Best Quality/Most Reliable Hardrive?

[LokutusofBorg]

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.

GoSharks, please tell me this wasn't a fresh revelation for you.

 

[shortylickens]

Just got the WD RE3 today from UPS, and when I pulled apart my game system I found the 1TB drive was in fact a Seagate 7200.11. Guess I didnt do thorough enough research when I bought it. In retrospect I only paid 89 dollars for the thing, which at the time was practically a steal. Now I know why. Sucker didnt even last a whole year.
The boot drive was an older WD 250GB and it actually lasted a long time before dying, so I'm not complaining.

In any event, I am formatting the new one now as a boot and game drive. Will probably have Windows XP and minimum drivers installed before I go to bed. Despite all the other complaints, I have to admit Windows 7 installs much faster than anything else, and usually has more hardware up and running when its finished. If I thought I could get all my old games running, I would use that instead.

 

[Rezident]

My last Seagate drive died and they failed to even reply about the warranty. Not happy ata ll which is a shame because it was my first Seagate failure but I'm reluctant to use them now.

Previously had one Samsumg drive fail (out of three drives, the others are still fine).

Only one Western Digital (external) drive failed mysteriously. My trusty old WD Raptor is still working perfectly though.

My Intel SSD is still perfect, and frankly the best drive I've ever dreamed of. Yes they're so expensive but they are so worth it IMHO.

 

[ivan2]

of the 4 WD that i have in my system right now (150GB raptor, 2 cavier 320gig, and a 1TB cavier black), the only raptor failed yesterday =(

 

[shortylickens]

Installed new motherboard and OS on new hard drive. Everything worked great. But I am not looking to install all my games yet again.
Just went with Baldurs Gate 2, and a buttload of fixes and mods. Having fun at 2048x1536. Will try and see if the other disc might work. If I can copy over my Steam folder that will save a lot of downloading.

 

[Gooberlx2]

I'm a fan of the RE line of Western Digital drives. I'd be confident buying Seagate enterprise drives too. I'm fairly convinced that it's not worth the headache to buy consumer level drives anymore.

 

[Voo]

I'm a fan of the RE line of Western Digital drives. I'd be confident buying Seagate enterprise drives too. I'm fairly convinced that it's not worth the headache to buy consumer level drives anymore.

At least over here in Europe those cost around 30% more (just compared a 1tb black against a RE3), which imho really isn't worth a bit more reliability. You've got to backup your data in either way, so the only thing you save is the time spent exchanging the drive and letting the software run in the background.

May depend on the person and how much your time's worth.. and actually I've been really lucky with my disks in the last few years - and that's even though I bought lots of perfectly cheap .11 cudas after the FW desaster

 

[lsv]

Been using WD EARS Green drives for every PC. I've bought 3 of these and am buying a fourth. The drives are fantastic so far. But then again only in use 6 months

 

[tweakboy]

Go with a WDC . then samsung then the rest are junk, maxtor will die on you.

 

[linjy2]

My WD 2TB Green EADS is dead after 8 months and real usage of maybe 2 month, most of the time it sits idle.

Had it in my main pc as a extra tv show/movie drive, but also used it to back up other files.

Never buying a green again. Also my first WD to die out of many. Power on, transfer, and everything was slow as balls.

Ordered a WD 2TB black to replace it today. So much for going green. haha

 

[Gooberlx2]

At least over here in Europe those cost around 30% more (just compared a 1tb black against a RE3), which imho really isn't worth a bit more reliability. You've got to backup your data in either way, so the only thing you save is the time spent exchanging the drive and letting the software run in the background.

May depend on the person and how much your time's worth.. and actually I've been really lucky with my disks in the last few years - and that's even though I bought lots of perfectly cheap .11 cudas after the FW desaster

Yeah, they're more expensive here too (though can be had for a decent deal at times). AFAIC, the extra cost becomes a savings if I do have a drive die...and yeah, I really do just hate dealing with the PITA of replacing the drive and re-transferring from my backup.

 

[abbadaba]

I've had power supplies fail, motherboards fail, graphics cards burn out and faulty RAM but in all my years of using PCs I've never had a hard drive go bad - maybe I'm just lucky.

That being said most of my hard drives were Seagate or Western Digital.

Last I checked my 40 MB seagate drive from my 286DX still works.

Edit: Come to think of it I've had about 3 Hard drives burn out on various computers at work, just not with my home PCs.

 

[adlep]

I say that there is no clear winnar. You just have to assume straight for the get go that they will all fail sooner or latter.

 

[zephyrprime]

I would say the best measure of hard drive reliability nowadays is Newegg's ratings. Unfortunately, there's not really a good DB of hard drive reliability out there. There's one on StorageReview's site but it's not expansive enough or up to date enough to be useful.

Newegg's ratings are at least very up to date. I would rely on them when picking HDs.

 

[Voo]

I would say the best measure of hard drive reliability nowadays is Newegg's ratings.

