In the battle of 1TB drives, nobody wins

With the holidays fast approaching and both Leopard's Time Machine and Windows Home Server loosed upon your desktop, we know what you're asking the Santa man for: a new 7200rpm 1TB hard drive. The question is, which one to purchase: Hitachi, Seagate, or Western Digital. Well, according to a review over at Hot Hardware, it doesn't matter, much. Those looking for the best price can find the WD Caviar GP on-line for about $0.27 per GB compared to the Hitachi's $0.31 per GB price. Seagate's Barracuda 7200.11 tops the list at $0.33 per GB. That's a big jump in heat, noise, and price when compared to the $0.19 per GB required for a 7200rpm 500GB drive. However, if mass capacity is your priority and available slots are limited, then a 1TB disk will do you fine.

[Fruition @ Nov 8th 2007 4:35AM]

Sounds to me like someone does win: the consumer.

[Chuckles McGee @ Nov 8th 2007 8:01AM]

No, I think that's just the opposite of what the article is trying to say. 1TB drives are more pricey per GB as compared to older 500 GB drives- consumers have to pay a premium per GB to get any 1TB drive, despite there being a large number of competitors in the market. I'm not saying that paying a premium for the latest and greatest isn't "fair", but it's just that 1TB drives aren't the best bang for one's buck-yet.

[Nick @ Nov 8th 2007 11:00AM]

how spoiled have we become to be complaining about $0.27 per GB!!!!!!!!!!

[Ryan P @ Nov 8th 2007 11:19AM]

Terrrra-(Wait for it)-Byyyyyte
Don't you want to win the BELT?

[Kozzi @ Nov 8th 2007 5:11AM]

How about Samsung's ?

[Kurian @ Nov 8th 2007 5:31AM]

Good thing I've been holding out on getting my new Raid 5 array after my HDD crashed last month.

[Leo Seeley @ Nov 8th 2007 6:34AM]

@ Kozzi - Damn straight! - the samsung disc is going to be teh nutz!!!11one

After 5 months since announcement or whatever it's FINALLY avail to pre-order in the UK (not sure about the rest of the world - how ignorant of me!)

Still, I'm gagging for 2 mirroerd 1TB's in a sexy QNAP TS-209 Pro.... just waiting on them drives to get released!

[Snowdog @ Nov 8th 2007 6:55AM]

Heat and Noise? The WD 1TB is the quietest, coolest drive tested.

[Jason Coleman @ Nov 8th 2007 9:18AM]

I'd say the same thing about my Hitachi 1TB drive. Very quiet and no heat issues at all in almost a month's use in my Core Duo 24" iMac, where it's not possible to stuff two 500GB hard drives.

[futurepastnow @ Nov 8th 2007 3:21PM]

That's because the WD GP is not actually a 7200RPM drive. WD won't publish its spin speed, but it's closer to 5400RPM than 7200.

I don't mean that as a minus- I fully intend to buy a Caviar GP terabyte drive in the future- but it's not some engineering magic that makes it cooler and quieter. It's cool and quiet because it runs slower.

[Tom @ Nov 8th 2007 8:17AM]

A totally uneducated article from Engadget...how surprising...

The Caviar GP has shown itself to be quieter and cooler than pretty much every drive on the market. How that becomes a big jump in heat and noise over 500GB drives, I don't know. Oh, that's right, it doesn't.

[t-bone @ Nov 8th 2007 8:26AM]

What? Newer 1TB drives are more expensive per GB than older 500GB drives? I thought newer, bigger drives were always supposed to be more expensive.

[JB @ Nov 8th 2007 8:58AM]

how does the heat and noise of 2 500gb hard drives working at the same time compare to that of one 1tb hard drive?

[Tom @ Nov 8th 2007 2:21PM]

Given that a certain 1TB drive (WD Caviar GP) is the coolest, quietest drive on the market of any size, favourably.

[DickHardknocks @ Nov 8th 2007 9:53AM]

Would it not be easier to get one of those large firewire/usb DVD changers [that catalogue information] and put all your data onto the 4.7 GB (or larger) DVD's?

DVD's last longer than Hard Drisk Drives if you buy quality brands. You never have to worry about inffo getting automatically erased and if you want to take a disk out and upload the content to a PC (any PC) its quicker.

I couldn't see myself getting a drive larger than 200GB unless I was heavily into computer based media downloading.

[Mike @ Nov 8th 2007 10:07AM]

dick not to flame but cmon, think before u post... that had to be one of the stupidest ideas i ever heard.. hard drives are way more scalable and the price is so cheap these days it doesnt make sense to waste all your free time burning dvd's.. Also dvd's are not faster, you need to find it, throw it in the drive and read it.. Hard drives attached internally, usb, or networked would be much faster, easier, and more centralized.

[Dauthi @ Nov 8th 2007 10:21AM]

DVDs are also far more destructible than HDDs. They scratch much easier, even if you do take good care of them. On the other hand, I've put a lot of data and use on a 7-8 year hard drive and only just a few months ago retired it. It never spontaneously erased anything (user error not withstanding).

And having 400 gb of movies and music are much easier accessed when they're available at your fingertips, rather than tucked away on DVDs that you have to sort and physically handle.

Just a silly comment overall, I think.

[tekdroid @ Nov 8th 2007 10:51AM]

For archival, i would agree that quality opticals rule. For general everyday usage, i would disagree - unless it's UDF-formatted DVD-RAM - even then it depends on what you're doing; saving/editing largish files you will suffer, speed-wise.

Hard drives I would never long-term archive my stuff to; removable opticals is where it's at for archival.

General day-to-day and in-progress usage? Hard drives.

[HineyWipe @ Nov 8th 2007 10:39AM]

But hey, you can get a 1 TB for $270-$330. That is amazing!

(I went with a Seagate ES.2 series. Designed for servers, and has a higher MTBF than the other drives)

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Nov 8th 2007 11:45AM]

Did anyone else notice the label said Made In China? When did Seagate move their operations?

[matt @ Nov 8th 2007 3:14PM]

I don't know, but I'm wary of Seagate because of the issues that have been going on, for example with their 2.5 inch drives.

Big issues with drives running firmware 7.01 while being manufactured in china, causing the read/write heads to detach and gouge the platters, crashing the drives.

Mine went on my macbook pro just like that. I'm reading about tons of others with the same problem, yet Apple and Seagate are keeping quiet...

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Nov 8th 2007 3:22PM]

I tend to boycott most companies that move their operations to China.

[WooWoo @ Nov 8th 2007 5:29PM]

The real question is "Will this be followed with cuts in the 750GB drive prices to reasonable levels?" That's what I'm banking on, this Christmas. If they dip to or below 20c, then they'll finally be useful, and they've been around for a few months/thoroughly tested.

[Wildness @ Nov 8th 2007 8:47PM]

The Hitachi drive has the best overall benchmark numbers in a number of test you can find on the web.

[Bryce @ Jan 28th 2008 11:21PM]

I'm just looking around on the web about 1 tb harddrives, cos' I live Down under and there was this free PS3 if you buy a Bravia thing. So anyways I'm looking to upgrade the HDD, since the PS3 is 40 GB only, and since the Ps3 uses up 3 Gigs, I've got very little space for game stuff. I just heard that a certain hard drive (hitachi or fujitsu) is 12.5 mm thick, while the standard is 9.5mm, which I'm guessing is the PS3's size. What would be the best drive for the PS?

Thanks!!!