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is Hitachi a reliable brand?

F

faye

Platinum Member
Hi,

want know if Hitachi is a reliable brand? I heard so many of my friends who has chosen IBM died in a year or two but the reason they choose it, fast.

2 questions, is IBM/Hitachi Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 (80 GB SATA), fast

is it reliable, long lasting? do i need to add a fan for it?

I am only looking for 80GB sata version... and add another 80gb later for raid.

thanks
 
ibm/hitachi has not had any [abnormal] problems since the 75gxp/60gxp series of drives of a few years back. have not heard anything bad about their drives since the 120gxp.
 
actually my friends' models are before the 120gxp series... so i don't know...

I want a fast and reliable drive loh
 
If you are looking for reliability, than go with a drive that has a good warranty. A Western Digital Raptor has a 5 yr. warranty.
 
Warranty doesn't mean that much..

I just don't want to loose the data. However, I don't want to waste a drive for RAID 1
 
Warranty doesn't mean that much..

I just don't want to loose the data. However, I don't want to waste a drive for RAID 1
 
Originally posted by: faye
Hi,

want know if Hitachi is a reliable brand? I heard so many of my friends who has chosen IBM died in a year or two but the reason they choose it, fast.

2 questions, is IBM/Hitachi Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 (80 GB SATA), fast

is it reliable, long lasting? do i need to add a fan for it?

I am only looking for 80GB sata version... and add another 80gb later for raid.

thanks
Click to expand...

Storagereview.com ranks the Hitachi 7K250 best in class.

I've had two 80GB SATA's running RAID0 since November 2003 without a hitch. Fast and quiet. Luv 'em 🙂
 
Ever since the 120GXP, IBM drives have been great. Their merger with Hitachi didn't affect that. The 7K250s are some of the fastest IDE drives you can get today, but since they're relatively new, nobody can give you a definite answer as to their reliability. Based on their past track record since the 120GXP though, it should be good.
 
I will never buy a Hitachi drive again, not because of reliability concerns, but because their RMA process is a nightmare. In contrast WD and Maxtor are very easy.
 
Originally posted by: Torghn
I will never buy a Hitachi drive again, not because of reliability concerns, but because their RMA process is a nightmare. In contrast WD and Maxtor are very easy.
Click to expand...

I would agree that past reliability has not been good. I owned 1 75GXP and 2 60GXPs. I RMAed a total of 4 times. The RMA process, however, was mostly painless. I think it's on par with other manufacturers.
 
Originally posted by: Swanny
Originally posted by: Torghn I will never buy a Hitachi drive again, not because of reliability concerns, but because their RMA process is a nightmare. In contrast WD and Maxtor are very easy.
Click to expand...
I would agree that past reliability has not been good. I owned 1 75GXP and 2 60GXPs. I RMAed a total of 4 times. The RMA process, however, was mostly painless. I think it's on par with other manufacturers.
Click to expand...

Other manufactures will ship do an advanced rma and ship the replacement drive first. Hitachi will not. They also have very strict packaging requirements that can make it expensive to ship the drive back. Also, from my experience they are also incredibly slow.
 
Originally posted by: Torghn
I will never buy a Hitachi drive again, not because of reliability concerns, but because their RMA process is a nightmare. In contrast WD and Maxtor are very easy.
Click to expand...

Agreed. It's not so much that it's difficult to RMA a drive (I've done two with no problems) but the turnaround time is over a month. That's just outrageous.

I'd probably buy an older one that's out of warranty if it was a good price.
 
Originally posted by: faye
Warranty doesn't mean that much..

I just don't want to loose the data. However, I don't want to waste a drive for RAID 1
Click to expand...

On one hand you don't want to lose data, but don't want to waste a drive on RAID 1???

That's an oxymoron!!! 🙂

I take that you will only do RAID 1 if you feel the drives are not reliable. On the other hand RAID 0 doubles your chance of a drive failure regardless of how "good" the drives are and then you lose all that data anyway.

Did I understand you correctly?
 
I've used IBM/Hitachi drives for years and never had a problem with any of them. I'm now using 2 7K250s in a RAID0 configuration and can tell you they rock!

I'd suggest buying one of a larger size, and then getting an identical drive later if you need one.
 
so if i RAID 0 both drive, it will double the chance to get failure?

oh this is the first time i heard about it.

For me i believe 80gb for now and add another 80gb for raid 0 later will be enough for me...
however, when i add that 80gb drive later i gotta format my first drive, someone here said that it is "stripe array" and must lost everything on the first drive in order to use raid 0.
 
Originally posted by: faye
so if i RAID 0 both drive, it will double the chance to get failure?

oh this is the first time i heard about it.

For me i believe 80gb for now and add another 80gb for raid 0 later will be enough for me...
however, when i add that 80gb drive later i gotta format my first drive, someone here said that it is "stripe array" and must lost everything on the first drive in order to use raid 0.
Click to expand...

Yup.... in MOST cases - all that I know of anyway you will have to backup or image your first drive once you buy the second to do a raid 0 across the two.

So you are increasing performance significantly doing raid 0 but also taking on double the risk that one of your two drives in that raid 0 config will die. I brought that up because you were asking about the dependability of the Hitachi's and seemed to state that the safety of your data was important. If you want raid 0 for the performance, then you will need a backup plan should one drive fail.... you never can get data from the remaining good drive in a raid 0 implementation.

Raid 1 is disk mirroring. This allows you to duplicate the drives from day 1 and every time you write something to drive 1 ( or 0 depending how you look at it ), it will also write the same data to drive 2 ( or 1 "").

Obviously this is much more reliable and fail safe - however, if your controller fails you are still up the creek unless you get the exact same controller to replace the bad one, or in some cases a newer model of the same brand/maker will do the trick and be able to read the mirrored drive and all will be well.... Of course you could do a soft raid across two controllers.... say the onboard PATA/SATA and a PATA/SATA add in card and you won't need to worry if the controller fails as each drive is on a different controller and you'll still have access to your "failsafe" or mirrored drive.... Using two different controllers is called disk duplexing and takes raid 1 to a more reliable level.... least in a software raid environment. You can only do soft raid 1 in Linux or in a microsoft server OS.... Win2k desktop and XP only support Soft Raid 0.

Raid 1 will give you a performance hit though.... So I guess you will still be looking at raid 0... Please, very please back those buggers up.
 
Running RAID-0 without a bulletproof backup plan is like flying an experimental airplane without a parachute! (c) 2002 .bh.
 
Running 2x 80GB 250K's here, not in Raid. 1 is OS, 1 is storage. Quick and quiet...actually swapped them in place of 2x 36GB Raptors in Raid 0.
 
I got my 2nd SATA 80 Gig Hitachi and decided to RAID0 them out. I was surprised how poorly Newegg shipped the Drive and now am having some clicking issues. Thank goodness for warranty's and Customer service because as anyone can see the HD Tach Benchmark drops significantly and it happens when I hear the click so RMA Time.
 
I have a Hitachi 19" color television my mom bought me new in 1985. The television has never needed any service and the picture is as good as televisions sold today. The only thing is that it is big for a 19" but back in 1985 they were larger.
 
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