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HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade



 
 
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  #1  
Old February 5th 18, 07:21 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Yes[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 105
Default HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade

An ad at newegg got me curious. AS much as possible in layman's words,
what is the difference between Western Digital's black performance
series of desktop hard drives and their gold enterprise series of hard
drives. newegg had a shell shocker deal today for a WD Black 2TB
Performance Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache
3.5 Inch - WD2003FZEX. I continued browsing newegg and ran across a WD
Gold 2TB Enterprise Class Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s
128MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD2005FBYZ offered for the same price.

I know the "black" series is a consumer model aimed at gamers, and the
"gold" series is aimed at the business sector. Both models have the
same capacity (2TB) speed (7200 RPM), SATA (6Gb/s) and form (3.5").
The only difference I can determine between them from the ad is that
the "gold" model HD uses a larger cache (128MB) than the "black
performance" model (64MB).

In the past, I would have expected business (enterprise) level drives
to be more expensive than consumer grade drives because the enterprise
drives needed to be more durable and reliable than the consumer grade
drives. In this instance, they're priced the same. So I'm trying to
figure out which type (black or gold series) makes sense to buy. I
prefer reliability and durability, but I fall into the target audience
for the "black performance" drive.

Shouldn't the "gold" drive work as well as if not better than the
"black performance" drive?. Thoughts about what other issues to
consider?

In terms of what I do on my pc, 95% is email and browsing. The rest is
just playing CRPG games from around the year 2000 - Baldur's Gate,
Morrowind, etc.
  #2  
Old February 5th 18, 09:16 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Larc[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 383
Default HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade

On Mon, 5 Feb 2018 18:21:31 -0000 (UTC), "Yes" wrote:

| An ad at newegg got me curious. AS much as possible in layman's words,
| what is the difference between Western Digital's black performance
| series of desktop hard drives and their gold enterprise series of hard
| drives. newegg had a shell shocker deal today for a WD Black 2TB
| Performance Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache
| 3.5 Inch - WD2003FZEX. I continued browsing newegg and ran across a WD
| Gold 2TB Enterprise Class Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s
| 128MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD2005FBYZ offered for the same price.
|
| I know the "black" series is a consumer model aimed at gamers, and the
| "gold" series is aimed at the business sector. Both models have the
| same capacity (2TB) speed (7200 RPM), SATA (6Gb/s) and form (3.5").
| The only difference I can determine between them from the ad is that
| the "gold" model HD uses a larger cache (128MB) than the "black
| performance" model (64MB).
|
| In the past, I would have expected business (enterprise) level drives
| to be more expensive than consumer grade drives because the enterprise
| drives needed to be more durable and reliable than the consumer grade
| drives. In this instance, they're priced the same. So I'm trying to
| figure out which type (black or gold series) makes sense to buy. I
| prefer reliability and durability, but I fall into the target audience
| for the "black performance" drive.
|
| Shouldn't the "gold" drive work as well as if not better than the
| "black performance" drive?. Thoughts about what other issues to
| consider?

I see both drives are warrantied for 5 years. The biggest difference is probably the
128mb vs. 64mb cache. I might opt for gold based on that with both being the same
price, although the actual noticeable difference in use is likely negligible.

Larc
  #3  
Old February 5th 18, 09:20 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Paul[_28_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,467
Default HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade

Yes wrote:
An ad at newegg got me curious. AS much as possible in layman's words,
what is the difference between Western Digital's black performance
series of desktop hard drives and their gold enterprise series of hard
drives. newegg had a shell shocker deal today for a WD Black 2TB
Performance Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache
3.5 Inch - WD2003FZEX. I continued browsing newegg and ran across a WD
Gold 2TB Enterprise Class Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s
128MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD2005FBYZ offered for the same price.

I know the "black" series is a consumer model aimed at gamers, and the
"gold" series is aimed at the business sector. Both models have the
same capacity (2TB) speed (7200 RPM), SATA (6Gb/s) and form (3.5").
The only difference I can determine between them from the ad is that
the "gold" model HD uses a larger cache (128MB) than the "black
performance" model (64MB).

In the past, I would have expected business (enterprise) level drives
to be more expensive than consumer grade drives because the enterprise
drives needed to be more durable and reliable than the consumer grade
drives. In this instance, they're priced the same. So I'm trying to
figure out which type (black or gold series) makes sense to buy. I
prefer reliability and durability, but I fall into the target audience
for the "black performance" drive.

Shouldn't the "gold" drive work as well as if not better than the
"black performance" drive?. Thoughts about what other issues to
consider?

