Most reliable hard-drives (manufacturer)

wishkah · Guru Joined: 09 May 2003 Posts: 441 Location: de

So, which manufacturer do you trust the most?

There already is the "most unreliable" thread, but I prefer it this way around, since I need to buy a new drive for my server (thank you very much big blue)

[subliminal message] IBM SUCKS! [/subliminal message]
_________________
if only I could fill my heart with love...

mmealman · Guru Joined: 02 Nov 2002 Posts: 348 Location: Florida

Where's the "They all suck" option?

bartendercorey · n00b Joined: 27 May 2003 Posts: 15

What ever you do don't go with a IBM/Hitachi Deathstar(Deskstar). At work we've replaced about 20 of those drives with in the past year. My personal call is Maxtor.

gsfgf · Veteran Joined: 08 May 2002 Posts: 1266

maxtor and WD have been pretty reliable for me. I haven't had any others. My ibm lappy drive is fine, but it's only a 20gb.
_________________
Aim:gsfgf0

JDenis_007 · n00b Joined: 08 Jun 2002 Posts: 48 Location: Canada

I've had absolutely no problems with IBM drives. A lot of people I know have them and I have never seen one fail. IBM now Hitachi got a bad reputation from only one bad model, and that is a shame since their other products are all of high quality. Don't let you judgment be influenced by only ONE model(75GXP). Personnaly, I own a 60GXP(60Gb) and it works great, had it for about 3 years now.
However, I have seen a lot of old Maxtor fail after about 3 years of usage. I also had a WD fail on me after about 2 years of usage. Worst of alli IMO is Seagate. I once had 2 identical models that could not even work in maste/slave configuration.

Anyway, IBM/Hitachi rules for me.
_________________
Imposible is a word used far too often by humans

zeroK · Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2003 12:51 am Post subject:

I had only experience with Maxtor and Seagate yet and those with Maxtor were absolutely bad. Every Maxtor HD I have lost after about half a year the first blocks while the Seagate HD works since IIRC 1999 without any problem. It isn't that heavy used as my current Maxtor which I now have since 2002, this one has already many bad blocks on it :-?

wishkah · Guru Joined: 09 May 2003 Posts: 441 Location: de

I used three IBM 60 gigabyte GXP drives and they ALL DIED within months! I still use one for my backups, I really hope that one is the exception, cause if THAT one dies, I'm gonna sue IBMs pants off! I hate them so much, I lost all my simpsons episodes and mp3 collection cause of their faulty drives! ARRRGH!
_________________
if only I could fill my heart with love...

donovansmith · n00b Joined: 23 Sep 2003 Posts: 8 Location: Denver, CO

I've had a Samsung 10GB that came in an HP Pavilion 3 1/2 years ago and it has been moved in out of various machines, been formatted more times than I can remember, and generally been used a lot and is still going. And it is still nearly silent, too. Not the fastest 5400RPM drive, either, but it does the job well enough. My Western Digital WD400BB is over 1 1/2 years old, but it is too early to tell if it will hold up in the longer term so I can't give it the vote.

wishkah · Guru Joined: 09 May 2003 Posts: 441 Location: de

I heard from many sides that 5400 rpm drives don't die as often as 7200 drives do. Its a shame that nearly all big IDE hdds (>40 gig) run at 7200 rpm... is there a way to slow down a 7200rpm drive to 5400 by software?
_________________
if only I could fill my heart with love...

lurid · Guru Joined: 12 Mar 2003 Posts: 595 Location: Florida

I don't know if this counts, but my WD 40 gig drive died about a year after having it. I was pretty pissed until I realised there was a 4 year warranty on all WD drives. I got it replaced with absolutly no hassle at all and its still under warranty until 9/2004. Even if the drives were complete shit (which they aren't) you're guaranteed at least 4 years out of them.
_________________
Go find a cheerleader and saw her legs off. - Nny

erik_swanson · Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2003 10:36 am Post subject:

This probably isn't the norm, but I have twice as many IBM drives as other brands (Maxtor and Seagate) and the IBM drives are the only ones I havn't had any problems with.

semiSfear · Guru Joined: 08 Jul 2003 Posts: 302 Location: Adelaide, SA

I'v said it before and I'll say it again. IBM sucks big time. IBM has both crashed on me and destroyed sectors. I have even recieved wrongly manufactured IBM disks, 2 times!? And they become very very hot too. Maxtor is OK. Now I'v only owned IBM, Seagate and Maxtor disks, and Seagate is so far the best manufacture.
_________________
DnB is my religion, Jungle is my church.

supernovus · Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2003 4:28 pm Post subject:

I've used Maxtor, Seagate, WD, Fujitsu, IBM and Quantum (no longer existant thank God).

