Seagate vs Samsung...

[Mini-Me]

Hi all. :)

A see that Samsung offer 1TB drives(Spinpoint F1's) at very competitive prices. Many sites call the Samsung offerings "Critically acclaimed!"

Anyone got any information as to the reliability factor of Samsung drives?
For me, reliability is the biggest factor - i'm quite prepared to pay a little more, for a drive which will have a good life-span.

According to what I have been able to find, the Samsungs are extremely quiet in operation, and have very impressive data-transfer rates.

I have read some very unhappy reviews about the Samsungs on the net, so would like to know if this is just one unhappy camper, or if there are reliability issues with them.

Thanks.

[adsrex]

I currently am using 2 640gb spinpoint drives and have had no issues with either of them. They are 6 months old.

[Mini-Me]

Okey dokey, thanks :)
Do you use them on a daily basis?

Any/all other comments from other members still appreciated.
Knowledge is power!
;)

[mjc]

Well, I have a Samsung 10 GB drive that I used daily for over 8 years...over the past year, it hasn't seen much use, as it is now in an external enclosure that isn't often used. It moved through four or five systems...

Yeah, I've liked Samsung drives for a while...:D, in fact, I'm looking at one of the 500 GB as I type this...looking like that will be the one I order.

[jlreich]

I have a Samsung drive. In comparison to my Seagate's it is slower, but I do like that it also runs significantly cooler than my other drives, even while not being in a direct line with the fan as the Seagate's are.

[Mini-Me]

@ mjc and jlreich: Have either of you had many or any failures with your Samsungs? I'm trying to gauge the reliability factor. Please feel free to be honest - I won't hold it against Samsung - ALL drives from any manufacturer fail given time, so...

The primary reason I am being so obsessive with respect to reliability, is that 1TB drive failures are not a pleasant thought - 1TB is a a-lot of space, and could represent a very serious loss of information. I do have backups, but you do want to minimize the risk as much as possible with these kinds of capacities!!! :p 1TB represents 212 single-layer DVD backup discs, or 1,428 CD-R's worth of data - not a very attractive "Restore from backup" procedure! :D

[mjc]

over the past 10 years I've had 4 WD, 3 Seagates and 1 Samsung (a couple of others too, but I'm not going to count the SCSI beasts that will probably out live my youngest son...).

Two of the WDs failed...one was not due to a fault with the drive but rather it was electrocuted...so that failure doesn't count, either. One Seagate failed...so that makes one WD and one Seagate that failed due to drive problems. Neither of them were used as much as the Samsung...it was basically under constant daily use for almost 8 years...never a blip.

[Mini-Me]

Okey dokey - sounds good - thanks again.
:)

[Paul Komski]

The primary reason I am being so obsessive with respect to reliability, is that 1TB drive failures are not a pleasant thought - 1TB is a a-lot of space, and could represent a very serious loss of information. I do have backups, but you do want to minimize the risk as much as possible with these kinds of capacities!!!
I fully agree and it applies not only to single large hard drives but also to large striped or spanned RAID arrays. I have a 1TB Samsung but use it as a backup drive in an external enclosure and not as a primary location for data (which I keep in anycase on mirrored internal drives). Depending on the type of data stored it may sometimes be necessary to keep backups (even rotated backups) of the backup!

As for Samsung drives. To date I have used three myself and installed numerous ones in both new and upgrade machines (about 20 as a ballpark figure) over the past couple of years when my main wholesaler started pushing them as budget drives. No complaints or returns yet.

I still feel that most premature failures (under 5 years) of all hard drives are due to physical abuse/movement.

One final point is that if one uses compressed files or images one can nearly double the storage space TB for TB of the backup machine. The downside is that restoration just takes longer.

[Mini-Me]

All valid comments, thanks Paul. :)
Seems that Samsung is no more or less reliable then any other HDD then.
Kinda what I thought...

It just seemed odd that some blogs on the net spoke of premature failures of Samsungs, but then, as you say - perhaps they were not being handled correctly.

I'm looking at upgrading my server again.
The main reason for this, is that SATA is now the standard, and I can't upgrade the server with any more PATA drives, as 1TB ones and above will not be made using the PATA interface.

The server is a media-server: thousands of MP3's of my CD collection and DivX's of all my DVD's, with the original CD's and DVD's being filed as an archival master. The MP3's and DivX are also backed up on DVD-R media, so in the event that any one drive on the server dies, I can replace the drive, and re-load from the DVD-R backup. If the DVD-R backup becomes unreadable for some reason, then I would have to re-rip from the original studio-issue silver master disc, but this is time-consuming(for DivX). Again, just trying to cover my bases as much as possible, without becoming a major investor in Seagate or Samsung!!!! :D