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Poll

In Your Experience Which Brand of Hard Drive is Most Reliable?

IBM
[ 5 ] (8.8%)
Maxtor
[ 9 ] (15.8%)
Western Digital
[ 18 ] (31.6%)
Seagate
[ 25 ] (43.9%)
Fujitsu
[ 0 ] (0%)

Total Members Voted: 80

Topic: Hard Drive Reliability (Read 4926 times) previous topic - next topic
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Hard Drive Reliability

I want to purchase a hard disk for storing important information, the HD  will at times be mobile. What HD manufacturer produces the longest lasting disks? & is there a preferd mobil rack?

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #1 –
Quote
I want to purchase a hard disk for storing important information, the HD  will at times be mobile. What HD manufacturer produces the longest lasting disks? & is there a preferd mobil rack?

Largely pot luck, I think. I've used all the above over a period of years and never had a problem with any of them. However, I'm sure there will be others who will tell you otherwise.  The only disks I've ever used that went bad, and they went bad in the first couple of weeks, were Connor and Quantum, both now deceased!

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #2 –
I've used IBM, Maxtor and WD IDE drives for the past years with sizes ranging from 850MB to 160GB and not a single one of them ever caused any data loss or had any bad sectors. The only reason I voted for IBM is that I just got two new 120GB IBM drives and like them so far, but Maxtor and WD should be fine too.

dev0
"To understand me, you'll have to swallow a world." Or maybe your words.

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #3 –
Maybe a better question would have been "Which brand of hard drive is LEAST reliable?", because people often don't even know which brand of hard drive they have until it fails.

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #4 –
I voted IBM because my friend who helped me build my PC a year ago tought me, among other things, that IBM drives are better than WD and Maxtor. I have a three year old WD, a two-year old IBM, and another IBM just a year old. All of them performing very well. I just went out today and bought me a 120GB 8MB buffer HD from IBM/Hitachi for 113 Euros. Less than 1 Euro (or a buck) a GB!!! The regular 120GB IBM with 2 MB buffer was for 97 IIRC.
[span style=\'font-size:10pt;line-height:100%\']Ib[/span]

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #5 –
Jasper, You're right. We need a poll which says "Which, if any, of these makes of HDD have you had die on you?" Most of the votes here are based on rumour rather than fact or experience.

The problem is you can't vote for two or three, which may be necesary for some unlucky people in the poll you suggest!


I had a SCSI drive die after 4 years constant use, but I forget the make. I'll try and check.

cheers,
David.

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #6 –
I've never had any problems with my Maxtor and WD drives. But a friend had some Maxtors dying on him, so i voted for WD. Also because the WD drives just look stronger from the outside.

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #7 –
I voted for IBM.

I really haven't had much problems with my WD's or Maxtor's either, but I really like IBM's hard disk software, which I prefer over Maxtor and WD, my ex's B)

Drive Fitness Test- tool is state-of-art, it allows you to test and repair corrupted sectors without low-level formatting the whole drive. It can be used with other brands too, highly recommended.

But the best part for audio-oriented people is the Feature Tool- software. You can make your hard disk drive totally SILENT. No kidding, it's silent. IBM calls it Acoustic Management. It decreases your seek and transfer times, but not to an annoying level. My 7200rpm drives operate more or less like 5400's. It doesn't harm my computer usage at home. Show Drive Temperature- option gives you some idea how to prolong hard disk's life span.

j

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #8 –
I'm afraid this poll won't give you any (statistically) relevant results.

"I once had a WD die on me"
"I've never had a problem with my IBM drive"
"Maxtor 0wnZ j00"...

Every manufacturer at one time or another had a bad line of drives. IBM's deskstar 75GXP DTLA-307045 and related drives is a good example. I have this drive and only once had problems with it, which most likely weren't related to the drive itself. It's been working fine before and after "the incident". Single user reports are worth very little. Most you will be hearing here is either isolated cases or based on rumor and hearsay.

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #9 –
In a previous thread on the same subject someone posted a link to a page which was taking a survey among a much larger user base - that one might be statistically more relevant and interesting.. the search button is your friend. 
A riddle is a short sword attached to the next 2000 years.

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #10 –
I didn't vote because I really can't say which is better, or worse. I haven't had a drive fail on me and that includes Quantums, WD, Maxtor, IBMs, & Seagates. The thing that does concern me was the industry adoption of the 1 year warranty. I believe statistically most drive failures occur within 1 year (actually the first 1-2 months of use) but somehow I always seem to be in that statistical minority so I try to buy drives that still have 3 year warranties.

The factors (more-or-less in order) that affect which HD i get are; price, availability, warranty, noise (and now things like SATA connectors come into play)

For trays: I use Kingwin trays and have been quite happy with them, i tried a few el-cheapo brands before but there was always problems. you can see their stuff here. Its a bit more pricy than the cheapos but I think in this case you get what you pay for.

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #11 –
Western Digital (WD) makes the fastest drives and by my experience they are also reliable but cost a bit more than the others.

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #12 –
@ TwoJ:

I am interested in Kingwin racks, too.
How about the noise level of those in-rack fans? If I buy a pair of those, is my computer going to sound like a F/A-18 Hornet, once again, like before my _hard_ efforts to make the music sound the loudest in the room 

j

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #13 –
Quote
But the best part for audio-oriented people is the Feature Tool- software. You can make your hard disk drive totally SILENT. No kidding, it's silent. IBM calls it Acoustic Management.


