3.5-inch) and Scorpio (2.5-inch) Black drives have five-year warranty. They also have an excellent website for registering your hard drives. Their warranty replacement service is also first rate, as I discovered when I had to replace a WD drive a few months ago.

      Most other hard drives, including Seagate, seem to have warranties no longer than 2 years. One other thing. You will probably notice the difference between a 5400 and 7200 rpm drive. Go for the 7200.

      • #2886449
        Avatar photo

        Reponse To Answer

        by hal 9000 ·

        In reply to Western Digital has longer warranties and a great website

        Neither of the listed drives where 7200 both are 5400 drives.

        Also the Seagate Warranty is 3 years and I’ve only ever had to replace 2 Seagate drives where as I’ve replaced lots of WD units over the years.

        Both have very good warranty service though.

      • #2887063

        Reponse To Answer

        by zazimi ·

        In reply to Western Digital has longer warranties and a great website

        HAL, they are both 7200rpm. That’s half the point of the Black edition 🙂

      • #2887036
        Avatar photo

        Reponse To Answer

        by hal 9000 ·

        In reply to Western Digital has longer warranties and a great website

        zazimi

        I’m more than slightly lost with your response. What are both 720 RPM Drives the ones that the Original Poster Asked about are both 5400 RPM Drives the Seagate is listed as this

        [i]Hard Drive Specifications

        Enclosure Internal
        Capacity 500 GB
        Speed 5,400 RPM
        Interface SATA
        Form Factor
        2.5″
        Application LAPTOP [/i] the WD Specifications are

        [i]Hewlett-Packard (HP) 575402-001 – 500GB 5.4K RPM SATA 2.5″ Hard Drive (HDD)
        Hewlett-Packard (HP) 575402-001 – 500GB SATA Hard Disk Drive (HDD)[/i]

        Both drives asked about are 5400 RPM Drives. I’m not disputing the benefits of faster HDD’s in NB but when the OP asked about 2 particular drives I don’t see the point in answering a question about drives that they didn’t ask about.

        They very specifically asked about 2 specific Drives and not any others so I assume that they have a reason for wanting to buy from this supplier and wants one of the drives that they asked about.

        For that Reason I didn’t make any mention of Samsung, Hitachi or other drives just the HP Supplied Seagate and the HP Supplied WD that they asked about. 😉

      • #2431384

        Reponse To Answer

        by felixq78 ·

        In reply to Western Digital has longer warranties and a great website

        I bought a Western Digital 2TB HD over a year ago and it started playing up. Took it to my local computer guy who sold it to me and he told me it was faulty. He sent it back to WD who replaced it with a new one “no questions asked” That’s good warranty back up service, I’m very happy.

    • #2886434

      WD vs Seagate

      by will s. ·

      In reply to Upgrading hard drive, should it be Seagate or Western Digital?

      I typically recommend the WD Caviar Black to my clients because of WD’s warranty and return policy. They have always responded quickly and efficiently for any RMA issues.

      On the other hand, I have never done and RMA with Seagate…

    • #2886428

      Actually, I just did a RMA with WD, after replacing a Seagate drive

      by robo_dev ·

      In reply to Upgrading hard drive, should it be Seagate or Western Digital?

      Personally, I like WD, their warranty is better. I had to attempt data recovery on a co-worker’s Seagate that had the ‘click of death’ two years ago (data was NOT recoverable).

      I replaced it with a WD Caviar. After two years, Windows would not start. The drive failed SMART diags BUT ALL data was recovered.

      Believe it or not, the owner had just done a full backup (as I recommended she do after losing all her data once), and when she restarted the PC that same day, Windows went BSOD, as the drive was having issues.

      I swapped it thru WD, no problem. I simply entered the serial number in their website and it said ‘in warranty’…I then registered the drive to get a RMA number, shipped it to them ($10 of my cost) and it took about a week to get a replacement.

    • #2887123

      Preferences

      by rayl-nc ·

      In reply to Upgrading hard drive, should it be Seagate or Western Digital?

      I have replaced a lot of hard drives over the years, and have seen both brands fail. My current preference of the two brands at the moment is Seagate because I have seen less fail. But it seems every few years that my opinion changes based on experiences. I start seeing more and more failures of a particular brand that I used to favor, and then my opinion will sway the other direction.

