Opinion: Seagate vs Hitachi HD

[C(-)ris]

Statistically any drive is just as likely to die as any other...bad batches excluded, like the DeathStars. I buy based on the longest warranty. Which is Seagate. Then I backup, because it is a "when" not an "if" a drive will die.

[MikeF]

Does our sponsor have any hard data one way or the other regarding returns or warranty issues?

[tortoise]

OWC Jamie sees a lot of drives, email for his thoughts, I won't speak for him but based on his input I did get a couple of Enterprise Hitachi drives for my new MacPro. Also got several more consumer level Seagates to save money on non critical locations protected by RAID-5 enclosure. Key to sleeping good is still backup no matter the brand of HD.

[OWC Larry]

FWIW - comparing Seagate to Hitachi 1TB HDs... We have encountered a very low failure rate on both - awesome reliability in terms of sheer numbers on both the 7200.11 and the 7K1000s... but in just the actual numbers of units returned - we have shipped far more of the Hitachi 1.0TB out straight as well as in our solutions and had far far fewer failures with the Hitachi. That said - still talking very small numbers that still wouldn't stop me from buying/using a Seagate 1.0TB drive.

I've said this for years... a longer warranty doesn't mean a better drive. Good marketing though.

That said... on Enterprise drives, the longer warranty is good (all Enterprise drives from all HD makers are 5yrs except Samsung that is now 7yrs) - That longer warranty is supposed to ensure that if a drive fails in that RAID-5 of yours, the MFR is supposed to give you an identical replacement down the road so can drop the replacement back in. On non-enterprise drives, the replacement is typically equivalent or better - which is fine except if your setup needs the same exact.

[tortoise]

OWC Larry wrote:

That said... on Enterprise drives, the longer warranty is good (all Enterprise drives from all HD makers are 5yrs except Samsung that is now 7yrs) - That longer warranty is supposed to ensure that if a drive fails in that RAID-5 of yours, the MFR is supposed to give you an identical replacement down the road so can drop the replacement back in. On non-enterprise drives, the replacement is typically equivalent or better - which is fine except if your setup needs the same exact.

Hi Larry
Thanks for the thoughtful input, I had not considered availability of the identical Seagate ST31000340AS consumer level drives down the road if and when I experience a failure. Sent a technical inquiry to HighPoint support RE their 2314 eSATA card and if exact match is mandatory on hardware RAID-5. I purchased from OWC the SansDigital TR8M enclosure and RocketRAID 2314 based on input from Jamie Dresser and Chris Haeffner, so far all is good after steep learning curve on RAID and hot swap reserve drives.
Must confess however the high cost of eight 1TB drives forced me to choose lowest cost vendor that still came in at $1100 for the Seagate AS drives. Eight of your Enterprise drives was just out of the question in view of high cost. Will advise you, Jamie and Chris of the reply I get from HighPoint tech support.