What's your take on hard drives?

[markjs]

Who makes the best. Seems they are failing now more often than ever, but who is the king of reliability?

I used Western Digital for years and swore by them, but recently I have had a couple of failures and I have been considering my choices. As it stands WD still offers the 3 year warrantee and that still has me stuck on them.

What do you think?

 

[mechBgon]

At the risk of becoming tiresome... I prefer 15000rpm SCSI 5 years of 24/7/365 operation... guaranteed. Seagate's nice...

Check your WD warranties closely when buying, 'cause many of their drives are down to 1 year as well.

 

[BoomAM]

What's your take on hard drives?

They hold information permenantly, and is non-volitile! .

Anyway;
The Seagate Baracudas are good. Very quiet.
The Maxtor 8mb DM9+`s are good as well. Good quietness/performance ratio.
The Western Digital Raptors/SE drive are very fast. But loud.

My personal pick is the Maxtors. As Maxtor provides a utility called Amset that you can set the noise/performance propeties with.
They`ll be plus`s and minus`s, fors and against for each make. Some people have bad experiances with certain makes, while others run flawlessly.

 

[DaveSimmons]

If you search old threads, all brands are bad and all brands are good. People have had 3 of brand X fail, people have had 10 of the same brand X running for 852 years 24/7 with no failures.

You can just buy anything with a 3-year warranty that's the size and price you want to pay, or look around www.StorageReview.com to compare brands/models for heat, noise, and speed.

 

[sandorski]

I prefer Hard drives over Floppy drives!

I swore off Maxtor for awhile(sub 10gb), but they are all I use at the moment.

 

[everman]

Seagate is my top pic.

 

[Willoughbyva]

I had a WD fail on me the other day after 5 or 6 years of almost 24/7 use. I currently have 2 maxtors in my system and they are doing fine. I guess the only thing I have to say is I would stick to WD, Maxtor and seagate. I wouldn't use any of the others out there because I don't really trust them. I would try to stick to at least 7200rpm drives and look for a 3 year warranty.

 

[EeyoreX]

As I said in a recent other post, whichever is cheapest is the brand I use. Barring full line failures (like the recent IBM "Deathstar" line of drives) just about every drive is reliable. I have owned dozens of Maxtor and Western Digital, a few Seagates and a few IBM/Hitachi drives. I have had good luck with all the drives I have purchased. The bottom line is luck plays a huge role in the reliability of the drive you buy. You may buy 100 Maxtor drives and never have a problem, then buy 1 Western Digital that fails. That doesn't mean WD is less reliable. Basically it means you got unlucky and got a bad drive.

\Dan

 

[JBT]

You will get a different opinion from everyone depending on which has died and which has stayed alive. It really comes down to price my self. I have had seagate, WD and Maxtor in my machine and all have been great. I have had a maxtor as my maine drive for awhile with no failiers. I think prerry much all the brands have an equal faliure rate, even IMB with thier Deathstar. Thier new one well, IBM/Hitachi 's new SATA drive is spose to be awsome. If you want a VERY reliable drive go with SCSI if you can't spend the money get an IDE/SATA with a good warrenty thats pretty much your only option. the new Raptors come with a 5 year warrenty and the other top model's from thier respective brands should come with a 3 years warrenty. All I can say is just make sure you back your stuff up if it is mission critical.

 

[Corporate Thug]

i'd go with seagate

 

[Cerb]

If StorageReview's survey can be trusted, Seagate 'Cuda IV and V are near SCSI-level (and of all the Dells with them, I've never even heard of one that anyone I know has used or been responsible for--and this probably over 150 of them all totaled--dying), and the new ones are closer to normal IDE drives.
WDs might die, but rarely go quietly, giving time to back up and whatnot.
Maxtors have a nasty habit of just dying...boot up and no drive.
Don't know about IBM/Hitachi or Samsung.
WD and Seagate both have good service for replacements, not sure about Maxtors.
At the moment, they all have around the same reliability. If you want the kings of reliability, though...Seagate ATA Barracuda IV, ATA Barracuda V, or SCSI...and might as well go with Seagate. They aren't the fastest...but Fujitsu ain't beatin' 'em by enough to ever notice.
BTW, all three of the major manufacturers offer a 3-year warranty with their 8MB cache ATA drives.

 

[Budman]

The secret to having a HD not failing on you is not a specific brand but rather how you use them.

If you want your hard drives to last you a long time it's no secret, just keep them cool.

Excessive heat is a sure way to kill a hard drive no matter who makes them,sure some drives are tougher than others but as long as your keep your hard drives cool you'll almost never have any problems with them.


And that's my take on hard drives.

 

[BoomAM]

Good point there Budman.
Keep `em cool.

 

[JulesMaximus]

What's your take on hard drives?

The bigger the better...

Seriously though, I've had many different drives but I seem to have more Western Digital drives than anything else. I really don't think there is any one manufacturer that stands out above the rest for reliability. As they make them faster and larger the chances of a failure increase. I don't know about you but a 10,000 rpm IDE 70GB drive scares the heck out of me!!!