      Wish you the best in your choice, and suspect either drive likely be just fine and reliable.

      • #2887116

        Reponse To Answer

        by smartacew0lf ·

        In reply to Preferences

        My own experiences mirror yours in this regard. These days, I never pass on the opportunity to emphasize the need for backups to my clients. Especially when replacing a faulty drive with a new one. Seems to be a coin toss which is best on any given day.

    • #2887115

      One thing that worries me regarding these 2 links…

      by smartacew0lf ·

      In reply to Upgrading hard drive, should it be Seagate or Western Digital?

      is that you are purchasing these drives with the HP label on them. This “seems” to indicate that you are buying OEM drives. OEM drives from either of the 2 manufacturers carry an entirely different warranty. Generally, OEM drives must be replaced through the PC mfgrs warranty. Thus, the effective warranty is only as long as the PC is covered under warranty. It has been my experience that when purchasing replacement drives, its a good idea to steer clear of OEM drives and purchase them from a reseller otherwise.

      My recommendation would be to purchase one of these 2
      http://www.newegg*dot*com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148591
      or
      http://www.newegg.*dot*com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136856

      Replace *dot* with .

      Both of these drives are 7200 rpm drives which equates to significant performance improvement. While I havent used any of the hybrid drives made by seagate, they do get good reviews. Of the 2 listed, The seagate is 3 years warranty and the WD is 5 years warranty. Both are less in cost than the ones you posted and the reseller is second to none in my opinion with regards to price and standing behind the products they sell.

      • #2887030

        Reponse To Answer

        by charles bundy ·

        In reply to One thing that worries me regarding these 2 links…

        Second [SmartAceW0LF] on OEM. Of the two laptop drives presented it seems like western digital had 20% fewer negative comments pertaining to DOA or DW2W (Dead Within 2 Weeks). They do have a three year warranty versus seagate’s two year, but if the drive doesn’t die within six months, both units seem reliable.

        Thus to have an edge with QA upfront I would go with Western Digital (for the two drives presented) from a third party vendor with specific warranty lengths.

    • #2887105

      Over the years..

      by colecrew ·

      In reply to Upgrading hard drive, should it be Seagate or Western Digital?

      I have been building computers for over 20 years and have seen Seagate drives fail more often than Western Digital. On a normal day there are over 22 hard drives in use in my house, none of which are Seagate and the majority are over four years old. I personally have a couple of WDs that are over 10 years old and still spinning; while the Seagate drives are dead and gone.

      • #2887061

        Reponse To Answer

        by cerabus ·

        In reply to Over the years..

        i also have been building systems for over 25 years. I agree,
        WD has never been a problem. I have had one grive fail, 1 terabyte, got an rma that day and had a new drives within10 days. excellent customer service with WD. I have had some of my drives over 14 years and still use them, however so small they are for long term backups now.
        I highly suggest WD drives. At my shop I have a stack of old seagates … nuff said?

    • #2887104

      Western Digital

      by dgilluly ·

      In reply to Upgrading hard drive, should it be Seagate or Western Digital?

      Seagate used to be a great company, but since they’ve gotten involved in Maxtor, they went downhill quickly. I recently purchased a Seagate portable hard drive, it lasted less than 6 months, and when it died it still had more than 2 years left on the warranty. They down right refused to take it for an RMA because SeaTools couldn’t read it at all.

      • #2887095

        Reponse To Answer

        by robo_dev ·

        In reply to Western Digital

        Maxtor is Latin for ‘oops there goes all your data’.

        My experience has been that WD is better than Seagate by a country mile.

        Seagate had a HUGE issue a few years ago with the anti-wear coating on their drive platters flaking off and gumming up the drive heads. I personally worked on (attempted) data recovery on two of those drives and it did not go well.

    • #2887092

      WD… for better warranty support

      by lkarnis ·

      In reply to Upgrading hard drive, should it be Seagate or Western Digital?

      I much prefer WD disks for 2 reasons…. 1. they seem to fail less often than Seagate disks and 2. WD’s warranty support has been much better for me.

