Hard drive recommendations?

[JULE5]

Stay away from Western Digital in my honest opinion. I've had more WD hard drives go down then any other brand.

Maxtor all the way!

LW

Each to his or her own experience I guess, but I personally avoid Maxtors like the plague (or have done so far - a cheap 1tb Onetouch enclosure offer might change that soon though...) as they are the only drive I have ever had fail on me. 3 of them, one after the other within the space of a year, all from the same batch I expect as bought together. Once bitten and all that.

[shaithis]

Each to his or her own experience I guess, but I personally avoid Maxtors like the plague (or have done so far - a cheap 1tb Onetouch enclosure offer might change that soon though...) as they are the only drive I have ever had fail on me. 3 of them, one after the other within the space of a year, all from the same batch I expect as bought together. Once bitten and all that.

That's the kind of attitude that will get you in trouble in the future.

What you need to realise is that there is no good or bad hard drive manufacturers, only good or badly made drive models (and in some cases revisions).

It changes over time, no hard drive manufacturer has ever maintained the best or worst record. Its one of the reason you hear so many people swear that manufacturer x is great or that manufacturer y sucks.....Yet everyone has their own opinion of who is good and who is bad.

[looney]

^ True, thats why different people will give different opinions, I have a 5 year old Maxtor hard drive and it hasnt missed a beat, I also still have a 9 year old Seagate which I use, and I would recommend both brands, althought now they are the same, Maxtor's are just rebranded Seagates.

[NeoVector]

Would def recommend the Western Digital 6400AAKS I use for my boot drive as it is very fast, but have partioned off 100gb as i'll never use the full 640gb, personally i found the older maxtors (3-5 years ago) to not be that reliable, but that might of changed since being taken over by seagate.

[martinm10]

maxtors are now a lot more reliable - id go for seagate as you get 5yr warranty and 500gb is around £40 on scan or ebuyer.

Depending on your pc you may want to think about having your old drive plus a 500gb together to keep data safe.

[JULE5]

Each to his or her own experience I guess, but I personally avoid Maxtors like the plague (or have done so far - a cheap 1tb Onetouch enclosure offer might change that soon though...) as they are the only drive I have ever had fail on me. 3 of them, one after the other within the space of a year, all from the same batch I expect as bought together. Once bitten and all that.

Well then, in the same vein, surely taking someone's recommendation will get you into trouble? Mine was just a negative recommendation!

[shaithis]

Hard drive recommendations are fine as long as they are based on the exact models you are looking at.

Unfortunately, with hard drives you also have the added issue of newer models not having chance to show their true failure rate.

How many IBM DeathStars were sold before people twigged?

[TheReaFireblade]

maxtors are now a lot more reliable - id go for seagate as you get 5yr warranty

Seagate and Maxtor are one and the same now

[chiark]

Just my few penneth on this...

I've had a few drives fail, and they've been either IBM (yeah, back in the days when 40GB was huge - put me down for 3 of those failing), or fujitsu (notebook drives - 2 of 'em) or maxtor (just the one).

Never had a seagate fail, including the ST-251 20MB device (yes, that's MB) that's attached to an Amiga 500 and is 20 years old, or notebook drives, or desktop drives, or server drives... I must have had about 15 seagate drives without any problems whatsoever. I've only run 4 WD drives, all have been on 24x7 in a home server and none have given any trouble over 4 years.

[martinm10]

I have had Western digital for about 5 uears without failure - and am just about to purchase a Seagate - have heard good news about them. You must bear in mind that any drive can go wrong - and the manufacturers wouldnt give 5 year warranty if they thought they would have to keep replacing them.

Some will always go wrong out of the thousands thay sell!!