Added to that, WD offers its aged Data Lifeguard tools that date back to 2006 and which don’t list support for Vista. There’s a choice of Windows, DOS on CD, or DOS on floppy, but when we gave the bootable CD image a go it didn’t work.
Terabyte set (clockwise from top left): Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate and WD
Add that little lot together and it’s hard to see why you’d choose the WD over the cheaper Seagate as the tiny amount of power you save won’t pay you back until some time in the distant future.
Verdict
All four Terabyte drives in this round-up offer a colossal amount of storage at a very reasonable price. The Hitachi is showing its age but still delivers decent performance, but we were less convinced by the green power saving features of the Western digital. If you want high performance – and who doesn’t? - it’s a straight fight between the Seagate and Samsung, and on balance we favour the Sammy despite its higher price.
Four 1TB hard drives on test
COMMENTS
Shoddy
As others have pointed out, you need to get your act together re: pricing.
The Samsung is the cheapest, the fastest and the quietest. Only the Seagate comes near.
The only other factor is reliability; In my experience, the Hitachi is trailing (along with Maxtor) and the the Samsung & Seagate are up in front, but YMMV.
Seagate = Shitegate
Well I can only agree with Steve Roper about Seagate drives.
I've had 10 replaced in the last 5 years. All different sizes. They don't seem to cope too well with BitTorrent and other P2P programs.
I have had 2 Maxtors and 2 Samsungs in the same period - all still work, but the Samsungs are VERY slow.
I am in the market for 4 x 750gb drives and I will be going WD or Samsung only.
Mileage
Seems to me my experience is as varied as everyone elses' - I have found Maxtor and Hitachi/IBM to be dreadful, and WD to be the best by far for reliability.
I've not had any first hand experience of Samsung but I've never wanted to buy one as they've not been around as long as the other major manufacturers.
I've had 4 WDs in a RAID 5 array for 2 years constantly at home in a server, in a cupboard normally reaching 30 C at times, and not one has failed yet, touch wood! Not had any problems with them at work either.
Review
Gotta hand it to the reg, it may not have included some information which a lot of us would have found useful, but it's by far the most detailed review I've ever seen on reg hardware!
Things can only get better (I hope!)
Varying Mileage
>Hitachi seem to me to be the most reliable drives around.
Just goes to show how personal bias/experience can colour these things.
After a bad experience of IBM/Hitachi drives repeatedly failing (and a few Samsungs too) I am loathe to touch either manufacturers drives .
Personal choice has always been for Maxtors with Seagate being second choice alongside WD.
The good thing is though, looking at the review, I am pleasantly suprised at how close they are to each other, we never had it so good :)