This is an optional part of the ATA spec, I believe.  If your hard drive is hooked up to a controller using an Intel chipset, download the Intel Application Accelerator.  Their software will let you control this feature if your hard drive supports it.

Quote
I believe statistically most drive failures occur within 1 year (actually the first 1-2 months of use)


I think that the vast majority of hardware failures are either DOA or within the first few weeks.  The whole 1 year warranty bit does suck though.  Longer warranties are yet another fatality of the "cheap, cheap, cheap no matter what" consumer mantality.


Anyway, if you want to see anything even remotely useful about drive reliability, don't listen to our anecdotes.  Get your butt over to StorageReview and check out their Reliability Survey.

[span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%']Edit: Fix speling snafu. [/span]

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #14 –
@Vigilante: Actually I find the seagates are usually more expensive and the WD are fast if you have them with the 8MB buffer, otherwise with the 2MB buffer I think they are not that much faster than all the others.

@kerminen

I have the 1 fan version which i found adequate for my needs since I use them to do backups for my internal HDs. So they are only in the computer for usually 1/2 hr per week. My box does sound like a chorus of F-18s

>_< anyhow so really the one extra fan doesn't make it much worse. If you have a really quite machine you will notice it a bit but it really is not that bad. Also the idea is that you do not have it installed all the time.

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #15 –
Why don't you just check out the StorageReview drive reliability database? If you browse through, you'll notice two things:

1) Most of the drives that fail often do so within the first month or two

2) The statistics for each manufacturer's drives are all over the place; there's no clear trend that says "this manufacturer is best". And that's with thousands of drives reported.

I've owned 3 Western Digital's, 1 IBM, 1 Seagate, and 3 Maxtors. One of the Maxtor drives died a little more than a year after I bought it, and I got it replaced; I now use it for off-line backup. Personally, I'd just go with whoever makes a quiet, 8MB-buffer drive with a 3-year warranty. I guess that would narrow it down to the Hitachi 180GXP or the Maxtor DM+9. I always have a full-image backup handy, which is a good thing--my hard drive corrupted itself just last week, and I had to re-image it!

As for racks/drive holders: I recommend that you only use them for drives that usually stay off-line, like TwoJ does. And since they won't be on much, they won't need active cooling IMO. I also use one for backups, but it's not hot-swappable, so it's a pain to use. Maybe you can look into getting a Firewire or USB2 external drive, if you want something removable.

Edit: I voted for Western Digital, because I once threw a drive of theirs across the room accidentally, and it kept on truckin'. It was a 420MB version whose heads had adhered themselves to the platters while I was on vacation, due to stiction... I was trying to twist the drive and wrench the platters, but my grip slipped and the drive tumbled across the room. It fixed the stiction, though!

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #16 –
I should have mentioned that - thanks to SometimesWarrior for mentioning it about the firewire/usb2 external solution.
One of the problems I've had is that I usually have the computer downloading some "important" file while I've got the backup hard drive in the tray and I have a hard time shutting the computer down to remove the hard drive. with the USB2/Firewire you can plug it in transfer the data and then unplug without shutting down the computer (hot-swappable). I recently looked into getting one of these because I find it a big inconvience having to shut down the computer to plug/unplug a hard drive. The only problem I have with it is that I haven't been able to find one that supports a hard drive bigger than 127GB.

Does anyone know if there is a USB/Firewire 3.5" tray that supports hard drives larger than 127GB? You usually have to dig fairly deep into the specs to find that information.

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #17 –
I wouldn't recommend IBM at all.  EVERY IBM drive we have bought has died, that's 6 drives, all after 6 to a year of usage.

My western digital 200GB decided to die, A replacement was sent out within 4 days which was nice.

Now I'm running 2 160GB Maxtor DM plus 9 SATA drives in a RAID stripe, 1 200GB WD drive which is starting to ring and I am very worried about, and a 120GB WD which has never caused me a problem.

All 8MBC, I would recommend either Seagate, or maxtor or WD

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #18 –
Well I build PC's for my job and this is what I have observed (and what my boss has told me).

Buy a shipment of 20 Seagates and there maybe 1 bad drive if that.
Buy a shipment of 20 Maxtor's and maybe 5 or 6 will be bad.

Through trial and error we have found that Seagates are the most reliable.
iTunes 10 - Mac OS X 10.6
256kbps AAC VBR
iPhone 4 32GB

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #19 –
Quote
Every manufacturer at one time or another had a bad line of drives. IBM's deskstar 75GXP DTLA-307045 and related drives is a good example. I have this drive and only once had problems with it, which most likely weren't related to the drive itself. It's been working fine before and after "the incident". Single user reports are worth very little. Most you will be hearing here is either isolated cases or based on rumor and hearsay.

heh, when I bought my computer it came with that exact model. It died. So did its replacement. The third replacement is still going, but I store nothing of importance on it. I bought two Seagate's for data and so far I havn't had any issues with them.

Hard Drive Reliability

Reply #20 –
People have already mentioned the storagereview survey - it's a lot more comprehensive than anything you'll find here I'm afraid.

My experience
                      - most reliable: Seagate
                      - least reliable: IBM/Hitachi 60 & 75GXP

Does fujistu even make 3.5" IDE drives?

If you're moving your hard drive a lot, it might actual be worthwhile to use notebook drive if capacity and price aren't so important - notebook drives typically have superior shock protection.