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The most reliable IDE hard drive?

F

furiousfords89

Gawd
Joined
Apr 17, 2004
Messages
712
hi everyone.....

What do u guys think is the most reliable and efficient IDE hard drive? i am thinking about getting a western digital or a seagate.
 
Western Digital, Seagate, and Maxtor. 8MB cache and 7200RPM is pretty standard.
 
I don't think that the sample size here at the [H] is large enough to assess whose drives are most reliable. Even if we knew, such statistics wouldn't guarantee the protection of your data. Buy a drive with a good warranty (at least three years of protection), and back up your data on a regular basis. Besides that, you should be equally safe with WD and Seagate drives, as well as drives from Hitachi, Samsung, and Maxtor. I haven't heard of any bad batches lately, so I have no specific reliability issues to speak of.
 
^ ;) what xonik said

plus
http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=ResultsBrowser

If you enter information about your current drives
(and its very detailed information) into the
Storage Review Reliability Database
youll be able to access the database, its the largest
"open" database on reliability I know of

also review
Which Brand of HDDs is most reliable
and the Proper Handling Guide at Seagate

read those and youll note the caveat
hard drives that employ Fluid Dynamic Bearings (FDB) will probably have a better chance
 
I love my Seagate 160gb. Got it for $70 about 7 months ago. WD, Maxtor, Seagate all good drives. Only drives I really hear about problems with are IBM'S.
 
IBM no longer produces hard drives. Hitachi picked up the hard drive division from them, but their new hard drives are problem-free.
 
Ice Czar said:
^ ;) what xonik said

plus
http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=ResultsBrowser

If you enter information about your current drives
(and its very detailed information) into the
Storage Review Reliability Database
youll be able to access the database, its the largest
"open" database on reliability I know of

also review
Which Brand of HDDs is most reliable
and the Proper Handling Guide at Seagate

read those and youll note the caveat
hard drives that employ Fluid Dynamic Bearings (FDB) will probably have a better chance
Click to expand...

This man cannot be touched when it comes to links and data storage info.

zzCzar
 
lol sadly thats why im asking you guys about reliable hard drives. I have an IBM 40 GB hard drive and used it for almost 3 years.. and every year i had to reformat the drive and lose some important data.
 
When important data is involved, you should always assume your drive will crash tomorrow. If it doesn't then that's good, but if it does then you better have a backup of your data. No amount of statistics in the world is going to prevent your drive from crashing. Owning the most reliable drive in the world doesn't mean jack shit when it crashes and you lose everything. Bottom line - back up your data! Also, if a format solved the problem then it sounds like a software problem, not a hardware problem. I'm not saying that it couldn't possibly be a hardware problem, but it just doesn't sound like it.
 
jpmkm said:
Also, if a format solved the problem then it sounds like a software problem, not a hardware problem. I'm not saying that it couldn't possibly be a hardware problem, but it just doesn't sound like it.
Click to expand...

Actually :p
a reformat offers the HDD the chance to lockout sectors that have degraded

from Hard disk Myths debunked @ Rojakpot
Myth #5 If your hard disk has bad sectors, formatting will cause more bad sectors to appear!

Truth :
If your hard disk has bad sectors from recurrent head crashes, then the number of bad sectors is GUARANTEED to increase as time goes by.

The reason for the increased number of bad sectors when you format the hard disk is because formatting your hard disk reveals the new bad sectors! Don't forget, when you format the hard disk, the format utility will check for and reveal the new bad sectors.

So, formatting will not increase the number of bad sectors in a failing hard disk. It just reveals what's going on.
Click to expand...

and for more indepth info

Defect Mapping and Spare Sectoring @ the PCGuide

you could effectively do the same thing without reformating by running one of the various interations of chkdsk see > Corrupted Files!?

when it comes to backup...I couldnt agree more ;)
 
It's very hard to say what the most reliable drive is since designs are always changing. I would go with WD as a first choice and maxtor as a second choice. I wouldn't touch anything else, had bad hitachi and seagate and other drives. Only time I had md/maxtor drives crash were from my PSU F'ing them up.
 
The storage review DB is useful, but you have to be careful when it concerns models that have comparatively few entries. The fewer the samples the less likely the results are representative. Likewise you cannot say that because you had a drive from one manufacturer that failed and one from another that didn't, that these results are extrapolable to the model in general, or worse yet, to the brand in general.


So go enter your drive experiences you lazy farts!
 
like leukotriene said, any personal sampling is suspect
as is any sample with low numbers

Ive seen every brand badmouthed in here
when its far more likely the environment, end user or the supply chain to blame
Ive even seen members that are pro integrators,
and deal with hundreds of the same brand\model stating that its junk
yet I have 12 of em, and they are still running without errors after 3 years :p

they never thought to change suppliers :rolleyes:
in truth its likely more important who you buy from than what
 
yeah, bad drives do show up once in a long while. But i LOVE maxtor's RMA process. so freaking easy. unlike SAMSUNG, those fuckers outsourced their rma and probably tech support to Bangladesh, India or something. I called them 3 times just to do a simple RMA and i couldn't undetsand some of what they were saying and tehy were downright rude. and i NEEDED to an original receipt of purchase (which maxtor doens't require) and FAX it over. wtf, why can't i just RMA thru a simple phoen call like maxtor? GRRR.....

i don't own any maxtor drives right now (RMA was for a friend). my two raptors would be considered as reliable since i iheard they use SCSI parts and a 5 year warranty.
seagate takes a long time to RMA too.
 
my two raptors would be considered as reliable since i iheard they use SCSI parts and a 5 year warranty.
Click to expand...

I read somewhere that the Raptors use platters that don't recieve the same type of coating treatment that high spindle speed SCSI platters do, meaning the drive surface may be more susceptible to deformation or chipping (from particulate matter) over time.

WD knows that SCSI users will continue to use SCSI and IDE users don't beat up on their drives as much on average, and so they probably won't lose any money even if the Raptor platters are more fragile than I've heard.
 
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