      WD has a local warranty depot for me so I can drop off failed drives. With Seagate, I have to mail in drives (at my cost). The other aspect is the warranty of replacement drives. Last time I checked a replacement Seagate drive has a very limited warranty (even if the failed drive still had years left on its warranty) whereas WD’s replacement drive warranty is closer to the warranty the original failed drive had.

    • #2887089

      Seagate vs. WD…Ford vs. Chevy, etc…

      by info ·

      In reply to Upgrading hard drive, should it be Seagate or Western Digital?

      I’ve been in ‘the business’ for awhile as well. I’ve seen enough to know that ALL makes can have their ups and downs. For these arguments, most people tend to buy either for price or personal preference rather than any ‘real’ qualitative evidence. MY personal preference is Western Digital (even though I’ve experienced a few failures), but if I have to buy a Seagate, I’m not overly bothered (They work well, and I’ve experienced more failures only because I happened to deal with more Seagate drives!). I’ve had good RMA and repair experiences with both.

      As an aside, you don’t ‘need’ to buy an HP-branded SATA notebook drive just because you have an HP notebook. Any SATA 2.5″ drive will work. It’s not going into a server, so arguments like, ‘it has to have a special HP drive firmware’ aren’t valid. Check out prices, but do get a 7200rpm drive if you can for the performance…unless you REALLY need to squeeze all the battery life that you can out of it.

    • #2887076

      I prefer Seagate

      by mike r lewis ·

      In reply to Upgrading hard drive, should it be Seagate or Western Digital?

      Over the years, I’ve bought four internal and three external Seagate drives. I then bought an external WD which was DOA.

      One problem I’ve noticed with all three external Seagates is that the USB port hole does not align well with the USB socket. In the worst case, wiggling the connector to get it in fried the USB circuit of the drive. The only way to retrieve the hard disk inside seemed to be with a chainsaw. Fortunately, I had multiple backups.

      To avoid frying more USB circuits, I now connect the USB cable then the power cable. If I’m feeling particularly paranoid, I unplug the USB cable from the computer before connecting it to the drive. I don’t always do that as the USB sockets on computers wear out and fail over time.

    • #2887074

      It’s not the warranty

      by computermaster ·

      In reply to Upgrading hard drive, should it be Seagate or Western Digital?

      I have a computer service business and I wouldn’t buy Western Digital on a bet. I try to go with Seagate. Yeah, all companies have models or short time periods where there are problems. But WD seems to have more than their share. Maybe their high end drives do better. Maybe because the big-box toaster computers use the cheapest drives around they seem to use more WD and those drives seem to fail more. WD used to be the joke of the industry, although they’ve cleaned up their act a bit in the last few years. There for a while if a client brought in a computer with a failed drive I could almost bet it was a WD without looking.

      But I don’t buy on warranties, either. I’d rather the drive just lasted like it was supposed to. I don’t want to find out how good the warranty service is. Overall, in 30 or so years of building and servicing computers, and maintaining my own, Seagate does better. I try to get my clients to have backup drives, and make regular backups. Then in the rare case a Seagate takes a dive we just replace it, almost always well after a warranty period anyway. In the last five years I remember one 2.5″ drive that failed a few months after install. I stayed away from the Seagate Terabyte drives when they first came out and so avoided that flaking problem that someone mentioned. Sometimes you just have to be smart, and Seagate to this point seems to take care of business the best.

      • #2887035
        Avatar photo

        Reponse To Answer

        by hal 9000 ·

        In reply to It’s not the warranty

        I’ve just pulled my RMA’s for this year.

        2 X Seagate NB Drives RMA’d when under 6 months old well the NB’s that they where in where under 6 Months old and the drives failed.

        46 X WD’s returned to the WD Agent here again all NB Drives in new NB’s but all under 12 months or thereabouts old

        Granted the majority of NB’s come with WD Drives and of the ones that I RMA’d most came from School Kids NB’s so it’s maybe not a fair comparison where as the 2 Seagate Drives came out of Adults Computers so they may have had an easier life and probably not placed on beds over bedclothes to block the Air Intakes and cook the HDD and M’Boards.

