hard drive reliability

[gopunk]

what's the most reliable brand of hard drives? i've heard of problems with all of the major manufacturers, ibm, seagate, maxtor, wd, so i'm just lost on this one. thanks.

 

[bozo1]

That's like asking what's better, Ford or GM. You end up in a religious debate as there are no failure stats that are publically available. I think each of those manufacturers have had models that are less reliable (aka IBM 75GXP fiasco) than others but for the most part, they are all good choices.

 

[Pariah]

Visit StorageReview, they have a user reliability survey. It may be accurate, or completely inaccurate, who knows, but it is the closest thing we have to a reliability report.

 

[thomsbrain]

well, in my personal experience, the only brand that i haven't had die at some point was maxtor. but i know that they are not perfect, either.

 

[avedis]

My Personal Expirence...

Had problems with Seagate, Bad sectors, etc.
Maxtor has given me no problems, but I think theyre a little noisy.
Western Digital has been my drive of choice. Never a problem. Had a WD 2Gb drive I used for 5 years without a flaw.
finally replaced it this year when I built me new computer for a WD 7200RPM 30GB.

Avedis

 

[FlipSide]

Personally I never had a problem with any harddrive, yet. I have/had the following hardrives.

MFM Drives(5.25 bays)
Seagate
Miniscribe

IDE's
WD
Maxtor
Quantum
Conner
Fujitsu

SCSI's
IBM
Quantum

Laptop's
IBM
Toshiba

The only one beef I had was my first Fujitsu, 3.5 G EIDE, it was noisy. That was it. My favourite ones are WD and Maxtor (mostly the new ones) because I cannot hear them. I have to look at the IDE lights to tell me that there is HD activity. Both drives (WD 80Gig 7200, Maxtor 13G 5400) are in my main rig.

 

[veryape]

Like everyone has said, they all have their problems with certain models but for the most part they are all okay. I prefer Maxtor at this point because of the price/reliability ratio at this point in time, but that could change at any time if something better comes along.

I have a Maxtor 15 gig that has been reliably working in my computer for over two years withour a glitch and I also have a Western Digital 2 gig that I transfered into my current system from my 7 year old system, and that one still works fine for me without any problems. I use it for my backup drive and keep all my downloaded files on it.

I go with what ever is the best at the time. If people are complaining about a certain model I stay away from it, that's about it.

 

[gopunk]

thanks guys, i was just a little scared after reading all the horror stories

 

[jamarno]

It's not like Ford vs. GM - the quality is actually good.

The numbers I've seen show no significant differences in quality over the past 2 years or so for the biggest brands (5400-7200 RPM only).

Some old MFM Seagates had a head positioner chip that would burn out, and they had a lot of 40-60M drives develop stuck heads. Some Miniscribes had an optical head position sensor that would go out of alignment. Mitsubishi and Maxtor made some well liked 5.25" drives.

 

[Atlantean]

I like the newer seagate drives, I have found mine very reliable. But imo basically any of the major hd manufacturers make good reliable drives.