Best Hard Drive?

C

Cyberian-Y

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Jan 1, 2005
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Hi,

I would like to know which is the best brand for HDs.

I don't care how long the warrantee is. If the HD should fail, my data is lost. The warrantee does not get my data back. Also, the trouble and money of shipping the HD + the 2-5 months of waiting for the return is not worth it; better off buying a new one.

Of the main three, Maxtor, WD, and Seagate, which is the best?

Please let me know your experience. Someone with 8 Maxtors and 2 Seagates obviously would have a higher chance of having the Maxtors breaking down. And if possible, please state the years that you had the HDs or how long it took for it to break down.
 
Upward Index said:
You don't care about speed ? only reliability ?
Click to expand...

One 40gb seagate barricuda, purchased when windows XP came out. Its quiet cause of the pad built into and its running fine in an IDE raid 0 setup.

One 200gb maxtor. About 1 year old. Loud, 'nuff said.

Two 36gb raptors. Fast, not loud, working together in raid 0 perfectly. They are currently in their 3rd case, and the sata connection clip on one drive is broken. In my opinon the sata connection design is seriously flawed and way too weak.

I'd buy more raptors if I was looking for another hard drive.
 
I had a Quantum (hey remember quantum ?) that got bad sectors after around 2 years
I had a Fujitsu that died completely.(after 3 years of abuse approximately)

Although I have never owned a Seagate drive, they usually get some good reviews @ toms

I plan on buying Raptors next
 
Hitatchi - for Laptop

Samsung, WD - for PC (samsung builds some fine, silent ass hdds/wd is very reliable but not always as silent)
 
Upward Index said:
You don't care about speed ? only reliability ?
Click to expand...
Yes, I do care about speed. But reliability is my primary concern. What good is speed if my HD is not reliable?

I am going with the standard 7200RPM ATA 100 (or 133) with 8MB cache.

I have 5 HDs, and I need to replace 2 of them as they would probably wear out soon or in the next few years. Despite all the exaggerated MTBF reports by the companies. The 2 HDs (13 GB and 40 GB) been in service since I was using Windows 95 or 98. Now they are just used for testing/experimenting with Linuxes.

Files been getting larger and larger these days, I need to get a bigger HD too. So I would scrap my 2 HDs for a new 200 GB.

HDs are not cheap enough to be desposible media. So when I buy my next HD, I expect it to be reliable and keep my data safe.

Keep the opinions and experiences coming. The more, the better!
 
i dont know what kinda hard drive is in this beast (lol) but we got it in 1998.

my computer stays on 24/7 ever since we got it. no problems, aside from the fact that its a p3 500mhz. lol.


i dont get it, do all new hdds have like.. an ultra short life or something? i mean this hdd is like.. 7 years old.
 
I think you'll find negative reports on just about any thing failing more often than actually happens in proportion thanks to the fact that the vast majority of people with hard drives that DON'T break feel no urge to go on any hardware site and post about it :D
 
I've experienced that iwth Maxtors, its a hit and miss. I've beeen lucky and only had one failure personally, but I've worked on systems with failed maxtors.

Western Digitals seem to work fine also ,but will die eventually.

Maxtors = hit and miss, but if you hit it lasts forever
WDs = Eventually dies after two or there years.


That is personal experience.
I'm a Maxtor user myself, though I'd recommend just choosing a major supplier and sticking with them. Its all based on how you feel about the drive I think.
-randyc :cool:
 
i have owned maxtor (30), western digital (250, 160, 120, 2x80, 3x20's) and all have gotten their shares of use. i got my maxtor for my athlon 800, a few years back when 30 gig was 100 bucks. brand has never been a concern to me (better deals tended to come in wd's) as much as performance. i do feel like my maxtor gets sluggish at unusual times of file transfer, and i have had to format it a few times. i've not had any problems yet with any western digital drives. but that's as far as i can suggest. wd's are a bit louder. seagate, from what i have read seem to be very reliable. an old favorite of mine is Quantum Fireball. i have several 4.32 gig Fireballs in my pos server that still work reliabley, without raid, after around 9 years (?)

also if data integrity of of such high importance to you, do you also do somewhat regular backups to DVD / Tape ?
 
seagate > western digital > maxtor > everything else > home made hard drives > IBM/hitachi
 
My Hitachi has been great, but as for the most reliable, i'd say Maxtor.

