HGST or WD Reds?

[microchip]

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.

I'm amazed you held up so long. I was a new Netgear customer half a year ago, buying my first Netgear router from them. After the disaster I experienced with their firmware, I am never going back to them, unless they change radically. Most likely my R7000 will be my only and last Netgear product.

But it's true that one bad apple spoils A LOT. Begin 2014 I bought an ASRock mobo which worked for almost exactly 1 year and then it broke. When I was on that mobo, my system would become very sluggish whenever I'm fully pounding the CPU (like during an encoding session). During the whole time I thought it was the CPU to blame (an AMD FX 8350). After the mobo broke, I exchanged it for an MSI one. Guess what? My system is no longer sluggish during full load and basically flies. I don't even notice that there's an encoding going on

So the fact that this mobo broke down only after a year of use and the fact that on it, my system became extremely sluggish during high CPU load, has left a bad taste in my mouth. So most likely, I'm never going back to ASRock again either.

 

[htismaqe]

I do have 2 ProSafe 5-port switches still in production but that's all that's left.

 

[htismaqe]

I'm amazed you held up so long. I was a new Netgear customer half a year ago, buying my first Netgear router from them. After the disaster I experienced with their firmware, I am never going back to them, unless they change radically. Most likely my R7000 will be my only and last Netgear product.

I bought my first Netgear product for my home in 1999 or 2000 I think. They were a subsidiary of Bay/Nortel, who was my primary networking supplier at work. I became a Netgear "junkie" in 2008 when I bought my first wireless router from them. I bought the WNDR3700 in 2010 and it still is the most stable, most powerful consumer wifi router I've ever had.

They had some really high-quality gear for a while and they've always been on the bleeding edge when it comes to raw performance but sometimes a good total package is required. Their router FW hasn't evolved significantly in 5 or 6 years, other to incorporate a nearly useless and extremely buggy mobile app.

 

[claykin]

I bought my first Netgear product for my home in 1999 or 2000 I think. They were a subsidiary of Bay/Nortel, who was my primary networking supplier at work. I became a Netgear "junkie" in 2008 when I bought my first wireless router from them. I bought the WNDR3700 in 2010 and it still is the most stable, most powerful consumer wifi router I've ever had.

They had some really high-quality gear for a while and they've always been on the bleeding edge when it comes to raw performance but sometimes a good total package is required. Their router FW hasn't evolved significantly in 5 or 6 years, other to incorporate a nearly useless and extremely buggy mobile app.

I was right there with you. Most of my cost sensitive networking gear now goes to Zyxel.
However, the R7000 from netgear is solid as an access point. Very solid. Still prefer Ubiquiti for SMB use, but the R7000 or Asus RT series for SOHO or resi.

 

[KenZ71]

Back on topic. ... I've been running WD green 2TB and 3TB in a 24/7 NAS4Free with no issues for about 5 years

They don't get a lot of intense work except for the weekly ZFS scrub but I am happy with them.

 

[stevech]

Back on topic. ... I've been running WD green 2TB and 3TB in a 24/7 NAS4Free with no issues for about 5 years

They don't get a lot of intense work except for the weekly ZFS scrub but I am happy with them.

Me too, but 2-3 years rather than 5, in the NAS. The always-on PC in the garage has two 500GB WD's that have 6 or more years on them. Still running XP.

 

[Chrysalis]

Never used HGST.

WD RED's I got 2 in my rig which are working ok, but as are my other drives of similar age so my feedback probably isnt that useful sorry.

RED's have an improved rating for errors and a improved warranty as well as custom firmware to make them work well in raid setup's although they will also work ok as standalone drives.

 

[sfx2000]

Me too, but 2-3 years rather than 5, in the NAS. The always-on PC in the garage has two 500GB WD's that have 6 or more years on them. Still running XP.

Personal/Professional experience - I tend to start getting concerned with rotating drives after 3 years of usage - different profiles on the desktop vs. the data center, but generally getting 3 years of use is a reasonable expectation. In the data center, my OPS team, and I agree with them, we tend to be proactive and start rotating the old drives out, as we have a high expectation of uptime...

On a personal basis - 3 years is reasonable in the desktop space on 3.5" drives - haven't really had any concerns there - on the 2.5" drives, both 5400 and 7200 RPM spinnners - 3 years about as far as one wants to go - laptops get jostled around a lot more than a desktop would ever expect to be...

I've been slowly moving over to SSD's - the first was back in late 2010 with a Macbook Air, and it's still running fine, and I've basically ordered on my laptops SSD's since then - haven't had any of them die yet...

 

[htismaqe]

I just upgraded my iMac. Got a great deal on an OWC 480G SSD...