So I picked up a 3TB External Samsung HDD for $99.99, marked down from $159.99 at newegg post labor day special, and I am hoping I am one of the lucky ones to get a good one that will last.

Looking at reviews of drives that are 3TB and larger lately I see lots of people having troubles, some people troubled by 2TB barrier of some BIOS's and others with drives that work great for a short while and then bite the dust.

I saw that this Samsung External has a Seagate HDD inside it and some people stated that Seagate moved drive manufacturing from Thailand to China and ever since then there have been many issues with the drives failing or making strange noises and still working etc.

I looked and saw that Toshiba also makes a 3TB HDD which was $10 more, but only a 2 year warranty and they too had issues with the drives such as one person who claimed to buy 4 of them for a RAID array and 2 of the 4 were DOA and others stating that they worked fine for 2 weeks died, sent back RMA and got a replacement and that drive died 2 months later and having to send it back in again.

Some people were stating that the drives with 1GB per platter were better than some earlier made ones in which they had 2 platters with 1.5TB per platter, but that the drive that is in the external that I bought COMES in a mix of 2 and 3 platter builds under the same part number.

Looking at at the negative info out there on drives 3TB and larger for WD, Seagate, Toshiba, Hitachi, etc it makes me wonder if the drive manufacturers are just getting sloppy in quality to make them quickly and cheaply or if they are starting to reach a physical limit in the capacity with current technology, which will be cured at some point in the future when technology meets making 3TB+ capacity drives which will last.

I almost didnt buy this drive due to the 3 eggs average rating and many many people reporting issues, but for the fact that this massive storage 3TB drive has a 3-year warranty and is priced at just $99.99 with free shipping and I have had good experiences in the past with shipping drives back to Seagate that were troubled under warranty and the replacement drives are still working years later with no troubles, I figured I'd pick it up. I havent been burned yet by Seagate, hopefully stating that doesnt set me up for a bad experience.

For the fact that 1/2 of the 3TB will be used to replicate my 1.5TB drive, storing on it is low risk for data loss, and the remaining 1.5TB can be used for lesser importance data. Given the feedback though I wouldnt use it as the only drive for storing data though as a single point of failure.

When I get it I will run it through a test period burn in process before I use it for data storage, if it passes the burn in without failure then it should be ok as for most hardware failures if there is a defect show up early on or under HEAVY use vs later on if the drive is well taken care of and left in a stationary location with no vibration to float a head and crash it. I learned a while back that excessive vibration (via loud low frequency) would kill a hard drive when I was playing "NIN - The Downward Spiral "loud and the subwoofer was on the floor under my desk with the computer tower down there off to my right side and I got the blue screen of death right in the middle of playing the CD and when I rebooted the system the hard drive had the clunk of death as for the vibration must have caused the head to strike the platter. Later I kind of laughed at the fact that I picked up on the fact that there were 3 songs on this album called Ruiner, Eraser, and Hurt that directly reflected the damage to that drive..LOL I now keep the computer away from the woofer as well as dont crank it that loud anymore.

But this issue with drives 3TB and greater with many negative feedbacks from many manufacturers reminds me of a similar issue that happened many years ago around the 4.3GB to 5GB drives in which many of them were failing from many manufacturers in the 1990s and at some point something changed with the density of the data on the platters I think and they released 8.4GB, 13GB, 20GB drives and they were now lasting vs crashing like the 4.3GB and 5GB drives that seemed like the drive manufacturers were pushing the drives beyond what they were capable of in design or quality took a dive for quantity!

Soon the cost of big drives will come way down. The industry is driven by cost and quality issues to the EXTREME. They have new technology that is much, much better, but the existing stuff represents a MAJOR investment. So they push the limit on what they already have.
Here is a bit of news.
WD upgrades NAS-friendly Red drives with 2.5-inch versions and 4TB desktop model
Quote

The existing 3.5-inch range now includes a high-capacity 4TB drive, and every new Red model ships with NASware 2.0 technology that should improve reliability.