Well, I hope my harddrive worries are over. I have gone through so many harddrives in the past couple of days, that I can safely rank the reliability and ownership satifaction of all the harddrive companies out there.
3 weeks ago, my western digital caviar from last year, a 10 gig drive, crapped out. This unit was practically brand new, I was seriously miffed. They definitely get my lowest vote. I also remember a long time ago my dad installed a 400MB drive in the 386 from WD, a lot of swearing was involved the next couple of years. Ive never heard good things about them, I have no idea why they hold so much respect. Screw you WD!
Second two worst has to be Maxtor. Im sorry, but these drives are noisy, fussy, and underperform. I had a 4 gigabyte drive that I bought for myself and a friend of mine. Back then I wasnt too interested in a quiet PC, and it wasnt until the Maxtor died that I realized that annoying brain wave erasing ray came from the HDD. The thing booted when it pleased, and several times the bios wouldnt recognize it (it wasnt the Mobo, I had a 2nd hdd in there too, along with a crapload of other stuff). Maxtor sucks, IMO.
Personally, Ive built many PCs with IBM drives in them. Theyve never let me down. After reading the testimonials here you would think they were the worst drives money can buy, but I disagree. I just wished that they performed better and produced less heat. But this opinion must be taken with a grain of salt, Ive never actually had one in my PERSONAL computer....
I do have a special fondness for my Fujitsu though. Through the years, it been the only part that has managed to traverse several generations of PCs that I have owned (mostly because I wanted to save money wherever I could). The damn thing wouldnt die even when I crammed it into a case that was a tiny glowing oven, complete with 1 case fan in the power supply and 1 cpu fan on an OC'd Pentium II, and enough cabling to blanket Connecticut. It died on me yesterday, at least 10 complete reinstalls later, and having had my sister cart it off one semester in her computer.
But above all, I have to say that Seagate drives take the cake. I've had a Seagate Barracuda 4.3 gig UW SCSI drive that has worked in everything, and is still working flawlessly. I bought this used off someone, and its been my savior ever since. Ive had my critical data stored in it since I got it, done video editing with it, let my sister mash on it for a semester. Its been so solid, often being the only thing working after windows has its way with my data <damn you microsoft>. It hooked into an adaptec 2940UW controller, maybe that has something to do with it. Recently, I bought a 40GB barracuda, this time ATA style, I couldnt afford a U160 SCSI one. I cannot believe the build quality of this part. It literally weighs a ton, and is as solid as a brick, and for good reason, its probably the quietest thing in my PC. Gone are the crunching sounds, the screaming spin (that was so prevalent in my old seagate oddly), and any semblance to any other HD. I am so satisfied with this unit, that I copied my 4gig SCSI drive over and chucked the old one, its the first drive that is faster in every respect to the SCSI Seagate. Its reliability remains to be seen...., but if its anything like my old barracuda, I think I will be quite satisfied.
My recommendation to anyone is to forgo the price points and extra space, and buy a Seagate drive.
Oh, and I dont work for Seagate, though I wish I did.