 

[Salvador]

Seagate: Quiet motor, but not completely silent seeking. Not loud by any means, but not the quietest either when seeking. The problem is that it's not a very fast drive IMO.

WD: The SE drives are about the quietest and fastest drives when you get a good one. Both seek and motor noise are very low. However.. I have one WD that just screams like an air raid siren. It works fine, but it's loud. I'm going to RMA that drive. The other identicle drive that I have though is dead silent and fast. It's amazing that they are both the same drives.

Maxtor: About middle of the road on noise and speed. Probably splits the difference between the two. I can hear the motor and can hear it seek, but it's pretty quiet when you get a "good" Maxtor. I do have a 40 gb Maxtor right now though that I'm about to RMA that is even noisier than the bad WD that I have. It has fluid bearings too. The drive checks out fine, but it's loud! I'm so glad that Maxtor has "excessive noise" for being one of the reasons why you want to RMA the drive.

Quantum (older Quantum before Maxtor aquired them): It's a fast drive, but not quiet by any means. The motor noise is average, but the seek noise is incredible. The thing literally sounds like a noisy toilet flushing. I thought that it might just be my drive, but I just bought a used drive just like it and it sounds the same. The sound is not nearly as objectionable as the noisy Maxtor and WD I have though.

Samsung: I don't have any experience with the newer Samsung drives. I hear that the newer one's are supposed to be quiet though. My older Samsung is about average on speed and noise. This is a replacement for the first one that I owned. The first one was the only hard drive that ever died on me. I just woke up one day and the drive wouldn't work. I lost everything. This was back when the best data backup was either a tape drive or a 100 mb zip disc.

Fujitsu: Never owned one. You should read about the class action suit brought against them because of their faulty IDE drives. No wonder why they are going to concentrate on SCSI drives from now on.

IBM "Deathstar": I remember when the Deskstar drives were all the rage for speed and price. A lot of people bought them and everyone that I knew that had one eventually failed on them. I'll probably never own an IBM drive because of it. Their market share with drives right now tells the story..

What else is there?

My advice is just to get any drive that you can get a good price on and back up your stuff. Any make and model of drive can go bad on you. Any drive can get noisy, so it seems. I can tell you that in the past, I bought the WD SE drives because of speed and bought the Seagate drives because of low noise. My approach now is to buy the drive that I get the best deal on because it's not that big of a difference if you get a "good" drive.

.02¢

Sal

 

[MrCodeDude]

Originally posted by: everman
Seagate is my top pic.

Seagate is by far the most quiet drive I've ever used.

I have three 80GB Seagate Barracuda's in 3 different computers, all have worked fine for 2+ years and all are quiet. I put in a WD 120GB 8MB Cache one in my spare comp, it whines like a b!tch. Even if it is idle, it still has this small "whine" noise to it. I installed a 80GB Maxtor into my computer, it's loud as hell whenever it's in use.

So yeah, Seagate gets my vote.

 

[BoomAM]

You must have a bad maxtor then.
Cos i have 2 DM+9s 8mb cache. A 80gb and 120gb in my rig. And they`re relativly quiet.
I have a DM+8 2mb 40gb on the shelf, that according to 4 different diagnostics software, works perfectly well, but i whines like hell for some reason.

 

[Tullphan]

I've never had any luck with Maxtors over the past 5 years. I was happy with their customer service as they replaced each of the drives with no hassle, but after having so many go bad, I doubt i'll get another.
I'm using a WD as my main drive & a Seagate for my downloads, mp3z & videos. I've not had any trouble with WD's over the years & this Seagate isn't old enough to give an honest opinion yet, though so far, so good (knock on wood).
But it's like DaveSimmons said, everyone is gonna have some type of drive go bad. I'm just relating my personal experience, fwiw.

 

[BoomAM]

Heres my personal experiances, for reference;

Fujitsu 500mb HD.
Worked very well. Never had a problem with it. At all.

Western Digital 3.2Gb HD.
As above. Never had a problem with it.

IBM DeskStar 40GXP 20Gb 5400RPM.
Failed after 4 months usage. Im very cautious about IBM/Hitachi`s now. And for ppl that say they`ve improved; A friend brough a new 60Gb Deskstar 2 months ago. It failed. My digital electronics & microprocessor lecturer, brought a 120Gb Deskstar 3 months ago. That also failed.
On the up side, their tech support is excellent, and when i RMAed my 20Gb, it got returned very quickly. 2 weeks. That includes from my local post office(Crewe, UK) all the way to denmark, and back. With a letter of apollogy about it failing on me. The drive was fixed. With my old data intact!.

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 40Gb 7200RPM 2mb cache.
Got 2 years ago, works great. According to Maxtor Diagnostic software, its fine, but it started making a whining noise about 8 months ago, so for the moment, its on the shelf, it`ll be used in a second PC soon. And the replacements for it;

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80Gb & 120Gb 7200RPM 8Mb Cache.
Has been working very well for near 8 months. With about 20/7 operation. Very quiet(to me), and fast.