HGST or WD Reds?

[Kylis]

Pretty much narrowed my choices down to these 2 and seems 6 one way half a dozen the other. Any anecdotes or suggestions between the two? looking at their 4-6 TB models.

 

[sfx2000]

Reds claim to be more NAS/RAID.... and lots of folks like them, and they're the benchmark for most NAS testing on various sites..

I use HGST for the most part in my data center for 2.5" drives, Seagates for 3.5" drives... not consumer drives obviously...

sfx

 

[Kylis]

Well when I say HGST I am talking the NAS specific ones that they make.

 

[stevech]

what became of the debate that the WD Red drives were identical to the consumer drives except for warranty?

 

[kamina]

what became of the debate that the WD Red drives were identical to the consumer drives except for warranty?

I would imagine there are some different settings in the firmware, probably mainly related to how long they will attempt to read from blocks that are causing issues before responding to the controller etc.

edit: again, could even be same firmware just different values for certain settings

 

[thiggins]

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-news/31813-wd-has-new-drives-designed-for-your-nas

 

[sfx2000]

With WD Reds (and Seagate NAS), the firmware is tuned for NAS/Server performance profiles - not much different than what the vendors do for other applications - e.g. in Data Centers, where Application Servers vs. Database Servers vs. whatever...

IIRC, HGST is actually owned by Western Digital...

 

[stevech]

I recall that in the last year or so, WD acquired HGST. Not happy about that, was I.

 

[sfx2000]

I recall that in the last year or so, WD acquired HGST. Not happy about that, was I.

Well, so far, they (WD) seem to be running HGST/WD as two separate engineering and development companies, so perhaps not is all bad...

Not the first time we've seen integration at this level...

 

[htismaqe]

I haven't seen a change in the HGST drive quality since WD acquired them. Good HGST drives are often the cheaper of the two and in fact, I've found HGST to be either the cheapest or close to it against Hitachi and Seagate too. I won't buy anything other than HGST anymore. Best combination of price, performance, and reliability.

 

[stevech]

It's easy to get brand-loyal - but based on a small sample size. And makes sense in terms of avoiding companies that consistently have crappy products and a bad corporate culture for the customer facing side.
But I think each of the biggies has good and bad new products. Some get designs fixed during production; some aren't fixable. Some rely more and more on the QA of their vendors to save money.
If you can find ones with a long warranty AND obligation to replace with new not refurbished, that can mean the quality has to be there or they loose to much $ in warranty costs.

 

[Trexx]

I have used HGST in current NAS and last one and been very happy with them.

 

[htismaqe]

It's easy to get brand-loyal - but based on a small sample size. And makes sense in terms of avoiding companies that consistently have crappy products and a bad corporate culture for the customer facing side.
But I think each of the biggies has good and bad new products. Some get designs fixed during production; some aren't fixable. Some rely more and more on the QA of their vendors to save money.
If you can find ones with a long warranty AND obligation to replace with new not refurbished, that can mean the quality has to be there or they loose to much $ in warranty costs.

Very true. I use HGST for NAS drives but I have bought WD and Hitachi recently for other applications. I won't be buying anymore Seagate drives though.

 

[stevech]

What company made drives for IBM PCs/laptops called Desk Star, and unhappy customers called it Death Star?

 

[htismaqe]

I've used HGST Deskstar 3.5" drives for years. In fact, I have one backup drive that is over 10 years old and still running. I've had 3 Seagates fail in the last year, including two 1TB drives of the same model numbers that failed in the same way, on nearly the exact same sectors.

We make buying decisions on personal experience most of the time. It's human nature.

 

[stevech]

Agree. Hard to ignore your place on the bell curve!

 

[sfx2000]

What company made drives for IBM PCs/laptops called Desk Star, and unhappy customers called it Death Star?

IBM did... and that business unit eventually became HGST, now a part of WD...

And this still happens from time to time - Segate's issue with their 3TB desktop drives comes to mind, and the Samsung 840EVO is an ongoing problem..

 

[sfx2000]

It's easy to get brand-loyal - but based on a small sample size. And makes sense in terms of avoiding companies that consistently have crappy products and a bad corporate culture for the customer facing side

It's very easy to become brand-adverse - all it takes is one very bad experience...

I'll never again own another Audi... even though their current crop of products are probably quite a bit more reliable... but that one experience was bad enough, that I'll go with someone else...

 

[htismaqe]

I had nearly 10 years of loyalty to Netgear, including alpha and beta testing some of the products they currently sell on store shelves. After my experience with their tech support last year, I severed that relationship. Probably permanently.

 

[stevech]

In my profession at a fortune 1000 company, I tried to use Netgear Professional grade items a few times. Like VPN server and so on. Maybe 10 years ago I found that their entire customer support organization was geared for consumer products. Near zero. For professional products, no one knew anything about them nor who would know nor where to go for pro support on such. Mostly offshored.

I still like their Pro line Ethernet switches for SOHO/home. But that's it.