In terms of what I do on my pc, 95% is email and browsing. The rest is
just playing CRPG games from around the year 2000 - Baldur's Gate,
Morrowind, etc.


The terminology is mostly rubbish.

Before you buy something, read the reviews on Newegg or Amazon and
see if you can spot rubbish before you buy it.

The last two higher-end WDC drives I got, they "park the heads".
I don't buy high end drives so I can sit here waiting for
them to spin up again. I didn't particularly plan on my desktop
behaving like a laptop. My older WDC drives (Black and RE) don't do this.
(Probably around a half dozen of them.)

Basically, all the shortcomings of these drives were listed
in reviews. Even the "funny noise" the 2TB WDC RE drive makes,
the reviewers were spot on the money. Mine makes exactly
the same noise, at shutdown. The basic rule of thumb is, the
more mechanical noise a drive makes, the sooner it will
wear out.

Drives intended to operate in an array (8 drives in the same
housing), they have an additional feature, where a piezo
actuator right at the head level, makes small corrections
to the tracking, at really high speed. This is much more
responsive than servo tracking implemented at the voice
coil. As a consequence, the various drive families are
rated for "how many drives can sit next to one another
and hum, without throwing off the other drives". A higher
end drive should be array compatible and have that
additional tracking feature. You don't need this
feature, if you only have one HDD and one SSD in your desktop.

All the drives use FDB motors. WDC arranged some to be
fixed at the bottom, others to be fixed both top and bottom.
(Motors are not made by the hard drive companies, and
companies like Nidec make motors for HDDs.)

The doubly fixed ones, should be low friction, and not
make a bearing noise at shutdown. Yet, I have a POC here
that makes a noise at shutdown. And everyone who bought one
of those drives, got the same shafting. It sounds like the
motor is a low-end fixed-at-the-bottom motor. This is actually
the first FDB motor that ever made a noise, which in 2017
was a disappointing development (and not a one-off accident
either, it's a design change).

Caveat Emptor, and don't drink the Koolaid.

I've bought my last WDC for a while.

I'm waiting for when I'm really short on space, before
I go shopping again. If they want to play games with us,
well go right ahead, and I'll sit this dance out.

The details of my experience aren't important, and like
a weather report, I'll recommend "more frequent reading
of reviews from customers to spot lemons" as my generic
advice to you.

There were some discussion threads, where users noticed
Black and Green drives *having the same seek time*. This
is Not Right, and should not happen. Were lower-end drives
substituted for Black drives ? Well, read the reviews,
as I cannot police every drive model number here. I've noticed
some funny **** too.

I cannot say anything about the last two Seagate 4TB drives I
bought, because they're only used as backup drives, and
don't have a lot of service hours. Unlike previous
Seagate purchased, by some miracle, "they haven't been
behaving flaky". But 100-200 hours on a drive is nothing,
and who knows what will happen next week.

My "champ" drive at the moment, is a Seagate ST3500418AS
with 38,964 Power On Hours. If I run an HDTune transfer
curve, there isn't a mark on the drive, neither are
there Reallocated sectors logged yet. Truly a miracle.
(I have plenty of other Seagates here that belong in
the Rogues Gallery.) And that one doesn't park the heads
either, so it's been flying heads the whole time. I
guess someone at the factory, "washed his hands before
he assembled that one" :-) It's too bad all the drives
couldn't be like that.

Paul
  #4  
Old February 5th 18, 10:09 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Rene Lamontagne
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 187
Default HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade

On 02/05/2018 2:20 PM, Paul wrote:
Yes wrote:
An ad at newegg got me curious.Â* AS much as possible in layman's words,
what is the difference between Western Digital's black performance
series of desktop hard drives and their gold enterprise series of hard
drives.Â* newegg had a shell shocker deal today for a WD Black 2TB
Performance Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache
3.5 Inch - WD2003FZEX.Â* I continued browsing newegg and ran across a WD
Gold 2TB Enterprise Class Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s
128MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD2005FBYZ offered for the same price.

I know the "black" series is a consumer model aimed at gamers, and the
"gold" series is aimed at the business sector.Â* Both models have the
same capacity (2TB) speed (7200 RPM), SATA (6Gb/s) and form (3.5").
The only difference I can determine between them from the ad is that
the "gold" model HD uses a larger cache (128MB) than the "black
performance" model (64MB).

In the past, I would have expected business (enterprise) level drives
to be more expensive than consumer grade drives because the enterprise
drives needed to be more durable and reliable than the consumer grade
drives.Â* In this instance, they're priced the same.Â* So I'm trying to
figure out which type (black or gold series) makes sense to buy.Â* I
prefer reliability and durability, but I fall into the target audience
for the "black performance" drive.

