just a note on Hitachi Hard Drives

[Cr0nJ0b]

I've bought lots of HDDs over the past 10 years or so and from time to time you run into a bunch of bad drives. I had some bad Maxtors, years ago and a couple of WDs in the very early days...but for a time, the last 5 years or so, I've been pretty lucky. I generally buy the cheapest ATA drives and I haven't had any real bad issues. But lately I've started to notice a trend. I have about 5 Hitachi drives, 10 Seagates, 2 WD and 4 Maxtors. Of them all, I've had 5 issues...all with the hitachi drives. 2 connectors broke...which I'm sure that I'm partially to blame for (SATA crap connectors + force = saddness), but again, only the Hitachi drives had an issue. another drive started crapping out with write errors etc...I returned that...then 2 more died with "excessive shock" errors. I'm glad they are still under warranty...but I'm done with Hitachi drives...that's for sure.

 

[Idontcare]

Well there are two ways to digest these statistics.

Either the quality of Hitachi drives are bad, meaning your experience and chances of having that experience is nothing special or unique...in which case yes you and everyone else should avoid Hitachi drives of your make/model/era as the batches are bad and 6 out of 6 failures is almost as assured as 5 out of 5.

Or you are an unlucky person who happened to receive the 5 bad drives per 1000 drives that all manufacteres generate (tongue-in-cheek here, but you get the idea) in which case statistically speaking you should run out and only buy Hitachi drives from here out because you have already depleted the sample set of its small pool of undetected rejects. (and the rest of hitachi owners should thank you for doing us this service).

 

[Puffnstuff]

Well I've got hitachi, seagate, wd and maxtor drives and I've never broken a sata connector off any of them. You really have to be careless to do that on any of them. If you've got limited space between the back of the drive and the side panel then you need to use the 90 degree sata cables to keep the stress off the connector. As a matter of fact the hitachi's are my favorites, very fast and quiet and quite affordable at the moment.

 

[AgentJean]

I've always thought as Hitachi as top notch drives.

 

[Zepper]

I've got a couple of recent Hitachi drives here and I think a lot of the problem with Hitachi drives bought from Newegg is Newegg's poor packaging. A couple layers of bubble wrap just doesn't cut it, IMO... It should be very difficult to get excessive shock on a properly packaged drive considering the non-operating G ratings on those drives. The weird new "play dead" behavior on the latest Hitachis is a PITA though (read my review of the 7K160 on http://www.techimo.com/reviews/ ) - made
me RMA a perfectly good drive...

.bh.

 

[hardbench]

You will get bad lots of any brand from time to time...

 

[bigboxes]

I've had a Maxtor sata connector break off. I am not rough with my equipment. Sata connectors (on the hdd) are male and a bad design. No amount of clips or 90 degree mounts change this poor design. I've had a lot of those IBM deathstar discs go bad (at least six) back when they had a run of bad hdds. I've had a Maxtor go bad. I have my first 250gb (WD) go bad after warranty. Just a paperweight now. I've had at least five Seagate fail as well. I think you're taking this too personally. All hdds eventually fail. That's why we backup anything that we value. Also, the use of a defragging software, a UPS and quality psu is essential to maintaining hdd health.

 

[Zepper]

The SATA connector on most HDDs I consider a design defect replaceable under warranty - but that's no good if you can't get to your data. Here is a new cable design that might help prevent breakage: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16812104558

.bh.

 

[Mandin62]

well i guess its a good thing i didnt buy a hitachi drive this time around. i was thinking about but when with the tried and true WD. its the only company i buy from any more. i have never had any drive fail and i have owned lots of drives from all major companies. i hope my luck doesnt change.

 

[Modelworks]

I had lots of issues with hitachi drives, IBM , and maxtor.

The only drives I trust anymore is seagate and western digital.
I have one seagate here that is 80mb, made in 1992, still works .