HARD DRIVE EXPERTS- Lets have it out. Who make the most RELIABLE/STABLE?

[KDOG]

I was looking at HDDs over at newegg and the Maxtor HDDs get pretty good reviews, but some people in here don't like them. The opposite seems true with WD, alot of reviews at newegg show alot of failures but in here it seems like WD rules. On the same token, I hear everywhere that Samsung and Seagate HDDs are pretty good. Its getting confusing for me because I'm looking into doing a RAID setup on my rig and I may purchase up to 4 HDDs.! So as you can see, I REALLY would like some input.

 

[Lonyo]

Never had ANY HDD fail on me.
Had an old IBM in a Dell machine, going on 4 or 5 years now.
An older Fujitsu, over 5 years old, still works.
60GB WDD drive, 2 years and fine,
An 80GB WD, 1 year and fine,
A Maxtor, 6 months and fine.

 

[Pariah]

Surf over to Storage Review and browse through their reliability survey. They have 1000's of results which makes it a far better guage then someone here telling you they've had x drive for 2 years with no problems so that brand is awesome, or they had y drive for 2 weeks and it died so that brand sucks. Random anecdotal posts like those are meaningless. You have to look at a much larger sample group to get any real idea of reliability.

 

[KDOG]

Ah HAH!!! Thanks.

 

[VisableAssassin]

Hands down Ill have to say Seagate.

 

[Dennis Travis]

I have had better luck than a lot of people seem to have overall, but my favorite for relibility is Seagate. Only Seagate I saw that seemed to fail a lot was the now old 2.1GB Medalist. Had two fail but since then they are very reliable. The newer Seagates are very quiet also. for a Sata drive though the Raptors are great and fast. They appear to be reliable also. Seen all the other brands die off and on but myself have been pretty lucky.

Seagate gets my vote for their IDE drives at least.

 

[screw3d]

I only had a few that I had problems with: A Quantum Fireball 1.2GB that developed bad sectors and a 20GB IBM "Deathstar" 60GXP that just died

Had an old-ass 6.2GB Quantum which was fine until I sold it, using a 80GB WD SE until now, and a 160GB Samsung 1614N is on its way from Newegg

Point is, every HDD manufacturer have their fair share of lemons, with the exception of the IBM deathstar fiasco which are simply bad!

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Never had ANY HDD fail on me.
Had an old IBM in a Dell machine, going on 4 or 5 years now.
An older Fujitsu, over 5 years old, still works.
60GB WDD drive, 2 years and fine,
An 80GB WD, 1 year and fine,
A Maxtor, 6 months and fine.

Ditto here..I have:
WD800JB works great
WD400JB same
WD 2.0GB same
Seagate 4.3 GB, slow as heck, but works fine
Last but no least, A 20GB IBM 75GXP that still runs everyday in my Daughter's macine..

YMMV with HDD's..Kinda luck of the draw if you get great one or a dud.

 

[BigFatCow]

My vote goes to seagate. Im running my raid 5 in my server with 3 seagates that comp also has a seagate boot drive. My main system has a 15k RPM cheetah.

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: VisableAssassin
Hands down Ill have to say Seagate.

same... Seagate is bar none the best IMO.

Maxtor it complete scrap... I've sent 3 back so far this month.... if anyone else remembers me posting other stories about Maxtor... not a month has gone by where I havent' sent a drive back... and our office is not THAT damn big.. they are just unreliable.... I don't like them at all.

but, Seagate = no problems so far in any PC's they've been in, whether at work, or home.

 

[sunase]

I vote Seagate as well. Although, all my WD and Maxtor drives in the past have been IDE whereas all my Seagate drives have been SCSI. It's not uncommon to see 5 year warranties on SCSI drives...

 

[batmanuel]

My personal experiences:

WD 8.4GB in wife's grandma's machine (installed April 2000) - no issues.
WB 20GB in wife's aunt and uncle's machine (May 2001) - no issues.
WB 80GB SE in my machine (Jan 2003) - no issues.
WE 120GB SE in my machine (Dec 2003) - no issues.
Maxtor 20GB in parent's PC (Dec. 2000)- died after six months, replacement has been working fine ever since.

 

[Cerb]

You want reliable?
SCSI.
They don't cost that much for nothing.

 

[0roo0roo]

anecdotal evidence is all bs. i've had drives from all of em die on me pretty much. only thing that matters is RAID.