My old WD 80 gig (SE) died almost a year ago but I just RMA'ed it last month. I shipped it to them (in southern CA) on Monday, December 13. A brand new refurbished 80 gig SE HDD (They claimed it was re-manufactured on Dec 17, 2004) was shipped the next Tuesday (12/21) and I recieved it on Wednesday, December 22. I'd say that WD's RMA department kicks ass! Except for losing all my data, I can't complain much.
 
I definitely keep seagate at the top of my list.
I've owned, Western digital/Maxtor/Samsung/IBM/Seagate.

All of my WD hard drives have died atleast once in the past year.
Maxtor has failed a couple of times for me.

But none of the seagate drives I've used and have installed for other people have ever failed.
And it's one of the most silent drives you can get.
 
r00k said:
also if data integrity of of such high importance to you, do you also do somewhat regular backups to DVD / Tape ?
Click to expand...
It is not fun backing up 300 GB of the stuff I been keeping in the last 5 to 6 years. Used to be 1200 GB, but I had deleted all the junk already. And 300 is what is left.

Also, blank media are designed to wear out fast, so you would buy new ones. Thus, the company makes more and sells it to you again. My CDs claim to have 120 years life. I have kept them in all proper conditions, and the data became corrupted in 2-5 years. I except the DVDs to follow the same path as the CDs did.
 
RAID 1 sounds like the way to go if your data is vital to you. Twice the price of course, but storage space isn't exactly expensive (relatively speaking).

For the record, I've had 2 Seagate Barracudas 160Gb fail in RAID 0. I doubt I'll be buying this brand again. A 3 year old Western Digital 60Gb is still going strong.
 
mulpsmebeauty said:
RAID 1 sounds like the way to go if your data is vital to you. Twice the price of course, but storage space isn't exactly expensive (relatively speaking).
Click to expand...
What he said! :D

So you buy two 300GB hard drives and a cheap $50 controller or maybe your motherboard supports RAID 1. Then you can afford to get any hard drive you want. But if you still want to avoid the hassle of replacing a drive, I'd say I've had the best luck with seagate and western digital.

I only buy western digital now. Seagate is usually a lot more money so thats why I don't pick seagate. The only WD that I had fail on me was a 5.2GB hard drive that failed after 5 or more years. I don't like Maxtor that much because of some maxtor software that screwed up the drive and required a lot of work to fix. I absolutely hate IBM/Hitachi. I had 3 of them fail on me in less than a year: 1 at a time...each drive was replaced with a new IBM hard drive and the new one failed again and again.
 
Daynja said:
So you buy two 300GB hard drives and a cheap $50 controller or maybe your motherboard supports RAID 1. Then you can afford to get any hard drive you want. But if you still want to avoid the hassle of replacing a drive, I'd say I've had the best luck with seagate and western digital.
Click to expand...

What is RAID 0 or 1?

When I buy something, I except it to be reliable. I am not going to buy 2 of each unreliable item and hope that only 1 of them breaks down, and the other 1 is there to safe my contents. So just ONE HHD for me now.

Money is a key issue here. I live alone and people are getting payed minimum wages, and I am always 2 months away from being broke. So money is not something I would throw around.
 
There is alot of good suggestions here.
Unfortunatly if your looking for a fool proof 100% no fail situation, for little money, i'm afraid you won't find one.
PC components are not built as durable as they once were, for the main reason that consumers demanded cheaper prices, and companies gave that to us, at the expense of quality. I remember shelling out 600$ for my 50meg hard drive back then, and its still going strong.