        But like everything else it’s Personal Preference and which is better is from personal experience so other than starting Flame Wars it’s probably better to say chose what you like.

        I’m a newcomer to Computer Servicing as I’ve only been doing it 22 years now. 😀

    • #2887053

      Thinking “outside the box”: Hitachi or Samsung

      by elteto ·

      In reply to Upgrading hard drive, should it be Seagate or Western Digital?

      Reading the various responses here, one can see that there will always be multiple experiences and opinions. Personally, over the last many years, I have had the best experience with Hitachi and Samsung drives (both desktop and laptop drives).

      Last I heard, Hitachi was in the process of actually getting bought by Western Digital, who in turn is selling it to Toshiba (confusing, I know), but the “talent” and “technology” stayed with the Hitachi brand, so a Hitachi drive would also be a good investment.

      Samsung, on the other hand, now belongs to Seagate, but again, the talent and technology are still part of the Samsung brand.

      I agree with the comment above, no need to buy an HP-branded drive, just buy one that fits the machine you need it for.

      • #2887028

        Reponse To Answer

        by charles bundy ·

        In reply to Thinking “outside the box”: Hitachi or Samsung

        I’ve had better personal experience with samsung over hitachi. To be fair tho the hitachi failures were in 24/7 server environments versus samsung in client PC’s. Hitachi’s at the same spindle RPM as the samsung just seemed to run hot…

      • #2886986

        Reponse To Answer

        by info ·

        In reply to Thinking “outside the box”: Hitachi or Samsung

        Hitachi drives are based on IBM’s tech, and were pretty rock-solid. I wouldn’t recommend a Samsung drive, although I wouldn’t refuse one outright. Their quality (with everything) seems to be based on quantity. “You produce 7 bad per 100 units? We’ll make 10,000 units, and noone will notice the bad ones!”

        Back when IDE was first getting established, the distributor I worked for brought in a boatload of drives made by a company called, ‘Dai Yung’. We got a good chuckle, but we were right, almost ALL of them ‘died young’.

      • #2886985

        Reponse To Answer

        by stano360 ·

        In reply to Thinking “outside the box”: Hitachi or Samsung

        In theory Hitatchi should be good, remember that their hard drive unit was purchased from IBM, which generally made a quality drive (when a 1Gb was a big drive!). But I’ve never found a good reason to use them, when for the same money or slightly more you can get Seagate or WD, both of which have held up well throughout the years for me. I’ve had few failures on any drives.

    • #2887048

      Reliability is a toss up

      by slayer_ ·

      In reply to Upgrading hard drive, should it be Seagate or Western Digital?

      My desktop at home is running two seagates, one from 2003 and one from 2005, both show 98% fitness and performance and they work fine. I got a 10 gig Fujitsu still running perfectly, and those things ALWAYS died young. And I’ve lost 3 WD drives in 3 years. On the other hand, the seagate drives in our office are dropping like flies, but the WD drives so far, are fine, we have some 5 and 6 year old desktops that are not having any issues.

      Laptop drives always seem to die young.

      • #2887044

        Reponse To Answer

        by elteto ·

        In reply to Reliability is a toss up

        True, it depends on a number of factors; certain models, certain speeds, certain years may make a difference, as well as how the drive is being used; whether if it keeps getting powered on and off (desktop and mobile applications), or used in a server or as a continuous backup(always on)… There is just no specific brand that is miles ahead of the competition. That brand would drive everyone else out of business, as everyone would buy its products. But it is not happening, simply because none of the brands is excessively better than the others.

    • #2887029

      When people start saying they have been building computers for over 25 yrs

      by charles bundy ·

      In reply to Upgrading hard drive, should it be Seagate or Western Digital?

      I start counting on my fingers and toes… 25 years ago would make the date ~1987. Pheonix came out with their reverse engineered BIOS around 1984 which allowed third parties to build PC compatible systems. I know I was there 🙂

      Of course if you are like me and think that the Cosmac ELF was cool and built your first board using an RCA 1802 then you might be able to claim 30+ years of computer building experience… 😉

      ADDENDUM: Almost forgot tearing apart a Big Track to get the TMS1100 processor. That was a 4 bit critter!