I never had any problems with any of them except for one IBM drive which died, and one Seagate which died. However, I remember when I was tech support for an ISP/Computer store and 99% of all failed hard drives we witnessed were Quantum. Now that Maxtor has bought out Quantum, I'm scared to try a Maxtor drive in case they used some of the Quantum crap. God that was a horrible hard drive company. Blech!

So in other words, they're all pretty good. I've never had a failed Maxtor, WD or Fujitsu drive. Yet ;-)

_________________
Remove OTW

jaska · Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2003 4:40 pm Post subject:

Voted Western Digital, but also Seagate is very good with making harddrives. Thinking of buying a 160gb Western Digital now.

mimesis · Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2003 7:43 pm Post subject:

my first seagate just died last week (after threeish years of brutal, vibration-filled/being-dropped life) and I respected it so much my replacement ended up being a seagate. Every other manufact. I've had an experience with produced at least one HDD that survived most briefly in comparison. IBM is the WORST. And surely the pro WesternDigital people have had their horror stories?!
_________________
peribleptic anacolouthon.

rbeagle · n00b Joined: 22 Jul 2002 Posts: 12 Location: Texas

Western Digital has always been rock-solid for me. I'm running on a WD 10 gig right now that has never given me problems, along with a WD 100 gig that has been equally reliable.

My worst experienecs have been with IBM and Maxtor, though. My school bought around 20 low-end Pentium compubers from IBM (back when they were still new, and came with both OS/2 and Win 3.1 loaded

). After two years, every last one had their drives replaced at LEAST once. A few years later, a friend of mine from Germany was beginning to convince me that IBM had improved greatly, but then that whole Deskstar fiasco came about.

As for Maxtor, nearly every time I've gone to fix a friend's computer that wasn't booting anymore, I've found a dead Maxtor drive. Certainly not a good reputation in my eyes.

But, since other people swear by IBM and Maxtor, and merely swear at Western Digital, it just makes me believe that buying ANY hard drive is going to be a gamble. I just place my bets on Western Digital.

lodger · n00b Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 53

Rbeagle, I have to agree with your last paragraph. My new box came
with a WD 80 and winblows. I immediately added another WD80 and
installed Gentoo. I rarely go into the win drive (virus & security updates)
but after less than a month the WD win drive died. The Gentoo WD is
nice and quiet.
My previous computer came with an IBM 20 and I set up Gentoo on a
Maxtor slave. The IBM died. The Maxtor still works after 3 yrs.
So maybe it is just a crapshoot with hds. Or, in my case, maybe it is
from lack of using the win drives.

lodger

Anime_Fan · Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2003 3:29 pm Post subject:

merlinBSD · Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2003 7:09 pm Post subject:

I use seagate WD and maxtor drives.... my 40 G maxtor drive has made crasy sounds since the day I bought it..... still working though, but I really like my WD drives and they are the oldest of my system and working very fine

They are the one that have the best hdparm perfs too. seagate is alwite in my opinion, jus dun like maxtor

but WD win 4 me

alphatronics · Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2003 6:57 am Post subject:

I've gone through a few maxtor's and WD's, I've yet to have a seagate go bad.

Syzar · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Apr 2003 Posts: 76

I voted for Maxtor, but still I have hard time myself deciding between Maxtor and Seagate. I have myself about a year old 80GB Maxtor, which has been working excellently. I also have about five year old 8GB Seagate, which has seemed to be great too, no dead sectors or anything.
I'm greatly satisfied with both. And I would not also put my moneys on IBM HDD's, as I have heard horror stories about those.

ProtectionFault · Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2003 8:51 am Post subject:

I'm only using Maxtor.
Using them on my server (24/7) and never had any disk crash.
Great disks, good performance.
Not a single disk crashed ever.
Once had a WD drive but it crashed after 20 hours (not that good :twisted:

)
_________________
ASUS Z87-PLUS, i7-4770, 2x8GB DDR3-1600, 700W OCZ Power Supply, EVGA GTX760 4GB, 3TB HDD, Gentoo ~amd64 (3.10.10, dm-crypt full disk, awesome)

ed0n · Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2003 9:58 am Post subject:

Maxtor has been always good for me.

Aurora · l33t Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 658 Location: Classified

Ditto above...Maxtor for me. Never had a Maxtor HD fail.
_________________
"My downfall raises me to infinite heights." -Napoleon Bonaparte

wishkah · Guru Joined: 09 May 2003 Posts: 441 Location: de