Hard drive brand questions

[Nab]

hey i'm currently in the market looking for hard drives and i was wondering which brand i should be looking for. Can anyone tell me the best brands for price, reliablity, stablity etc. I don't mean one brand that has all of them, but seperate lists for each and one that has average best would be good too. Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[EeyoreX]

IMO, one brand has all of them: Whichever is cheaper. Price and similar features is all I look at. Brand means virtually nothing to me, as I have experience with most all major hard disk manufacturers and have had problems with none of them. There are always people going to tell you one brand is better because they had a bad experience with another brand, I wouldn't listen to that. For every person touting brand X there is another saying brand X sucks and only uses brand Z. Some drives may offer things such as quieter operation or a better warranty, but you didn't ask for that (implicitly, maybe you want that stuff too, and that's different). Just get whatever is cheapest. They are all equal in terms of "reliablity" and "stablity" (outside of specific lines, ie IBM Deathstars that had massive problems. Other IBM drives are fine).

\Dan

 

[Ken90630]

Hi, Nab:

Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor and Hitachi, in no particular order, are the recognized 'leaders' in the hard drive market these days. (I assume you're talking about regular EIDE drives and not serial or SCSI.)

Just look for the least expensive HD with these two minimum criteria:

1) An 8MB cache
2) A 3-year warranty

There's no excuse for buying anything less, but there are still a lot of drives out there with a 2MB cache and/or a 1-year warranty. Seagates are reputed to use fluid dynamic bearings, which run quieter than non-FDB units. Western Digital drives often have the best specs, on paper, but as to whether or not they're noticeable to the average user, I don't know. WD also has an excellent reputation for reliability. Anandtech usually recommends WD in their buying guides, for whatever that's worth to you. And Maxtor generally gets spoken of highly too, from what I've seen. Ditto Hitachi, for the most part.

If it helps, I just saw an ad in last Sunday's paper from Circuit City -- they're selling a WD hard drive ... what was it ... it was either an 80GB or 120GB model for $50 off (!). That's with a rebate, of course, but a smokin' deal nonetheless if you don't mind five minutes of paperwork and waiting a few weeks for your $$ back. Office Max (oddly enough) and Staples (ditto) often have similar deals where they're practically giving WD and Maxtor HDs away. I'd check out their Web sites for current deals. Pricegrabber.com is always a good resource too, as long as you stick to the established vendors on there.

Good luck. Hope this helps!

 

[OdiN]

I would get a Western Digital (get OEM 8MB, they have 3-year warranty or Raptors have 5-Year) or Seagate.

I would stay far, far away from Maxtor drives. I see more of those fail than any other brand.

Hitachi....I'm still not going to recommend going back to those (ex-IBM drives) for a while.

Samsungs are excellent, not the fastest but good solid drives.

 

[Muse]

When I'm buying HDs I like to do some research. Some drives fail more than others, so testimonials count for something. 3 year warranty, 8 MB cache, quietness would all be on my list of priorities, as well as being relatively cheap, of course. So far, I've always managed to upgrade before HD failure, but I've read so many tales of HD failure woe, that I don't trust them. I back up any data I'd hate to lose.

 

[jacktesterson]

I personally in this order, like

Western Digital
Maxtor
Seagate

 

[ath50]

All companies will have bad drives...there have been a couple threads about this over the last week and I believe the top three were usually:

Seagate
Western Digital
Samsung

Not necessarily in that order...

 

[Redviffer]

Exactly as stated before: they are all pretty good but GET the 3yr warranty. The cost between the 1yr and 3yr is negligable IMHO.

 

[Kaido]

I've owned Western Digital, Maxtor, Hitachi, and Seagate hard drives.

For desktops, I like Seagate...mainly because they're very, very, very quiet. The Maxtors were the loudest drives I owned...I do a LOT of word processing and I like having a nice, quiet computer. The Maxtors in my old Athlon box were louder than my fans, hehe.

I'd recommend getting a Seagate with an 8mb cache @ 7200rpm - fast and quiet. And like Ken said, get a 3-year warranty if you can - the longer the warranty the better. CompUSA has had a deal on the 200gb Seagates for $99 a couple times, if you wait I'm sure you can find a nice deal on them. I'm using an 80gb Seagate in my main box right now, they run about $90 at CompUSA right now.

If you want speed, get a 10,000rpm SATA Western Digital Raptor (available in 36 or 74gb).

For laptop hard drives, I like Hitachi. Pretty quiet and quick.

 

[Nab]

Thanks guys for all the responses, I think i'm going to go for a western digital/seagate and then based on price see which on is better for me.:beer:

 

[Chaotic42]

I like Seagate and WD drives. I've had too many Maxtors die on me to trust their ATA stuff. I'd pick up a Maxtor SCSI drive if the price was right.

