Are any really better the others?
Hard Drives decent consumer models?
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no. just look for the access time, and the specs are generally reviewed somewhere. i found after searching through the reviews the main difference is how noisy or quiet, but performance is extremely fast for all, so buy the quietest one.
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I've had good luck with Seagate and WD. Just got a TB for $89 and put it in a ESATA / USB 2.0 enclosure and it works well.
I have had a few Maxtors go bad. But they were about 5-7 years old.
Take care, Bill
I have had a few Maxtors go bad. But they were about 5-7 years old.
Take care, Bill
I've had a lot of Seagate drives go back for warranty lately, "11" series. The WD have been more reliable. However, Tom's hardware shows Seagate as the performance leader for many models moreso than the WD's.
I can't stand Maxtor... Have had nothing but problems with this brand, both when I sold them and when I purchased computers with them in it.
I have had very good luck with Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung, Toshiba, Hitatchi, Deskstars and later model Fijitsu's and wouldn't hesitate to use these brands...
I have an old 80mb (not GB) Seagate that is about 15 years old and still kicking in my 386!!!!
I have had very good luck with Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung, Toshiba, Hitatchi, Deskstars and later model Fijitsu's and wouldn't hesitate to use these brands...
I have an old 80mb (not GB) Seagate that is about 15 years old and still kicking in my 386!!!!
Just had a Maxtor 60GB go bad....
I've done them all, and the worse I've ever dealt with were the IBM "Death Stars"...
In 15+ years I've had only Western Digital & IBM. None have ever failed.
Sometimes there are bad batches, but really there's little difference between the brands. I usually buy WD or Seagate (who recently had some problems) but at work, I've seen them all fail.
Last drive a bought was a Seagate. I paid a few dollars more ($5?) at Newegg and got a server duty drive. Same performance specs as the consumer drive but higher MTBF.
I've had at least one drive fail from each of the major players at one time or another. It's rare that a certain drive line turns in consistently high failure rates as did the IBM DeathStars from the early 2000's. Base your buying decision on performance, features, warranty and price.
I was trying to run a recording studio in the early 2000's using DeathStar's in *RAID0*. You wanna talk about futility?! For the longest time, I thought it was me.
Like some of the other posters, I've had drives from most major manufacturers go bad, and others last seemingly forever. These days, I just buy commodity drives, count on them failing and make sure my data - the *real* value, here - is always backed up well: the "working" drive, an external drive on premises and (usually) an external drive kept by the client once a job is finished, an Amazon S3 account in the cloud; and optionally punch cards, sea scrolls and cryptic cave drawings.
Like some of the other posters, I've had drives from most major manufacturers go bad, and others last seemingly forever. These days, I just buy commodity drives, count on them failing and make sure my data - the *real* value, here - is always backed up well: the "working" drive, an external drive on premises and (usually) an external drive kept by the client once a job is finished, an Amazon S3 account in the cloud; and optionally punch cards, sea scrolls and cryptic cave drawings.
I started a hard drive thread ~1yr ago, some good info here:
https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/threads/word-on-the-street-about-hard-drives.80008/
I like the Western Digital drives and am planning to buy the WD3200aaks (single platter 320GB).
https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/threads/word-on-the-street-about-hard-drives.80008/
I like the Western Digital drives and am planning to buy the WD3200aaks (single platter 320GB).
And yes, the only drive I've had go bad was Maxtor and wouldn't buy another one. I've had a heap of Quantum drives ... they seem reliable, but are now old and slow and somewhat noisy.
Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
I've had a lot of Seagate drives go back for warranty lately, "11" series. The WD have been more reliable. However, Tom's hardware shows Seagate as the performance leader for many models moreso than the WD's.
I bought a refurbished "11" series on Ebay. Somewhat concerned, since if you go to NewEgg the reviews seem to indicate a high failure rate for that series. This drive is working great. The question is how long will it last?
I've had a lot of Seagate drives go back for warranty lately, "11" series. The WD have been more reliable. However, Tom's hardware shows Seagate as the performance leader for many models moreso than the WD's.
I bought a refurbished "11" series on Ebay. Somewhat concerned, since if you go to NewEgg the reviews seem to indicate a high failure rate for that series. This drive is working great. The question is how long will it last?
Back when I worked for Maxtor I got to see a few info that explains why some drives fail more than the other:
1) Some drives are mishandled by the vendors and that is the #1 reason they fail in consumer's hand.
2) Within the same brand, some generations are bad because they were falling behind their competitor and was squeezing the last safety margin out of the drives, or testing didn't catch some quirky bug that shows up after a few thousand hours of run.
3) Consumer buying drives from a store always get the non prime units. The prime ones are always sold to the large OEM because they demand even higher quality to avoid costly RMA. Consumer usually are ok even if they lose a drive and send one in for RMA and get a replacement.
4) No drive is guarantee to last forever, backup is a must if the data is important to you.
