Best Quality/Most Reliable Hardrive?

[shortylickens]

Title says it all. I am sick of having drives go bad on me because I keep going to brand names I know rather than spend time researching issues with specific models or chipsets. In the past year I have had many SATA drives and a couple old PATA drives go bad in both my gaming and web machine. Some of them were Maxtors, a couple Seagates, and a Hitachi. In a few cases I was not ever able to recover info from the hard drives and that was really miserable. Losing save games means loss of hundreds or thousands of hours of work. And if that drive held Steam games then its a long ass process of downloading them all again. And an even longer process of installing disc based games. In the case of my web computer I am smart enough to back up important shit to a 16GB thumb drive, but I am getting tired of reinstalling Windows and all my apps over and over again.

I always disable automatic defragging whenever I do a fresh install, so none of my drives should be getting excessive wear. And frankly, even if I did defrag weekly that shouldnt kill a quality drive after one year. Or multiple drives in my case.

So, in order to keep from doing this on a regular basis, I need to know what the best rated drives are in terms of build quality and reliability under heavy gaming and home use. I dont care so much about speed, I just want something that will last for years on end, or be replaced by a comprehensive warranty if needed.
Am looking for 1TB drives in SATA 1 or SATA 2. I already got in to the SSD thing with the OS drive for my Win 7 system, but thats not going to work for my gaming rig.
Brand and specific model recommendations would be appreciated. Links to sites that have rated many drives by quality would also be great, but I cant actually find any of those. Most sites I visit just tag on the generic "all drives today are of equal build quality and should not be judged based on that", which I know is incorrect.

EDIT:
At this point I am frustrated enough that if you guys suggested an expensive server class hard drive I would probably consider it. I am also not interested in Green hard drives unless they happen to be more reliable for some reason.

 

[repoman0]

What exact drives have you had fail on you?

Maxtor has never been known for reliability, and recent Seagate drives aren't great either. Not sure about Hitachi. I use Western Digital almost exclusively now, and many people swear by the reliability of their drives, though I'm not sure of a source that tests or measures drive reliability. WD has a 5 year warranty on most if not all drives.

Something like this or the newer SATA 3.0 64MB cache version...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-284-_-Product

The Samsung Spinpoint series of drives is good too, fast at least, but I think the general consensus is that WD makes the best quality, most reliable hard drives..

edit: Check this out, good discussion here and a link to a Google study on hard drive failure, and a storagereview.com reliability poll that you have to register to see.

http://serverfault.com/questions/7952/what-brands-of-hard-disk-has-the-lowest-failure-rates

 

[shortylickens]

Thanks. Will read tonight.

I cant recall all the model numbers now, many have already been sent to the trash.

I did find one decent article, but aside from mentioning the read arm moving off or staying on, it didnt have a whole lot to say about reliability other than enterprise drives are supposed to be better.
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Definitive-2TB-Hard-Drive-Roundup/?page=1

I actually wasnt even looking for 2TB specifically, but the consensus of recent articles is that given the price per GB it makes sense to go for the gusto. I found that RE4 on newegg for $269 after promo code. May consider it before it expires.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-579-_-Product

 

[repoman0]

Looks like a few people had major problems with those new 2TB drives. 1TB capacity is a proven reliable performer and is the sweet spot for now, IMO.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-313-_-Product

Two of those would be $280, only a few bucks more than a single 2TB drive.

 

[shortylickens]

Looks like a few people had major problems with those new 2TB drives. 1TB capacity is a proven reliable performer and is the sweet spot for now, IMO.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-313-_-Product

Two of those would be $280, only a few bucks more than a single 2TB drive.

I dont even need 2 terabytes, just one. The whole idea was reliability first, and bang for the buck second. Since most new hard drive reviews are only on 2TB models thats where I ended up focusing.
That will be fine. So long as it supports Ultra DMA 6 it will serve well as an OS and gaming hard drive.

 

[Emulex]

velociraptor sata 600gb should be fine and reliable. think of it as a B-grade 600gb SAS drive

 

[Rifter]

Honestly the consumer stuff is not even close in reliability to the server grade drives. If its that important to you i would really consider a SAS controller card and some server grade SAS drives.