      P.S. The first hard drive I ever installed was on an Apple II+ circa 1986…

      • #2887012

        Reponse To Answer

        by oh smeg ·

        In reply to When people start saying they have been building computers for over 25 yrs

        Should I mention Hydraulic HDD’s that leaked?

        But that was before computers as they where used in Main Frames and everyone knows that there where no computers before PC’s. :^0

        Kids today are good for a laugh. I even had one ask me did I know that Paul McCarthy was in a band before he was in Wings. Took me a bit f time to realize she was talking about the Beatles and I never thought of them as Before Wings. 😉

        Col

      • #2887008

        Reponse To Answer

        by charles bundy ·

        In reply to When people start saying they have been building computers for over 25 yrs

        Oh now Col we are talking [i]building[/i] computers which implies PC ;).

        I didn’t build, only cursed the early offspring of IBM, DEC and PRIME…

      • #2887007

        Reponse To Answer

        by charles bundy ·

        In reply to When people start saying they have been building computers for over 25 yrs

        I’ll raise your “Hydraulic HDD” with some real hard drive history 🙂

        I pulled down my copy of “An Introduction to Direct Access Storage Devices, Hugh M. Sierra” to wit

        [i] The first direct access storage device (RAMAC 350) was conceived and designed by IBM personnel in downtown San Jose, CA during the early 1950s. The feasibility models were a hodge-podge of components available at the time: the spindles were obtained from juke boxes, the disks were aluminum pizza plates with a hole in the middle, the magnetic recording materials (liquid) were poured on paperdrinking cups and deposited manually, the first read/write heads were assembled by former watchmakers, etc. In fact some of the early servomotors consisted of coils obtained from hi-fi loudspeakers whose cones had been removed. Today those motors are still called “voice” coil motors…[/i]

      • #2886992

        Reponse To Answer

        by oh smeg ·

        In reply to When people start saying they have been building computers for over 25 yrs

        Well then you’d remember those 1 Meg Winchester Drives used by Wang.

        I recently saw a array of those things about 50 used to hold the program for a CAM Device that was an Armature Winder. The owner wanted a couple of the drives which had failed replaced and I really had no idea how to proceed with that one. I ended up pulling an old Vesa IO Card and removing all of the old drives and fitting 1 X 100 Meg drive that was around before the IDE interface was standard. Now if only I could remember the name of those drives. 😉

        I

      • #2886987

        Reponse To Answer

        by info ·

        In reply to When people start saying they have been building computers for over 25 yrs

        VESA? That’s ‘new’ tech! 😉 I had a young kid (well, I’m not that old myself) in from one of the tech schools on an internship. We were setting up some IBM PS/2 Model 25s when he pointed and asked, “What kind of plug is THAT?” I had to explain to him that 8-bit ISA slots even EXISTED, and that there were interfaces that were even OLDER. He seemed shocked. Ah, youth…

      • #2886984

        Reponse To Answer

        by stano360 ·

        In reply to When people start saying they have been building computers for over 25 yrs

        I was thankful that I got a HD in my first PC (versus two 5.25″ floppy drives!). The classic Seagate ST225, that thing is probably still running somewhere! I felt like a king with that 20mb of space!

      • #2886980

        Reponse To Answer

        by slayer_ ·

        In reply to When people start saying they have been building computers for over 25 yrs

        You guys are all so old… lol

      • #2886957

        Reponse To Answer

        by oh smeg ·

        In reply to When people start saying they have been building computers for over 25 yrs

        Slayer

        Wait a minute while I park my Walking Frame and I’ll come and tell you about the [b]Good Old Days[/b] when Computers where real and not the cheap light plastic that they are these days. Even then I came to Computers after Punch Cards where obsoleta, well I only worked on the then [b]

    • #2887005

      Luck of the Draw

      by lehnerus2000 ·

      In reply to Upgrading hard drive, should it be Seagate or Western Digital?

      My housemate always has problems with Seagate HDDs failing quickly.
      I haven’t had a problem with either (I prefer WD because of my friend’s experiences).

      Ironically, he bought me a Seagate 320 GB IDE HDD in 2007 and it hasn’t “skipped a beat”.

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