Shouldn't the "gold" drive work as well as if not better than the
"black performance" drive?.Â* Thoughts about what other issues to
consider?

In terms of what I do on my pc, 95% is email and browsing.Â* The rest is
just playing CRPG games from around the year 2000 - Baldur's Gate,
Morrowind, etc.


The terminology is mostly rubbish.

Before you buy something, read the reviews on Newegg or Amazon and
see if you can spot rubbish before you buy it.

The last two higher-end WDC drives I got, they "park the heads".
I don't buy high end drives so I can sit here waiting for
them to spin up again. I didn't particularly plan on my desktop
behaving like a laptop. My older WDC drives (Black and RE) don't do this.
(Probably around a half dozen of them.)

Basically, all the shortcomings of these drives were listed
in reviews. Even the "funny noise" the 2TB WDC RE drive makes,
the reviewers were spot on the money. Mine makes exactly
the same noise, at shutdown. The basic rule of thumb is, the
more mechanical noise a drive makes, the sooner it will
wear out.

Drives intended to operate in an array (8 drives in the same
housing), they have an additional feature, where a piezo
actuator right at the head level, makes small corrections
to the tracking, at really high speed. This is much more
responsive than servo tracking implemented at the voice
coil. As a consequence, the various drive families are
rated for "how many drives can sit next to one another
and hum, without throwing off the other drives". A higher
end drive should be array compatible and have that
additional tracking feature. You don't need this
feature, if you only have one HDD and one SSD in your desktop.

All the drives use FDB motors. WDC arranged some to be
fixed at the bottom, others to be fixed both top and bottom.
(Motors are not made by the hard drive companies, and
companies like Nidec make motors for HDDs.)

The doubly fixed ones, should be low friction, and not
make a bearing noise at shutdown. Yet, I have a POC here
that makes a noise at shutdown. And everyone who bought one
of those drives, got the same shafting. It sounds like the
motor is a low-end fixed-at-the-bottom motor. This is actually
the first FDB motor that ever made a noise, which in 2017
was a disappointing development (and not a one-off accident
either, it's a design change).

Caveat Emptor, and don't drink the Koolaid.

I've bought my last WDC for a while.

I'm waiting for when I'm really short on space, before
I go shopping again. If they want to play games with us,
well go right ahead, and I'll sit this dance out.

The details of my experience aren't important, and like
a weather report, I'll recommend "more frequent reading
of reviews from customers to spot lemons" as my generic
advice to you.

There were some discussion threads, where users noticed
Black and Green drives *having the same seek time*. This
is Not Right, and should not happen. Were lower-end drives
substituted for Black drives ? Well, read the reviews,
as I cannot police every drive model number here. I've noticed
some funny **** too.

I cannot say anything about the last two Seagate 4TB drives I
bought, because they're only used as backup drives, and
don't have a lot of service hours. Unlike previous
Seagate purchased, by some miracle, "they haven't been
behaving flaky". But 100-200 hours on a drive is nothing,
and who knows what will happen next week.

My "champ" drive at the moment, is a Seagate ST3500418AS
with 38,964 Power On Hours. If I run an HDTune transfer
curve, there isn't a mark on the drive, neither are
there Reallocated sectors logged yet. Truly a miracle.
(I have plenty of other Seagates here that belong in
the Rogues Gallery.) And that one doesn't park the heads
either, so it's been flying heads the whole time. I
guess someone at the factory, "washed his hands before
he assembled that one" :-) It's too bad all the drives
couldn't be like that.

Â*Â* Paul


Great drives, I have 2 of the same ST3500418AS, one in each machine
about 23,000 hrs on each, same results, no bad blocks or relocated
sectors on these either, Really quite and running at 32 deg. C.

Rene

  #5  
Old February 5th 18, 11:27 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Flasherly[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,407
Default HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade

On Mon, 5 Feb 2018 18:21:31 -0000 (UTC), "Yes"
wrote:

In the past, I would have expected business (enterprise) level drives
to be more expensive than consumer grade drives because the enterprise
drives needed to be more durable and reliable than the consumer grade
drives.


Enterprise, yes, is a reason to qualify for more money;- then again,
so are gaming- or video-tailored performance factors;- ostensibly
among reasons, as much as money, no doubt to be of continued interest
to bear upon a concern.

Ignoring these pressing political ramifications, however, there
nonetheless emerges a unique qualifier for HDDs. Being they're brunt,
brute-force workhorses of computing, often outlasting major component
classifications, innovations and advancements, they're also then
subject to long-standing statistical arrangements.