At the moment if you want to get Seagate, they have a bit of problems with the 11 series that supposed to have been fixed in the latest firmware. WD seems to be ahead in the power consumption, Samsung seems to be ahead in noise, IBM as usual are strong in performance (they have the best command recombine algorithm according to a 15 year veteran that defects to us in SanDisk), and Seagate used to be in reliability (suppose to be until the 11 series).
The rule of thumb is: every drive company messes up once in a while, and their technologies are usually within a few months of each other due to cross licensing / patenting in the industry. So don't buy based on brand, buy based on model.
1) Some drives are mishandled by the vendors and that is the #1 reason they fail in consumer's hand.
2) Within the same brand, some generations are bad because they were falling behind their competitor and was squeezing the last safety margin out of the drives, or testing didn't catch some quirky bug that shows up after a few thousand hours of run.
3) Consumer buying drives from a store always get the non prime units. The prime ones are always sold to the large OEM because they demand even higher quality to avoid costly RMA. Consumer usually are ok even if they lose a drive and send one in for RMA and get a replacement.
4) No drive is guarantee to last forever, backup is a must if the data is important to you.
At the moment if you want to get Seagate, they have a bit of problems with the 11 series that supposed to have been fixed in the latest firmware. WD seems to be ahead in the power consumption, Samsung seems to be ahead in noise, IBM as usual are strong in performance (they have the best command recombine algorithm according to a 15 year veteran that defects to us in SanDisk), and Seagate used to be in reliability (suppose to be until the 11 series).
The rule of thumb is: every drive company messes up once in a while, and their technologies are usually within a few months of each other due to cross licensing / patenting in the industry. So don't buy based on brand, buy based on model.
I've had good luck with WD drives in the past. Pulled a pair of WD1200JB's out of my G4 last year, still working fine, but the bearings were shot and the drives whined like crazy. They were about 7 years old when I pulled them out. Replaced them with a pair of Samsung Spinpoint F1 drives, which so far have been good, they've very quiet. I've got them in RAID1. I won't run any drive without at least RAID 1 anymore.
I've had a few drives fail on me in the past, including an 80GB IBM TravelStar (back when they were still IBM and not Hitachi), an older Seagate 20GB, and a Maxtor. Of all the failures, the Seagate 20GB was the most disastrous.
I've had a few drives fail on me in the past, including an 80GB IBM TravelStar (back when they were still IBM and not Hitachi), an older Seagate 20GB, and a Maxtor. Of all the failures, the Seagate 20GB was the most disastrous.
Originally Posted By: PandaBear
1) Some drives are mishandled by the vendors and that is the #1 reason they fail in consumer's hand.
At my last job I tried to educate the people building servers on how to handle hard drives in an attempt to reduce the number of failures. I couldn't do it, they just didn't care. I knew it was a handling issue because the failures went way up when I stopped doing the Linux server builds myself. I knew the failures went way up because I would get paged to deal with them in the middle of the night. I also had a suspicion that the Windows NT server failure rate was always higher than my Linux server failure rate, because I would always see the Windows NT people doing hardware work on servers that were put online recently.
Eventually they just outsourced the server builds to another company. I believe the hard drive failure rate went down after that.
1) Some drives are mishandled by the vendors and that is the #1 reason they fail in consumer's hand.
At my last job I tried to educate the people building servers on how to handle hard drives in an attempt to reduce the number of failures. I couldn't do it, they just didn't care. I knew it was a handling issue because the failures went way up when I stopped doing the Linux server builds myself. I knew the failures went way up because I would get paged to deal with them in the middle of the night. I also had a suspicion that the Windows NT server failure rate was always higher than my Linux server failure rate, because I would always see the Windows NT people doing hardware work on servers that were put online recently.
Eventually they just outsourced the server builds to another company. I believe the hard drive failure rate went down after that.
I've owned all brands, and the only hard drive I've had fail on me was a Samsung 80gb after 2 years.
I am running mostly Seagates now, with a few Maxtors (Maxtor brand is no more) and no troubles yet. A few of my 160gb Seagates have been running for over 5 years....although one is just now beginning to grow a few bad sectors.
You can't go wrong with WD or Seagate.
I am running mostly Seagates now, with a few Maxtors (Maxtor brand is no more) and no troubles yet. A few of my 160gb Seagates have been running for over 5 years....although one is just now beginning to grow a few bad sectors.
You can't go wrong with WD or Seagate.
Had a WD die a slow death on me.
Started playing back videos all jaggedly and slowly. WD had a diagnostic program I downloaded and ran and it said the drive was junk.
Still ran (slowly) and I evacuated all my data.
I lost my receipt but they warrantied based on the build date, sent me a new drive, and I sent my old one back in the same box.
Sure I should have backed up my data, but it was just video scratch, and I was impressed the drive limped along to help me get my stuff off...
Started playing back videos all jaggedly and slowly. WD had a diagnostic program I downloaded and ran and it said the drive was junk.
Still ran (slowly) and I evacuated all my data.
I lost my receipt but they warrantied based on the build date, sent me a new drive, and I sent my old one back in the same box.
Sure I should have backed up my data, but it was just video scratch, and I was impressed the drive limped along to help me get my stuff off...
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