If going consumer i dont think it really matters, all drive makes have there share of issues, ive had good luck with the newer 7200.12 seagates, just stay far far away from the 7200.11. Also been running a few WD blacks(500GB and 1TB) with no issues although my WD green 2TB is acting a little strange but so far so good, it does get hammered daily for 1.7GB of backups from my RAID array, probably wasnt ment for that much abuse.

If i was staying with consumer grade drives i would go with the WD black.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

Seagate does not have reliability problems. They had one doozy of a firmware issue with their 7200.11 drives, but they continue to pump out more drives than any other manufacturer, I believe. If you buy a Dell you're getting a Seagate drive. Do you think Dell would continue to sell drives that had reliability problems? Seagate is huge in the enterprise space, and their experience trickles down to their consumer drives, you can be sure.

If I didn't like Seagate enough to have bought two 7200.12 drives despite the recent bad press they received, I would have bought Samsung F3 drives. They (Seagate and Samsung) were the only ones that had moved to 500GB/platter when I bought my drives. If WD is now selling 500GB/platter drives I'd say they're worth considering. But I think the higher density platters are key to your reliability requirement. Less platters = less moving parts = longevity.

I've never seen the wisdom in buying VRs myself, but others have a valid point recommending the new 600GB VRs. Newest WD tech, pseudo-SAS drives, so you're sure to be getting a good product.

 

[FishAk]

I'm going on about 8 months with a set of 5 WD Caviar Black 1Tb drives. I have 5 because I started with 4 in RAID 10, and one showed up as failed after a few days. I brought it back, picked up another, and the next day another failed. I was pretty sure the drive wasn't at fault at that point, and started searching for answers.

Turned out that you're not supposed to use the new WD drives in RAID unless you spring for the more expensive RE model. I figured out how to reduce booted disks from the array to once per week or so, and once the ICH10R 9.6.0.1014 driver came out, it's down to "only" once a month or so. When I got my 5th drive back from the store, I set it up for backup duty.

The drives are fast, and so far reliable. As a single drive, it's great that the drive will try for a couple minutes to fix an error. Just don't buy them if you ever think you might want to have a RAID array.

 

[Griffinhart]

I've had decent luck with WD Black drives up to 1TB (haven't tried higher capacities), Seagate 500GB, 1TB and 1.5TB drives have done well for me too. That said, stay clear of the WD green series. They have been nothing but trouble for me. I've had several 1TB Green drives fail and the only 2TB drive failed all within a year. I think I'm sitting at a 75% failure rate for the green drives. I don't buy them anymore.

 

[CurseTheSky]

If you want a reliable drive, say away from cutting-edge capacity (2 TB and up), and keep the platter numbers to a minimum (1-2 platters). Personally, I'd go for 1 TB drives with two 500 GB platters at the moment.

My personal favorite is Western Digital, though I will buy Seagate and Samsung as well. The only drives I absolutely will not buy are Seagate 7200.11 (especially 1.5 TB), fixed firmware or not.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

The number one killer of any HDD is dirty power either, low or spikes. That said, I give another vote for Western Digital.

 

[KlokWyze]

WD here as well. Though Seagtes would be a close 2nd. I always just see what people bought and reviewed the most @ Newegg and make my decision after reading a few reviews. Quality can be highly subjective and can take years to really find problems though....

 

[jjmIII]

I tend to agree, stick to 1tb or less.

As far as the 7200.12's, I'm not sure Seagate figured it out yet.

 

[shortylickens]

I went ahead and bought an RE3 drive from Amazon. Much cheaper than other stores and free shipping thanks to Prime. The RE4's are a little out of my desired budget and all I could find were 1.5 TB and up.

 

[fuzzymath10]

My first 1.5TB 7200.11 was bricked the first time I used it but Seagate sent me a replacement with new f/w within a day or two and I've been running it for over 18 months.

The WD Greens seem to have a weird behaviour with idle buzzing which is apparently normal but a tad annoying. I have two which are both running fine though. Same with Caviar Blues, and a few Momentus 2.5" drives.