Good sources, not necessarily to be ignored, the IT server structures
behind the WEB;- an affiliate of dedicated statistical patterns for a
heavy reliance of HDD material, they draw from, as published in their
abstracts regarding HDD performance matrices.

Search for and there's certain probability indeed you shall find them.
  #6  
Old February 6th 18, 01:28 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
dogs
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 6
Default HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade

On Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:09:39 -0600, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 02/05/2018 2:20 PM, Paul wrote:


My "champ" drive at the moment, is a Seagate ST3500418AS with 38,964
Power On Hours. If I run an HDTune transfer curve, there isn't a mark
on the drive, neither are there Reallocated sectors logged yet. Truly a
miracle.


Great drives, I have 2 of the same ST3500418AS, one in each machine
about 23,000 hrs on each, same results, no bad blocks or relocated
sectors on these either, Really quite and running at 32 deg. C.



I guess those are 500 GB? My smaller ST3160023A has "3 years, 4 months,
and 4 days" Power-On Hours. I think I bought it about 18 years ago.

  #7  
Old February 6th 18, 01:51 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Rene Lamontagne
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 187
Default HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade

On 02/05/2018 6:28 PM, dogs wrote:
On Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:09:39 -0600, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 02/05/2018 2:20 PM, Paul wrote:


My "champ" drive at the moment, is a Seagate ST3500418AS with 38,964
Power On Hours. If I run an HDTune transfer curve, there isn't a mark
on the drive, neither are there Reallocated sectors logged yet. Truly a
miracle.


Great drives, I have 2 of the same ST3500418AS, one in each machine
about 23,000 hrs on each, same results, no bad blocks or relocated
sectors on these either, Really quite and running at 32 deg. C.



I guess those are 500 GB? My smaller ST3160023A has "3 years, 4 months,
and 4 days" Power-On Hours. I think I bought it about 18 years ago.




Yes 500GB, 8 years old.

Rene

  #8  
Old February 6th 18, 08:56 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Flasherly[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,407
Default HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade

On Tue, 6 Feb 2018 00:28:18 +0000 (UTC), dogs wrote:

I guess those are 500 GB? My smaller ST3160023A has "3 years, 4 months,
and 4 days" Power-On Hours. I think I bought it about 18 years ago.


I don't know how long I ran a some 200G Seagates. One SATA and a PATA
are left out of possibly three maybe four original units. I've backup
data the PATA, at least while MBs continue to provide the interface;-
same for the SATA, which is among storage drives that don't see a lot
of use, except for a powered USB docking stations. It's almost
ludicrous to admit a preferred efficiency I still like about my first
SSD, a Samsung 64G unit. My last 500- to 700G-class, a plattered
Western Digital HDD, though, still bears a brunt of downloadable
material, augmented by a couple other 250G-class SSDs, and organized
accordingingly for strategical advancement a SSD provides. The WD
will be next to go, placed in the dockting-station queue and replaced
by a 500-class SDD.

Another thing comes to mind, re the OP and Statistical Abstracts
provided by IT WEB "drive rankings". HDD manufacturers are neither
unaware of an unfavorable such publicity provides. At times farther
research is indicated, e.g. a HDD manufacturer model may be
subsequently "hidden", as an identifiable model, within and subject to
objectionable characteristics. Another area is updated drive firmware
ROM. One of my 2T drives was manufactured to cycle-out power states
inordinately. Jacking the power cycles, thereby shortening a drive
life span means. . .who needs integrity when spending more of your
money on failed drive replacements is vastly more interesting. The
manufacturer subsequently released a firmware patch to define a
definable maximum for nonintervention of data polling. The firmware
was a direct result from a class action lawsuit against the
manufacturer by the IT sector.
  #9  
Old February 6th 18, 09:34 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
[email protected]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 220
Default HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade

lookup this:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-...tats-for-2017/
  #10  
Old February 6th 18, 07:39 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Larc[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 383
Default HD question consumer grade and enterprise grade

On Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:20:53 -0500, Paul wrote:

| The last two higher-end WDC drives I got, they "park the heads".
| I don't buy high end drives so I can sit here waiting for
| them to spin up again. I didn't particularly plan on my desktop
| behaving like a laptop. My older WDC drives (Black and RE) don't do this.
| (Probably around a half dozen of them.)

This bothers me since I'm thinking of buying another HDD. Normally, I'd opt for a
1TB WD Black without giving it a second thought. But checking around shows many
recent noise complaints about the same WD model I last bought (WD1003FZEX), so I'm
guessing changes have been made even in existing models. I've used only WD Black for
years and have had great experience with them, but wouldn't consider anything that
parks heads.

Larc
 




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