Raid 1 is likely your best solution for safety.
But to be completely safe the only thing you can do is backup, and backup your backups, and backup your backup's backup, etc.. The advantage of RAID 1 is that you will be running 2 or more drives as mirrors to the original drive, so if 1 drive lets go, your data is not lost, and you can safely replaced the lost drive and continue on your way. While this is not cheap, it is very effective.

Myself I still have my original 50meg HD in my 386. My best luck has been with western digital having installed many for various clients, which are still running error free for over 5 years. But of course this doesn't make a lick of difference because components are no longer built to last, they are built for performance and price. i've seen the same model die after 3 months as one that lived for a year or more.
 
Which Brand of Hard Drive is Most Reliable? by e_dawg @ the Storagereview FAQ
With the exception of a few models with outright design problems (the IBM 75GXP for one) or the odd bad batch, most hard drives from all manufacturers are similar in reliability when they leave the factory. There is no point saying Maxtor is more reliable than WD or Seagate is more reliable than Maxtor unless you have used hundreds of hard drives and have a sufficient sample to draw from. Most people drawing on their experience with a dozen drives will come to a completely biased conclusion because their sample is not even remotely representative of the population.

The most common cause of HD failures is mishandling/abuse during shipping/storage and integration (*1). If you think about it, there are so many opportunities for this kind of mishandling/abuse to take place once a drive leaves the factory: shipping/sorting from the factory to national distributors, storage/handling at the national depot, shipping/sorting to local distributors, storage/handling at the local distributors, shipping/sorting to the retailers, storage/handling at the retailers, handling/integration by the retailer or consumer.

If you have ever seen couriers playing soccer with your packages, you will know how shipping can damage a drive. If you have ever seen packages tumble down conveyor belts into sorting bins at a courier's sorting facility, you will know how sorting can damage a drive. If you have ever seen how some distributors and retailers pour drives out of a box onto a table and stack them 20 high on top of each other, you will know how handling at the distributor/retail level can damage a drive. If you have ever seen how some people install drives into a PC, you will know how integration can damage a drive.

It is not right to say Brand X drives are unreliable because the vast majority (>99% usually) of hard drives from any manufacturer leave the factory in a perfectly reliable state. If you want to blame people, look at the rest of the marketing channel downstream from the HD manufacturer. Of course, if a particular brand of drive is consistently unreliable in your area, it could be symptomatic of a careless distributor or shipping company that deals exclusively with that brand of drive — I guess the only solution would be to avoid buying that brand of drive. But to broadcast it on the Net that this brand of drive is unreliable is misleading.

-I forgot to add this point: (Sep 25/03)

(*1) That said, non-operating shock tolerance could be a determining factor in the reliability of a drive because it may allow the drive to survive indelicate handling by couriers, distributors, retailers, and consumers. It follows, then, that FDB equipped drives, which generally increase the non-operating shock tolerance of a drive, are potentially more reliable than their ball bearing equipped counterparts.
Click to expand...

Storage Review Reliability Survey
you have to play to view, and they ask rather detailed questions

"Best" HDD, IMO would be one of the outrageously expensive Solid State HDDs
see the SSD section of the Advanced HDDs Issues thread in the FAQ
 
Hitachi have gotten a very bad rap over the years, but they have definatly improved, recently I bought 2 Hitachi drives (because I found the fluid bearing design intriguing), now I’ve had these 2 120gb drives running Raid 0 24/7 for about 8 months without fault, they are quiet, cool, relatively fast, and as fare as my experiences reliable.
I have had many WD drives and have found them to be very reliable for 3 or so years, then they get faulty, but I wouldn’t buy WD at the moment because of there slow seek/write/read speeds (except for the Raptors, an awesome drive if I do say so myself).
Seagate seem to be the great all rounder, they are proven reliable (Talking from experience), run cool, fast, very quiet and would be my large drive choice.

If you are so worried about you data not being wiped then go with Raid 1, although it is expensive it definatly will give you peace of mind. ;)
 
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