Most reliable hard drive model...

[Shargrath]

Hello.

I am trying to figure out what is the most reliable hard drive that I can find since I am looking for a new drive and I want something that will be reliable. By reliable I mean last at least a couple of years, preferably more.

I've had Western Digital and Samsung in the past. Had REAL bad experience with WD, brand new drive breaking in like two months...Samsung has been alright, have had a drive for 4 years and its only now starting to develop some bad sectors (that is why I'm looking for a new one).

I looked at the new Samsungs and it seems they have horrible reliability now. I've looked at Seagate & Hitachi and same problem. It seems every drive I check, theres people for whom it lasted less than a month before developing problems. Is it the state of tech today, or am I missing a reliable drive model? Ive been told its model specific, so if anyone can suggest me some reliable models...

Also I am not looking for TONS of space. I have 200GB and thats pretty much what I need, so anywhere from 200 to 500GB is fine. Any reccomendations/experiences welcome and thanks in advance.

 

[seemingly random]

I've had good luck with the two platter wd 640gb models.
blue: wd6400aaks
black: wd64001aals (on sale now at newegg)

If you're looking for a secondary drive for movie/music storage only, check on the green wd 1tb model: wd10eads

I've also had good luck with samsung drives. I have no idea why they're not more readily available in the u.s.

 

[Soundmanred]

Here are the drives I own, none of which has ever died.
20GB WD IDE
80GB Maxtor IDE
160GB Seagate SATA
(2) 250GB WD SATA
300GB Seagate IDE
500GB Seagate IDE
750GB Seagate External
750GB WD External
(2) 1TB WD External
(2) 1.5TB Seagate CCH1 SATA

(7.5TB Total)
Good luck so far with most major brands out there...

 

[taltamir]

biggest thing to do is to break in a new drive... get some heavy use it on it with benchmarking or burn in tools for a day and see if it dies... if it was prone to failure, it will die from that (or a few months down the road after you put all your stuff on it)...

ever since I started doing that I had to replace a few drives who failed on burn in, but I have never lost a drive that survived it...

I do still use backup and raid6 though.

 

[martensite]

Originally posted by: Soundmanred
Here are the drives I own, none of which has ever died.
20GB WD IDE

I have a 10GB Maxtor from around 2000, somewhere on the shelf. Last time I tried it a couple of years ago, it was still working fine.

I've had a reasonably good experience with all the brands, so I have no bias against any brand except the post-2003 Maxtors.

 

[seemingly random]

Originally posted by: taltamir
biggest thing to do is to break in a new drive... get some heavy use it on it with benchmarking or burn in tools for a day and see if it dies... if it was prone to failure, it will die from that (or a few months down the road after you put all your stuff on it)...

ever since I started doing that I had to replace a few drives who failed on burn in, but I have never lost a drive that survived it...

I do still use backup and raid6 though.

I've started doing a 'burn-in' since I experienced failures beginning with 1tb drives. I usually use the manufacturer's diagnostic s/w including write mode and then 3rd s/w (hd tune pro, etc). For a 1tb drive the write zeros, check and then re-check takes 8-12 hours.

I read a discussion somewhere in which half vehemently discounted the need for burn-in. I still like to do some checking however. 1tb of stuff is a lot to lose.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: seemingly random

Originally posted by: taltamir
biggest thing to do is to break in a new drive... get some heavy use it on it with benchmarking or burn in tools for a day and see if it dies... if it was prone to failure, it will die from that (or a few months down the road after you put all your stuff on it)...

ever since I started doing that I had to replace a few drives who failed on burn in, but I have never lost a drive that survived it...

I do still use backup and raid6 though.

I've started doing a 'burn-in' since I experienced failures beginning with 1tb drives. I usually use the manufacturer's diagnostic s/w including write mode and then 3rd s/w (hd tune pro, etc). For a 1tb drive the write zeros, check and then re-check takes 8-12 hours.

I read a discussion somewhere in which half vehemently discounted the need for burn-in. I still like to do some checking however. 1tb of stuff is a lot to lose.

Between formatting and copying around 1TB of data over, it takes me around 7 hours to just get that done. Once that's done, I run HD Tune to get it under extreme stress for awhile, then I run the manufacturers long diagnostic routine just to be safe. Typically that's a full day of heavy stress on the drive. If it survives that, it goes into regular use, which is much less stressful.

That said, I actually had my 2nd drive fail in like 10 years of building systems (the first was a 10.2GB WD drive, so it's been awhile). I suppose it was not so surprisingly a 7200.11 Seagate 1.5TB drive. I got in on the recent 2-pack deal from Dell (~$202 for two 1.5TB was too good to pass up), and one of them didn't get past formatting. The second one formatted fine and I'm currently writing ~800GB of data to it. I've got another 240GB of data to put on there from my network share before I run HD Tune and SeaTools. We'll see how it goes. All that data is backed up in two other reliable locations however, so it's all good.:beer:

 

[Shargrath]

So, if I just burn in a new drive as you guys instruct, it should fail if it's defective most of the time? Sounds like a good idea, never knew about it. I guess I will buy a drive from a retail store then since its easier to return than to have to ship back to Newegg or whatnot. And the reliability on all the major brands is pretty much the same?

 

[seemingly random]

Originally posted by: Shargrath
So, if I just burn in a new drive as you guys instruct, it should fail if it's defective most of the time? Sounds like a good idea, never knew about it. I guess I will buy a drive from a retail store then since its easier to return than to have to ship back to Newegg or whatnot. And the reliability on all the major brands is pretty much the same?

There are a few models with known problems. ie. seagate 1.5tb manufactured last year. A retail shop might not have the turnover so you should be careful. If you see a particularly 'good' deal, it might really be too good to be true. google the model/date.

As for 'burn-in', just make sure that you run a test that writes (many just read) and that tests the entire drive (some do ~10% randomly). These tests can take a long time - don't get impatient.

 

[Shargrath]

Whats a good source of info to find out which drive models are considered reliable?
I looked at Newegg reviews but it seems with every drive that has a large amount of reviews, there is at least several percent who get drives that stop working very quickly. Makes me feel like all drives are crap tbqh...

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: Shargrath
Whats a good source of info to find out which drive models are considered reliable?
I looked at Newegg reviews but it seems with every drive that has a large amount of reviews, there is at least several percent who get drives that stop working very quickly. Makes me feel like all drives are crap tbqh...

I kinda feel the same way about at least the higher capacity drives being crap lately. I'm quite happy with my 7200.12 500GB drives from Seagate, but they don't make those bigger than 1TB currently. The WD Green 2TB drive is just ridiculously overpriced, and the 1.5TB options are pretty slim pickings. It's karma for being a gigabyte glutton I suppose.