As far as I know newegg doesn't show the number of shipped items right? (European here and can't find any numbers on a quick glance) Since these reviews tend to cater to people who got problems with their product, shouldn't the number of complaints also depend on the number of shipped items?

If one HDD is sold ten times more often than another, it's obvious that there'll be a lot more complaints even if their failure rate is equal or even a bit lower. Don't think there is any statistical significant and useful data out there (too bad that google anonymised their data, that'd have been really interesting)

 

[Emulex]

just got two RE4-GP 2TB drives. they seem to be burning in really well. slower - yes, but RE4 quality. if you are doing raid and bulk storage this is a nice cheaper option

 

[Modelworks]

If you want it to last then you should be looking at enterprise class drives.
I have been using hitachi e7k1000 drives in the workstations and they are rock solid and generate very little heat with no cooling needed.

One of the first things I look at on drives is how the pc board is oriented. If they have the circuits laid out so that the chips are against the drives surface I don't buy it. That traps heat and doesn't allow for proper cooling, shortening the lifespan. Of the drives that have failed and I removed the boards they all had burn or discoloring of the PCB from heat when the board was oriented that way. They started doing this because users were damaging components when inserting drives. I think they will find though after a few years that it was not a good idea.

 

[wanderer27]

As far as I know newegg doesn't show the number of shipped items right? (European here and can't find any numbers on a quick glance) Since these reviews tend to cater to people who got problems with their product, shouldn't the number of complaints also depend on the number of shipped items?

If one HDD is sold ten times more often than another, it's obvious that there'll be a lot more complaints even if their failure rate is equal or even a bit lower. Don't think there is any statistical significant and useful data out there (too bad that google anonymised their data, that'd have been really interesting)

Still, it seems to me that there are an excessive number of issues with HD's these days, and it doesn't really seem to be getting better.

If you browse through even the overall 5 Egg rated drives you see an awful lot of issues that just don't seem to be going away.

The theoretical performance of these newer drives make them look like a nice performance boost, but the reliability issues are enough to keep me away.

 

[zephyrprime]

As far as I know newegg doesn't show the number of shipped items right? (European here and can't find any numbers on a quick glance) Since these reviews tend to cater to people who got problems with their product, shouldn't the number of complaints also depend on the number of shipped items?

If one HDD is sold ten times more often than another, it's obvious that there'll be a lot more complaints even if their failure rate is equal or even a bit lower. Don't think there is any statistical significant and useful data out there (too bad that google anonymised their data, that'd have been really interesting)

Yeah but it's still the best info there is unfortunately. And the total number of comments is a rough indicator of the number of drives sold altogether at newegg.

 

[shortylickens]

Mother fucking fucknuts.
After two weeks the drive started hiccuping and crashing. After another week it died completely.

I am so tired of hardware going bad on me. Even more tired of reinstalling Windows, drivers, games, and copying my stuff back and forth. And thats assuming I can get the old drive working somehow. Otherwise that data is gone for good.

Before anybody jumps on me, I ran the Western Digital disk health check utility. It came up fine. And this was supposed to be a high quality enterprise class piece of hardware. WTF?

 

[PsiStar]

PSU? Swap out the PSU. I have lost plenty of h/w to a PSU with failing rails.

 

[Voo]

I am so tired of hardware going bad on me. Even more tired of reinstalling Windows, drivers, games, and copying my stuff back and forth. And thats assuming I can get the old drive working somehow. Otherwise that data is gone for good.

Before anybody jumps on me, I ran the Western Digital disk health check utility. It came up fine. And this was supposed to be a high quality enterprise class piece of hardware. WTF?

Don't worry we won't jump you because you used the health check, but because you didn't backup your stuff
A image of the OS with all the usual stuff installed will reduce downtimes by broken drives down to almost nothing - update a few outdated drivers or apps afterwards if necessary and you're good to go.. including the time to install the new drive maybe 10minutes of work (and depending on the size of the image some time to copy it around)

Lession #1: Just because it's a enterprise drive or a SSD or whatever doesn't mean you don't need a backup, you'll always want one (um lesson #0 would be RAID is no backup I assume)

 

[shortylickens]

Backups are fine, but there isnt any reason I can think of for so many drives to be going bad so frequently. I've replaced my power supplies and UPS many times over the years. And the motherboard was brand new along with the hard drive.
If I didnt need a powerful Windows XP gaming machine I would just go retail with a heavy duty service plan.

 

[FishAk]

Damb! You got some baaaad ju-ju! Seriously! I'm not a power user, but I got my first computer in 1982. It was $2000, and it didn't even have a hard drive. Anyway, I've never experienced a hard drive failure- not once. No, no, it's not because my computer doesn't have one. That one was retired after 3 or 4 years. Still works though.

You've got something going on. Do you live under some power transport lines, or do you have a hole in the ozone layer right above your house? Does your neighbors dog sneak over at night and pee on your computer?

 

[theevilsharpie]

Any sort of mechanical device will fail eventually. Save yourself the heartache and run 2-3 drives (from different manufacturers) in RAID-1.

It won't prevent drive failures, but they'll become annoyances rather than disasters.