Got a HDD preference?

[AlwaysUp]

I was just surfing the net to find a definative comparison of HDD failure rates among the major brand HDD makers and found no satisfaction to speak of. The reason I was interested was as I was musing over the last 8 years and quite a few builds, I realized that I could not remember a single Western Digital hdd failure. I have purchased new and used and cannot recall a failure. I also have only one failure experienced working on other peoples PC's. Most of the pulled bad hdd's in my experience have been Maxtors. Just wondering what other folks experience was....?????

[pam123]

The last drive I bought for myself was a Western Digital but I've still got 2 Maxtors, 7years and 3 years, going strong.
The only hard drives I've dealt with that failed as a group were the Hitachi "Death Stars" of a few years back .
The company is doing better now but people still scream and run when you mention the name.

[AlwaysUp]

The half/height Maxtors that some Dell and older compaq machines have in them seem like they are very prone to failure. I got a stack of them from replacement jobs I've been involved in and I really can't force myself to try other Maxtors due to that even though they tend to be a bit cheaper than WD.

[pam123]

It sounds like you got a batch of drives from back when Quantum and Maxtor merged.
That was a mess.

[eric102]

2 bad Maxtors for me, both in Dells.

[glc]

It's tough to pin it down - but certain models and production runs of WD's have been terrible over the years. These days I recommend Seagate, but I wouldn't touch their budget line which is rebadged Maxtor (Seagate bought them out). You are safe with Barracuda 7200's except the .8 series, those had bad bearings. The .7, .9, and .10 are reliable.

What do I do when I need to replace a hard drive for a customer? If I can get a Seagate I do it, if not I use WD. I won't touch Hitachi, Samsung, or Maxtors if I can help it.

From a support standpoint, Seagate has the best warranty, but WD has the best customer service. WD is the only one that will cross ship drives.

[IonicBond]

sorry tp

[IonicBond]

Dammit. I deleted both my posts by mistake.

Bah, I hate having to retype my long post, so I'll just summarize my preferences
Seagate > Hitach i> Samsung > WD
As for Maxtor, screw 'em. Already lost 3 new maxtors in 2003-2004 within 4 months of purchase. Won't touch them with a 10 foot pole again.

[Cricket]

Over the last 10 years I've had a number of HDDs go bad in my own computers and a number of HDDs go bad in the computers I've built for others.

Most of the drives that went bad in my computers were IBM DeathStars but I've also lost a Conner, several Western Digitals and a few Maxtors. I haven't had any Fujitsus go on me yet (I have a couple 5400 RPM models). I've never used Hitachi or Samsung HDDs in any of my computers.

For the computers I've built for others it's about the same...lots of IBM DeathStars died, a bunch of Western Digitals and a few Maxtors.

I started using only Seagate hard drives from 2003 and haven't had one go bad yet...not in my computers or in any of the computers I've built for others. Not sure if we've just been lucky or if the Seagates just hold up better here in Hawaii's weather (high humidity).

Cricket

[glc]

Most models of WD are fine - you just have to know what the bad ones are. All their SATA drives seem to be okay, most JB series IDE are fine except the 80 gig, but I won't touch the BB's or EB's.

[AlwaysUp]

I like the JB's mostly due to the 8mb cache,...oh yeah...just shipped an 80 gig WD in my sister-in-law's build...gulp...I guess I may be in twubble!

[TwoRails]

Originally Posted by AlwaysUp ... Just wondering what other folks experience was....?????

Maxtors have been very good to me. I've been building with them for at least 20 or more years and had exceptional good luck. Yes, during the Quantum fiasco, as mentioned above, there was a period of problems for some, but I missed the bullet on that one. (They re-bagged all the old Quantum stock and sold it as "Maxtor" which is legal, but not too nice in my opinion.)

Anyway, I'm now a Seagate fan since they bought Maxtor. They still seem to be carrying the Maxtor line on, and, for myself, I just bought another Maxtor for this box: 500GB w/16MB cache. Working great.

[doubledragon5]

I have used WD and Maxtors, only one have failed and it was the Maxtor.. My latest build I used Segate and haven't heard of anything wrong yet..

[Lespaul20]

I had a IBM "Deathstar" die on me after my first build. Since I have owned Maxtor, WD and a very old Seagate and yet to have a failure(Cross my fingers).

[Hi Ho]

I have had only one hard drive failure as long as I can remember. It was a 60GB "Deathstar". I still have a 6 GB Fujitsu 5400 RPM drive that is over eight years old and still works fine. I have a Western Digital 80GB drive that hasn't given me any problems. I have a 200 GB Seagate in my old PC and a 500 GB 7200.10 in my new PC. I haven't had any problems.

[Force Flow]

I'm in the same boat as glc.

The drives I've worked with are the WD SATA and IDE JB drives, and Seagate .9 and .10's, and have proven themselves reliable. That's about all I'll suggest at the moment until some of the newer lines of drives make their way into the field for a test drive.

[IonicBond]

The older Maxtors were okay. I still have a 10 GB unit from 1999 which saw heavy daily duty in my PC until 2004, and now is a media drive in my friend's desktop. Still runs like a champ.

