Other harddrive brands.

[Laforge]

I've been a maxtor/wd guy most of my life, but in recent months, our failure rate has been going up on them [percentage wise.. i track this stuff]

Now, here's the problem.

Maxtor and WD drives have 1 year warranties, unless of course, you bought something like a raptor.

SO, I've been shopping other drive brands with larger warranties.

Seagates have 5 years, but at a cost premium
Samsung has 3 years
and Hitachi has 3 years, and are the most 'cost-effective' drive out there.

I know that the old deskstars had some issues, but i'm wondering if any has had any experience with the new sata drives from hitachi.. I'm not so much concerned about their "uber performance" statistics.. but, I just want a general opinion,... are they still "Crap"? Or are they 'acceptable drives' for budget systems. - We've opted to use raptors still for our "super high end" systems, and seagates for those systems that are going to be embedded machines [such as servers].. but how would you rate the hitachi's for the "sub $700 market" computer buyer..

I expect seagate to be "the winner" here, but, like I said, i'm looking for options on all of them. - -the 3 year warranty means a lot to me

 

[seasponge]

the oem maxtor's on newegg say they have a 3 year warranty...is newegg just wrong??

 

[Laforge]

the oem maxtor's on newegg say they have a 3 year warranty...is newegg just wrong??

according to maxtor, they are, as the 5 oem maxtors i bought for my OWN computer all show 1 year on maxtor.com

 

[mohammedtaha]

all seagate hdd have 5 year warranty plus they're the quietest you can find .. and native sata

 

[Laforge]

all seagate hdd have 5 year warranty plus they're the quietest you can find .. and native sata

Seagates have 5 years, but at a cost premium

As you can see, I said seagates have 5 year warranties, so i'm aware of that.

 

[Vertigo Acid]

I've used Hitachi's recent Ultrastar SCSI models and been impressed with their quality and reliability, so I see no reason not to go with Hitachi. I guess the choice you have to make is, is the 5 year warrenty worth it for you?

 

[LoneWolf]

Maxtor and Western Digital both have three-year warranties if you buy from the right vendor and read the warranty info. Both the `Egg and ZipZoomFly have WD and Maxtor drives with said warranties.

I won't buy Hitachi. It's not just the former Deskstar fiasco which left a bad taste in my mouth, but they are one of the few companies that will not ship you an advance replacement drive if yours fails, so you're out a drive for however long it takes for them to test yours and get you a new one. This isn't acceptable to me. Western Digital, Maxtor, Seagate, all have advance replacement policies. As for Samsung, the only drives I've seen by them are economy models that I haven't been impressed with. They might make some good ones, but I have more experience with other models so I've stayed away.

I'm a big Western Digital fan, but when I switched to SATA went with Seagate due to their new 5-year warranty and reputation for being quiet but fast drives. My 7200.7's are fast and whisper-quiet. I haven't had them that long, but I've been happy so far.

 

[Laforge]

Well, i've done a little fact finding.

I called hitachi directly

1-800-hitachi

they referred me to ibm [1-800-426-4968]

Ibm couldn't understand why in hitachi would tell me to call them, and referred me to

1-800-801-4618
Which was instantly answered by a gentlemen who said "hitachi security, may I help you?"

When I told him that I was looking for hitachi WARRANTY dept, he said that it was the same #, but that they weren't in until 8am pst.

Suffice it to say.....
Hitachi probably isn't going to get my business..



I called seagate.. spent 14 minutes on hold, and asked "do you offer advanced rma's for drives which are under warranty" to which they gave a resounding yes...

So.. while they offer what I want.. They do have a bit more hold time than I want.. but all in all.. I'd rather wait 20 minutes on the phone so that I can get my replacement drive shipped to me first, than have to wait the 3 days it takes my bad drive to get to hitachi before they'll even CONSIDER shipping me a replacement

 

[scoob8000]

Suffice it to say.....
Hitachi probably isn't going to get my business..

IBM / Hitachi has the WORST RMA policy I've ever dealt with.

I buy and have RMA'ed with the big 3, and they are the only ones I'll buy from. In order:
#1 Western Digital
#2 Seagate
#3 Maxtor

 

[evilcartman]

My vote goes for the Seagates...I've only had my new drive for about a month now but I've had no problems whatsoever with it. I read lots of reviews and things while trying to determine what SATA drive I wanted and all I read were good things about the Seagates. I was thinking about going WD because of their good reputation but frankly the 5-year warrenty is hard to beat (I know this has been mentioned already). My drive is very quiet, it's practically silent compared to the rest of my system and plus it's probably the quickest 7200rpm drive I've ever had experience with. I can't really comment on Maxtors but my parents have a Maxtor (actually two...one they bought when my friend built the system for them and the other is an old 4GB one scavenged from their previous computer...an old Dell Pentium 233) in their home computer and they haven't had any problems with it at all. The thing is that I'm not sure if it's SATA...it's most likely IDE but whatever....