Hitachi Hard Drives: Is it time to forgive the Old Deathstar?

[strike-down]

Had a few of em now, and never had a problem with any of them.
Currently using spinpoints though. Would have gone with hitachi again, but when you're offered half price on spinpoints,. . . well, too good to miss.

[synaesthesia]

The latest Hitachi drives (and all of them for the last couple of years) have been absolutely fine and entirely devoid of the old IBM Deathstar issues. One of my RAID arrays is made of 4 x 400gb Hitachi Deskstars which are aging a bit now and came from a 24/7 data storage background (i.e. not new when I got them). Still all perfectly fine

[Funkstar]

My deathstars were destroyed. Damned rebels!


(Well someone had to!)

[staffsMike]

They are my second favourite after WD. While they are extremely fast, especially my notebook drive.. for a notebook drive.

I've never had a problem myself but I know we had some issues with the industrial PC's they built at my last job. Not as many as you might expect given the reputation though.

I wouldn't want my data or back ups on one, I only trust WD for that but I'd be happy to run O/S and apps on them

[Professor Frink]

I had the old deathstars with the clicks of death. I currently have 5 deathstars in my system from 250GB-1TB and love them. They are quite, reliable and fast and great in RAID.

[arthurleung]

About 18 months ago I had a Buffalo 500GB Drivestation that had a Hitachi in it. Shipped it from USA to UK and it broke. On the other hand, FreeAgents have no problem with shipping.

Have to say, Hitachi's construction is still a bit filmsy. Though my friend just killed a FreeAgent from someone kicking the drive accidentally.

I wouldn't mind buying Hitachi drives as long as it is not 5 platters, with the exception of if Hitachi bring out a 2.5TB drive now.

Personally I only buy from manufacturer that product the largest capacity harddrive.

[chrestomanci]

After the deathstar faliures, I made a decisson to switch to IBM drives, on the basis that after the embarisment of the failures, IBM and their designers would be more careful than usual with future product lines, so IBM drives would actualy be more reliable than other makes.

Over the years I have owned one 60Gb unit, and two 120Gb drives, All where top of the range capacities at the time I brought them, and the sizes will give a clue as to how long ago that was.

All this is despite the fact that a friend of mine lost a RAID-5 array of deathstars when two of the 5 drives in the array failed on the same weekend.

[shaithis]

There is a chance of failure with any drive. I still feel that asking on a forum is not going to get you a true idea of how good/bad a drive really is and manufacturers will never release the true failure rates.

I would like to think that the HDD market will never again see the mistake of the DeathStars, they were so notorious that I think HDD manufacturers will always try their hardest to stop a repeat of that episode.......at least that's what I hope.

I would take a chance, hell I did with my SpinPoints and haven't regretted it (YET!), I doubt Hitachi are any more or less reliable.

[Tom O]

havent had one for ages now as i got totally put off after i had two die on me, one a build i did for a friend with all his music producing stuff on

so many other HDD manufacturers to choose from...

[nobby375]

ive had 2 for 4yrs plus, apart from them not liking a raid o array(had a disastrous failure) they've been fine for me
gets my vote

[[DW]Cougho]

Had both 100gb and 250gb deskstars, both were fine for many years.

I swapped out the 250gb yesterday because it was getting very loud and causing the occassional hang. Mind that was after over 4 years of use, and my data was all perfectly intact.

[s3ds]

I had problems with the 80gig deathstars but that was 7-8 years ago
Before that i used to like the IBM brand drives but have not used them since

WD / Seagate / Samsung but i supose its time to try them again