 

[Martimus]

If you buy a Dell you're getting a Seagate drive. Do you think Dell would continue to sell drives that had reliability problems?

While I can't say much on the Seagate quality, I do know that I have seen more Dell hard drives die than from any other OEM. For a while, I think every one of my friends or relatives with a Dell had their hard drive die on them (over the course of maybe 18 months.) I had never seen anything like it.

I like WD, as I haven't had one die on me for probably 15 years. Hitachi bought out IBM years back, but at the time IBM was having quality issues (I am sure these have been fixed by now though). I have never heard a single bad thing about Samsung, and am considering buying a Spinpoint for my next spindle drive. Maxtor has always been cheap, and always been really LOUD. I have had a few Seagate drives, and only one has died on me (I think it was a 320MB model).

 

[Binky]

If you've really had a long streak of "bad" drives, maybe the drives aren't the problem.

Look at your surge protectors - are they crappy or old? Are you drives running at sustained temps of more than 45C? In a perfect world, you'd have every computer on a UPS and all drives would run at maybe 40C or less.

For what its worth, the drives that fail on me the most are the drives in computers that get turned on and off a lot. My systems that run continously have very few problems (except dust maybe).

 

[shortylickens]

Good UPS and good power supplies. Believe me I thought of those first. They get changed out with each new generation of motherboard. And I try to let me system run constantly or in standby. I never let the drives go into standby. They dont use much energy anyway and getting them back online is more hassle than its worth.

 

[QueBert]

Bought a 1TB WD Black retail drive in December or January and it's already toast. The only brand of HD I've owned that didn't crap out on me was IBM, this was years ago and it was one of the "Deathstar" models. Go figure lol.

 

[shortylickens]

Bought a 1TB WD Black retail drive in December or January and it's already toast. The only brand of HD I've owned that didn't crap out on me was IBM, this was years ago and it was one of the "Deathstar" models. Go figure lol.

As a matter of fact, my IBM Deathstar lasted longer than any other drive I've had. It got too small for my massive game collection so I had to retire it.

 

[extra]

As a matter of fact, my IBM Deathstar lasted longer than any other drive I've had. It got too small for my massive game collection so I had to retire it.

Off topic I know, but brings back memories. I had four of those drives. lol. One failed...got data off it of course because it failed gradually...clicky clicky. Month or so later, next one failed. Month or two later the next one failed. Few months later drive number four failed. Kinda funny. Man those things were horrible.

 

[tweakboy]

Best hard drive used to be Seagate Cheetah or Barracuda. Or their current crop of 7200RPM drives. Maxtor which is unrealiable hard drives that break on you after 2 months or a year. Maxtor is the worst,,IBM stopped making drives cuz all broke down been a long time no IBM hd,, but hitachi is quality actually smart people build them. But overall the best hard drive that will last 40,000 is WDC Caviar Black. My WDC has almost 39,000 hours under its belt and I heard at 40,000 thats the operation time so Im gonna burry her shes gonne die., the Barracuda was from old skool when Seagate was a sep company and it has almost 35,000 hours of operation , the max is 40,000 then they die.. I will have to do the do hold a service ceremony for them for all these years of usage..... or WDC Green either one ,,,,,

 

[Rifter]

As a matter of fact, my IBM Deathstar lasted longer than any other drive I've had. It got too small for my massive game collection so I had to retire it.

I still have a IBM deathstar that runs fine, it was in a old router box(Pentium 100Mhz with 64MB of EDO ram) i used it for years and years, ran it till 2 years ago when i got my wireless WRT54. Still have comp and still fire it up for old dos games lol, mechwarrior and star control 2 baby lmao.

 

[GoSharks]

IBM stopped making drives cuz all broke down been a long time no IBM hd,, but hitachi is quality actually smart people build them

Dude, you have no idea what you are talking about. Hitachi GST = IBM. Ownership changed, but there is a direct relationship between the two entities. FYI, HGST operates/operated out of the same campus that the IBM Storage division operated out of.