I think Samsung drives are fine. They are usually the least expensive to choose from. I suppose the only disadvantage is that they come with a three warranty versus Seagate's five years.
I have had a 1 TB Samsung SATA drive running for about a year in an external case via USB. I recently pulled it out of the case and put it in my new Core i7 machine and it never lost a beat. I think the Samsung drives are fine.
Switched to Samsung about a year ago after being a Seagate fan for 5+ years. I don't have any cosmic, stressful setup, but I'm 2 for 2 with good Samsung drives.
Can't recommend enough a semi-regular backup regimen. Spent over $900 to get (most of) my data recovered after my Seagate bit the dust. I hadn't backed up in over three years, so I had a whole slew of precious photos to recover.
“Putting it simply, we love the Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB. It’s everything a great enthusiast product should be; fast, practical, great value and affordable. Last week we said that the SSD, while starting to show some of its potential, was still a long way off replacing the conventional hard disk, and this drive is the reason why. With massive capacity, blazing performance and a price tag we can all afford, this is the hard drive we here at bit-tech would all buy. In fact, between us, we’ve just bought our sixth – how’s that for a recommendation?”
64% (176 reviews) say it's excellent.
9% (26 reviews) say it's good.
5% (13 reviews) says it's average.
7% (19 reviews) say it's poor.
15% (40 reviews) say it's very poor.
That's not what I would call "glowing." So it depends on who you talk to. It does show they don't build things they way the used to. It seems that everything these days is a crap-shoot.
Reviews can be a helpful indicator if you take into account that 30 to 50% of computer "enthusiasts" who participate in reviews haven't a clue what they are doing or are basically blithering idiots!
Read between the lines of the worst reviews to see what I mean.
Samsung, Hitachi, Maxtor (earlier before Seagate) have been flawless for me. I have 15 hard drives spinning daily.
Samsung, Hitachi, Maxtor (earlier before Seagate) have been flawless for me. I have 15 hard drives spinning daily.
Wow...I'm starting to get the impression that you hard-core video people have a LOT more HDDs than I do. My current workstation has 4 (plus 4 external backup drives). Add that to my laptop (2 internal + 3 USB HDDs) and I still only have 13. And I never have more than half of those running at once.
How do you folks use all these drives??? Raid? USB/FW/eSATA/ethernet?
Is this all about performance or about having access to mounds of footage/video for creative editing?
I, too, suffer from "drive creep" - I just counted 11 drives currently spinning on this computer, with a couple more on USB cables ready to turn on for deep backup purposes (backups for backups that are powered by the internal power supply - in case it blows out all the internal drives, including backups). Several are Samsung; I've been using Samsung for perhaps 4 years with excellent reliability & performance.
"How do you folks use all these drives??? Raid? USB/FW/eSATA/ethernet?"
3 computers; one for video HDV edit only (1.5TB RAID5 3x750, 1x750 Production Music/Effects 1x500 programs, 1x750 scratch), another one for internet and archive (1.5 TB RAID5 3x750, 1x500 programs), etc, and a laptop (2x200) + several USB for utility, NAS( RAID5) for backup!!!.. backup!!!... backup!!!!
Once you lose a major project you will truly appreciate the value of backup!!!.. backup!!!.. backup!!!
Not really that big a setup for daily editing business.
"with a three warranty versus Seagate's five years."
Warranty means very little.... your real worry about cost should not be that of replacing the drive but the time and priceless data you may lose if one fails. Warranty won't get that back!
OK...well if you're running 3 separate systems, that makes sense. I have one main workstation and a laptop with 2-3 backup HDDs for each. So I don't ever loose a major project - backups are religious.
But even with all this I still don't spin a dozen drives in one day. ;-) Given 3 PCs I might...
A fellow Vegas friend recently told me he has 7+ raw footage drives attached to his editing workstation along with two cams (1xSD, 1xHD) to bring in new material. It's no wonder he always has something impressive to show! I am curious to know if this is common among Vegas gurus. 8-)