 

[Ionizer86]

I've used drives from all the companies, and I like Seagate the most since their 7200.7 line is very quiet and you can't hear the seek noises once you put the lid on your computer. The Maxtors and WD's are a lot louder by default, but you can use tools to make them quieter (while slower). Even after bringing my dad's WD400BB to the lowest noise level, I can still hear seen noises though. As for reliability, I've had a 3.2GB WD die on me after about 3 1/2 years, and a Maxtor 40GB die on me before 3 years even elapsed. I haven't run any other drives for such a long period of time, so all I can say for now is that my Maxtor drive wasn't too reliable.

 

[Nab]

Originally posted by: OdiN


I would stay far, far away from Maxtor drives. I see more of those fail than any other brand.

q]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
I've had too many Maxtors die on me to trust their ATA stuff. .

Originally posted by: Ionizer86
Maxtor 40GB die on me before 3 years even elapsed. .

it seems as thought maxtor isn't very reliable

edit: sorry those quotes are messed up,they aren't suppose to be replies of replies.

 

[EeyoreX]

Refarding Maxtor drives (ie, the previous post). I said in my very first reply to ignore things like this. I will give you the opposite end of the above spectrum. I have currently in my rigs 5 Maxtor drives. I passed along another 6 to other rigs that didn't need so much space. Several of the drives are going on 5 years old. Not one of them has caused a single problem or failed in any way. I have owned a total of one Maxtor drive that was bad. I bought it that way for $5 knowing I cold get it replaced under waranty. The bottom line is people are going to have bad experiences with one brand of drive over another, that does not make all drives of that brand unreliable. I stand by my Maxtor drives. And by my Western Digital and by my Seagates. In short, I stand by whichever drive is cheapest when I am making my purchase.

\Dan

 

[OulOat]

Maxtor, I've found, has the easiest RMA service. Fill out their online form and they will send you a new one in a couple days. Western Digital is second in RMA service, but the drives are very loud/hot. Seagate is rather harder process to RMA (have to call them to get advance RMA), but I like their drives since Barracudas are silent and worth the extra cash. HD noise is very annoying in the sense that it is very high pitched whine. So the ranking for me would be: Seagate, Maxtor, then WD. But then again, if your fans are the ones causing all the noise, just go for the cheapest one.

 

[earthling30]

I've used WD for years and they've treated me very well. They are very reliable.

 

[acebake]

WD is good, and Maxtor is very good as well.

 

[OdiN]

Originally posted by: acebake
WD is good, and Maxtor is very good as well.

I would still stay away from Maxtor drives. I see a larger percentage of Maxtor drives that fail than any other brand. This is also the same fact as reported to me by several data recovery facilities that I sometimes deal with in my job. Enough for me not to purchase them. That and the fact that they decided to start this whole 1-year warranty mess which gave all the other manufacturers an easy path to follow.

 

[dudeman007]

I have a Samsung 120 gb 7200 sata hdd. Its awesome. Very quiet. Though samsung isnt the biggest of the names, theyre are very good. I highly recommend them.

 

[ELopes580]

I am loyal to WD mostly, but I do like how quiet the Seagates are.

One time I was duplicating a HDD. My friend got a Seagate (40GB?, I think). I hooked it up, and powered on the comp. I am use to hearing sounds of the drive.. so when I didn't hear anything; I had to look down to make sure i connected it. Are they still that quiet??


As for the OP, I have 2x WD 250GB drives now in my system.

 

[Jeff7181]

I don't think I'll buy a Maxtor drive for a while yet... after two died on me within about 6 months, I just don't have a very high opinion of them. I have a WD800JB going on 2 years... a refurbed WD Raptor going on 1 year... a WD1600LB going on 4 months (I think)... a Seagate that's been working since 1994, a Western digital since 1992, had a Quantum for 4 years, a Hitatchi for 5 years... oh... and I currently have a 40 GB Maxtor that was a replacement for one that died... that's going on 2 years as well. But the ONLY drives I've had fail were Maxtors.

 

[OdiN]

Originally posted by: dudeman007
I have a Samsung 120 gb 7200 sata hdd. Its awesome. Very quiet. Though samsung isnt the biggest of the names, theyre are very good. I highly recommend them.

I concur, I used to sell a lot of Samsung drives and I had 1, maybe 2 come back to be RMA'd. They may not be a big name in the hard drive business, nor the fastest drive, but they are definitely reliable drives. I sell mainly Western Digital now, I've had a few come back in, but nothing out of the ordinary.

 

[tweeve2002]

I like Western Digital Drives....Although I do have a 120gb from them going out. But the drive is old...I got it soon after they were first released, Paid way too much for it too.