What's up with HD's these days?

[wanderer27]

I've been looking to get another Hard Drive later, and from some of the reviews (Egg) and comments I've seen around, I'm really wondering what happened to the HD Industry.

From what I'm seeing, it seems the quality / reliability has really gotten bad.

I think everyone knows about the Seagate issues, and now I'm seeing Western Digital having some of the same issues.

I've had Seagates & WD's in the past, and wasn't very impressed with the lifespan of either drive - we're maybe a year on these.


What's a good reliable HD these days?

 

[NXIL]

Hey Wando,

a one year lifespan for your hard drives: that seems awfully short--what sort of environment are these drives being used in? How cool/hot? And, what sort of usage? 24/7? And, what part of HD failed: mechanical, i.e. spinning disks/actuator heads, or, the electronics?

*LOTS* of hard drives at various sizes and price points with perfect 5 egg scores, some with over a thousand ratings:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...2099%2CN82E16822145241

Right now, reviews overall seem to favor WD--but, both Seagate and WD make good reliable drives.

I would recommend: go for either WD or Seagate based on best value--both come with multiyear warranties. Since you are *backing up* anyway, if a drive goes bad, pull it, return it, swap in another....

And, depending on your budget, which you didn't mention, SSDs are looking better and better. (just still very expensive, and new, so having a few teething issues.)

Oh, (s)Hitachi drives: since being burned by the IBM DeathStar line, I avoid IBM/Hitachi. Yes, I know they are long gone, and (s)Hitachi probably makes good drives, but, that was pretty ugly...my drives, and the drives of friends after I had recommended IBM drives, grinding themselves back into raw materials....not good.

HTH

NX

 

[wanderer27]

The Drives that failed on me were on an Alarm Monitoring System running 24/7 in an Environmentally Controled room, probably ~68-70 F.
Even though they were on 24/7, they really didn't have much load/activity.
They basically became inaccessible, and the data on them wasn't worth the expense of sending out for a recovery attempt.

I'm not sure if a new Drive would be used as a backup or the primary.
They seem to have a bit better performance than what I currently have, but I worry about the reliability - 500GB to 1TB is an awful lot of data to lose (failure).

Right now I've got a 160GB IDE I'm using as data/program storage which is about full (D: Drive).
This new Drive would either replace that or become the main Drive, and the IDE would go into a new Server I'm thinking about building from old parts (Socket A & no SATA support).

 

[NXIL]

I'm not sure if a new Drive would be used as a backup or the primary. They seem to have a bit better performance than what I currently have, but I worry about the reliability - 500GB to 1TB is an awful lot of data to lose (failure).

Backups: must have. Best to have it off site, hence all the various on line back up sites like Carbonite, etc. I think Microsoft even has a pretty good free on line back up with GB of space:

http://www.backupreview.info/

Live Mesh? There are several other really good on line back up services....if your PC is on 24/7, it can back up at night. You will always have a current off site backup, which is good.

As for 24/7 use of consumer grade drives: you might want to buy from the server line of drives. Also, if your hard drives are really running that cool: according to a google study with lots of data, too cool is as bad for hard drive reliability as too hot.

HTH

NX

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: wanderer27
I'm really wondering what happened to the HD Industry.

From what I'm seeing, it seems the quality / reliability has really gotten bad.

Two things...
1. Capacity (platter density)
2. Perpendicular recording.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: wanderer27

What's a good reliable HD these days?

Mirrored backup.

There's no other way if you value your data. I use WHS, you could try even one of those inexpensive external Raid 1 units.

Or just do RAID 1 on your MB, most of them support it these days.


If you really don't want to replace your drives for 4-5 years then consider WD RE series of enterprise drives.

Personally since my data is backed up I just buy the cheaper consumer stuff, and change it out every 2 years for capacity anyway.