Then I have a 80 gig maxtor from 2002 (IIRC) that is on its last legs. It may go anyday now, but it contains totally non-essential stuff which I can afford to lose without concern. It is also in an external enclosure.

After the Maxtor failures of 2003-2004, I have given them a wide berth.

I have had a couple of WDs around 2001-2002..I had a bad experience with one of them giving CRC errors. Also they didnt like my Promise controller card.

Samsung has given me a bit of a surprise. I used two samsung drives in a low-end PC that was abused quite badly (heat, humidity, dust, PSU problems), and the drives ran without complaining, for 3 years. They are still in use. Not the quitest or fastest drives around, but very impressive nonetheless.

Seagate and Hitachi have been great in my experience. The 7200.10s w/16MB are the best 7200 rpm drives I have used. The Hitachi T7k250s are also great..not as fast as the seagate, but very quiet.

BTW, I have never used any of the deskstars, but I didnt know that IBM drives were so bad.

[glc]

Well - actually I should talk.........I have 3 old used drives in this box - a 40 gig Maxtor D740X, a 20 gig IBM 34GXP, and a 20 gig Quantum Fireball. None of these are drives of choice but they work.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by IonicBond BTW, I have never used any of the deskstars, but I didnt know that IBM drives were so bad.

They weren't "bad", in fact when they did work their performance was top notch. Their reliability wasn't so impressive. Every 7200 RPM IBM I owned died (6 GXP models) but oddly enough I still have two very old 5400 RPM IBM HDDs running in external housings.

IBM sold off their hard drive division to Hitachi. I haven't used any Hitachi hard drives yet but I understand they're actually pretty nice performing hard drives, especially the new 32MB cache models.

Cricket

[glc]

My 34GXP was pre-Deathstar. It's an ATA66 7200/2. The 75GXP was the original Deathstar, it was the first drive with glass platters.

[kilgoretrout]

I could not remember a single Western Digital hdd failure.

The only drive I've had fail on me was a Western Digital on my first build and I've never bought another one since.

[acuariano]

and which is a reliable seller to order these drives....any siuggestion?

[TwoRails]

www.newegg.com

[glc]

I've had failures with every brand made.

[IonicBond]

Originally Posted by Cricket IBM sold off their hard drive division to Hitachi. I haven't used any Hitachi hard drives yet but I understand they're actually pretty nice performing hard drives, especially the new 32MB cache models. Cricket

Oooh 32 MB cache I didn't even know about these drives. I have been out of the hardware scene for a while after my last build. Off to the Hitachi site I go!

As mentioned previously, my Hitachi T7k250 is exceptionally quiet, even without enabling the 'quiet mode' through Ftools. I dont' know if it is indeed that quiet or I am just losing my hearing slowly after spending too much time with in-ear phones on the mp3 player

[IonicBond]

Just looked at the HGST site, looks like the only ones with the 32 MB cache are 750 GB and 1 TB 7k1000 drives. Would be damn nice to have in my desktop, but 1 TB is overkill for me ATM lol.

From the seagate site, the 7200.11 also seem to offer 32 MB cache, but for some of the 500 GB models too in addition to 750Gb and 1 TB. With 105 Mb/sec sustained transfer speeds

I didn't know even about thes existence of these two drives. I think I should get out of the house less often!

[daveyp225]

In my experience, WD has been the best of: WD, Samsung, Seagate.

These were all IDE drives, though, and I have limited experience. I have never had a WD drive fail on me in the 5 drives I've owned (mostly JB drives). I had 2 Samsungs (20gb and 40gb respectively) fail on me whereas one Seagate I had worked fine (I think), just made odd noises.

I will be buying a Seagate 7200.10 drive for my next build.

[Colonel Sanders]

I have not yet used a Seagate. I have a ton of Maxtors, my main rig is currently running off of a 60GB SATA Maxtor and a 250GB IDE Maxtor - been reliable for at least a year.I have a pair of 10GB maxtors still working and a 15GB Maxtor still running. I even have a pair of the half height "value" Maxtors - one is a 15 which died pretty quick the other has been a reliable 30GB.

As for WDs I have 2 80GBs running for a little over a year know - one is a JB other is a BB. I'm getting ready to replace another Maxtor 30GB with a WD (have to figure out how I'm going to do the cloning - system drive).

The 80GBs used to be part of a Dell snap-drive (big RAID 5 box with 4x PATA hard-drives) - that thing was nightmare. Dell chose to load the box full of Quantums and those things liked to bite the dust on a regular basis. Despite the fact that it was a fault-tolerant RAID 5 array I don't think it every managed to recover from a drive failure - that was probbably related to the box storing it's operating system and other settings on the hard-drives. . .

So far the only failures I have seen have been 1 Maxtor and a few Quantums.

L J

[glc]

have to figure out how I'm going to do the cloning - system drive

WD Data Lifeguard Tools, DOS version.

[Colonel Sanders]

Originally Posted by glc WD Data Lifeguard Tools, DOS version.

Thanks! my original plan was to use the Gparted LiveCD - it has done a good job in the past, but when I tried to boot it with the PC in question it had trouble finding a graphics driver. I think the WD tools should work great.

L J