 

[SilentZero]

Seagate and WD in my opinion! Never had probs with either, but from what I hear seagate takes the top spot.

 

[KDOG]

I see that no Seagate drives are ATA133, just ATA100. Does that matter at all? I would think that in a RAID setup it might....

 

[KDOG]

I was thinking, I wonder why Anand hasn'to done a hard drive round up?

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: KDOG
I see that no Seagate drives are ATA133, just ATA100. Does that matter at all? I would think that in a RAID setup it might....

1. No, Maxtor is the only one. However, even burst speeds are typically under 80MB/s. We'll be well into SATA II by the time 100MB/s is reached for mainstream drives.
2. Why would it matter in RAID? In software RAID, the HD transfers aren't the main bottleneck (an extra potential 33MB/s means what?). If set up well, they're on different channels, so still not the bottleneck. If hardware RAID, you're dealing with separate channels, and the bottleneck is once again the interconnect, be it PCI, PCI-X or PCI-E, or the HDDs themselves.

 

[KDOG]

People bash Maxtor around here, but I must say, Ive NEVER had a problem with Maxtors. I honestly hear people having more probs with WDs than anything else....

 

[Cerb]

I hear it and have had it equally with any I've used. Except for the old Fireballs, Deathstars and Medalists, most HDs were fine, with the occasional dead one here and there.
Seagate's 'Cuda IV and V drives had near SCSI-level reliability. The new don't seem to, so it's more a matter of noise and performance and anything else.

 

[high]

i think most hard drive problems are between the keyboard and the monitor.... not enough cooling or whatever because I've had a maxtor 120 8mb and a wd 80 8mb for a year and no probs. Also had various maxor's and wd's with not one problem.

 

[azndelite6983]

Seagate and WD at the top for sure. Stable and reliable.

Running 2 of each in my comp now, with some of those running nonstop for almost 2 years with not a single problem.

I would not recommend Maxtor, as I have also heard of many problems. IBM as well. Hitachi and other various manufacturers I have no experience with, but tend not to show up in enthusiast rigs (for a reason).

 

[MrMaster]

I have also had every HD manufacturer crash on me. Personal favorite is still Seagate for their quietness. WD had an easy RMA setup as well. Currently I own 1 seagate, 3 Western digitals, and 2 Maxtors. No crashes in over 9 months. (knock on wood)

I am not a fan of Maxtor for their RMA process.

 

[Mavrick007]

I've had alot of different brands and sizes of hard drives, and my views on manufacturers
have changed slightly over time.

My first drive was a Seagate (130meg) and actually it's the only Seagate I've ever had.
It developed bad sectors, but over time. It probably still works even.
The new ones are quiet, but they've been known to be slower than Maxtor or WD.

I've had alot of Maxtor drives, but that wasn't because they were necessarily the best.
It was mostly due to convenience, since I was able to find a Maxtor drive when I wanted it and for
the right price. Most of my Maxtor drives have had problems, the 245meg drive, 5.1gig, 27.2gig, and 80gig drive. They seemed to develop bad sectors quite easily for some reason, so I'm not a big fan.

I never used to like WD in the past but I've noticed that their quality has increased substantually.
I have 2 x 120gig drives that are on constantly and they work great. I would like to get a couple of those
Raptor 74gig drives and RAID them.

Heh And then there's IBM. Alot of people have a sour taste from their drives, but I thought my drive was great, and so do other people that I know who have the same 45gig 75gxp drive. It is fast and pretty quiet too.

It all goes to show though, you can get a bad drive out of any batch. One person's opinion may not matter if they had good or bad luck with the same drive you are looking to purchase. Get recent
reviews on the drive you are interested in and find out what people think. If your friend had a drive 5 years ago and it sucked, check to see what people think of the drives now since quality has changed
for most companies. Something very important to look at now are *warranties*. Warranties have changed from 3 years for most drives to 1 year now, unless you get the "special edition" drive or it specifically states 3 years or better. Good luck in your search, I know what kind of drive I would buy right now if I was looking for a new drive

 

[EvanAdams]

I've had three westerndigitals fail, I've had four westerndigitals
I've had two maxtors, one failed and the other developed bad sectors
My Seagate may have died. I'm checking out the MB today to see if that is it.

I think I carry some sort of EM field that hurts harddrives.

oh. and re maxtor, I've only had one because the one I bought had a rebate, three months later I got a card saying that due to overwelming demand maxtor would not honor the rebate.