Please help! Need advice on which 1-2TB desktop drives to buy on Monday!

Hi everyone! I am in the market for two additional 1-2TB drives. I read so many horrible reviews about the 1TB Seagate Barracuda ST31000528AS(+Q for the Apple drives?) that is in the iMac for those who order 1TB systems. Why would Apple choose this drive if it really has such a significant chance of failing? Yes, there were plenty of 5-star reviews as well, but it's annoying that a significant number of these drives seem to die within only a few months of usage and sometimes reviewers report their drives failing after seeing only light usage.

What should I do? Am I really in a unique situation, because I am simply not used to ANY problems with hard drives. I kid you not. During the past eleven (11) years, I have used almost exclusively the Hitachi Travelstar 2.5" notebook drives and they all saw a LOT of usage, including even some rough handling at times. Not one of them has ever caused me any problems. I'll be disappointed the very first time that one of these drives show only the slightest bit of oddness, because I am simply used to everything always working just as advertised.

Given that history, should I maybe get Hitachi 3.5" desktop "DeskStar" drives? Then there is Western Digital (WD). Again, during my last 11 years with notebooks, the (very) few WD drives that I had also gave me zero problems.

Which of these, or other brands for that matter, can you recommend that I buy with confidence. I'm only considering 1TB, 1.5TB, and 2TB drives w/ at least 32MB of cache, running at 7,200rpm, which probably applies to all drives except for the 2TB ones. I will need two, both of which will likely be external drives.

Thanks so much for helping me with this! I need to buy these pretty much first thing on Monday morning, so I have only this weekend to get a little more educated.

Thanks again!

Thanks very much for your advice. That was smart to check with your IT staff, as they are hopefully in the know. I checked out all of the drives and the enclosure type that you suggested and they look great! WD drives have always been good to me and that particular 1TB drive you mentioned even comes with the SATA 6Gbps interface and 64MB of cache! All the ones from Seagate in that category, including even its 1.5TB version, only have SATA 3Gbps and half the cache size (32MB).

As for the fact that the current iMac does not have any USB 3 or eSATA ports, that irked me as well. It does, however, come with FireWire 800. I have thus far never had a computer with a FW 400/800 port, and it is only because of my recent switch to the Mac platform and the iMac that I find myself even considering FireWire at all. I thought FW was mainly there for camera/camcorder equipment. 800Mbps does sound good, though.

Then again, USB 2 might just be enough, as one of the drives will be used to run a mirror of the 1TB Seagate drive that's inside my iMac. I guess you lucked out getting a WD drive when you ordered your iMac. Good for you! So far, knock on wood, my 1TB Seagate drive has been performing very nicely. It is the Seagate 1TB 7200.12 ST31000528ASQ (the Q apparently indicates that it is an Apple OEM drive...I think. ) The "regular" serial for that Seagate drive is ST31000528AS.

Alright, so I just searched various channels online where I can source these drives, and I believe the WD1002FAEX (1TB WD 7200rpm, SATA 6Gbps, 64MB cache) is a winner at $76 at TigerDirect, CompUSA, or CircuitCity online, after a hefty 15% Bing cashback discount. It is $89 at all of these outlets with no sales tax for my state and only $5 for shipping. That drive also received mostly excellent reviews!

In order to get an additional 500GB (by way of the 1.5TB drive), it would cost me $109 for the WD1501FASS at newegg plus shipping with no cashback incentive. I think I'd rather buy two 1TB drives at the better price. Just FYI, Microsoft is doing away with the Bing cashback program on 7/30, which is only 5 days from now.

Finally, I have been reading up on RAID quite a bit and I'm very interested in what kind of performance boost I would be able to attain if I set up my internal 1TB Seagate drive with one of the 1TB external WD Caviar Black drives in a RAID 0 configuration. Is that even possible, and if so, would it be advisable, being that one of the drives only has SATA 3Gbps and 32MB of cache, and the other SATA 6Gbps and 64MB cache? I have never set up RAID, so I want to make sure before I buy another one for that purpose. At least they both spin at 7,200rpm. lol

Incidentally, it looks like we will see a hardware refresh from Apple for both the iMac and the Mac Pro in the coming weeks. Hopefully, Apple will implement either USB 3 or eSATA, or maybe both? Probably not, but I can dream, can't I?

Thanks again very much for your detailed response. I'm sorry for my long reply, but you're helping me make intelligent decisions. I'm excited about receiving my new Caviar Black drives, of which I will be ordering at least two as early as tomorrow morning.

What's so special about the FireWire enclosures that they're so expensive? By the way, it looks like the iMac refresh (along with one for the Mac Pro but I'm not taking out a 2nd mortgage) is coming up in the immediate future.

I've had my iMac for 2 1/2 weeks and I know of one person who bought a Mac mini 2 weeks before the new models were released and she was able to just swap it out at her Apple store, no questions asked. I was already going to try to upgrade to a 27" iMac this coming week, but now it's time to wait and see if we actually will get an eSATA and/or USB 3.0 port besides new CPU's and GPU's.

Can we please have an iPhone 4-like "Retina" display? lol...