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

[Zak33]

Hi guys,

For a long time we all seem to have fallen in love with WD and Samsung, and rightly so. Incredible reliability and good speeds.

I ued to be a Seagate man, and still to this day haven't had one go nipples-skyward, but many of you have.

However, I've also had a few Hitachi drives, and I've not had any problems for ... years.

My Dad now has 2 500 gig Hitachi drives (not in RAID, they're seperate) and also he has a WD AAKS (my choice) and he's telling me that to edit heavy amounts of film on his new quad core system, the Hitachi's seems to be faster, and supplying the data quicker, or maybe recording the data quicker to themselves id he uses one Hitachi as source drive (ie uncut film) and one as final destintion drive, but if he uses the WD as either, the process slows.

So, the question is, HONESTLY.... from real life RECENT experience, have you had any problems or simply success with Hitachi drives?

[Funkstar]

I have 5x 1TB Ultrastar's in RAID-5

One of them was showing realocated sectors almost from the start. Scan swapped it out and not had a problem since.

Also got 5x 500GB Seagates, the same happened to that lot, one had re-alocated sectors pretty quickly but was swappped out sharpish. Not a peep since then.

only down side of the Ultrastars is they are very expensive still.

[moogle]

Had 2 deskstar ide's before no problems at all

I had no idea people hated them.

[Funkstar]

I believe Tiggerai has a real hatred of them.

[Fraz]

I thought it was IBM that did the DeathStars?

[Hicks12]

I think i had one and its still going, only had a maxtor drive fail after many years but WD/seagate drives still going strong. I think the reason i dont buy hitachi was due to the actual speed of the drives, they seemed to be slower than samsung etc in benchmarks in averages but on a burst speed they are great shame they dont keep at the speed.

[moogle]

I thought it was IBM that did the DeathStars?

It was, then it switched over to Hitachi. Maybe because I have the IBM ones (I think) mine are still going strong?

[Zak33]

I agree on the synthetic benchmarks they seem slow, exceopt burst speed, but it real life it seems they're consistanty quicker for long jobs

[schmunk]

For deity's sake, people, the 'Deathstar' models were made by IBM in 2000-01 - EIGHT! years ago now, and Hitachi drives, whilst bearing the Deskstar name, have never had any of the same problems again...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would not touch either IBM or Hitachi notebook hard disks at all. All the ones I have had have not lasted very long!!

[Hicks12]

Well if real world performance is similar(even better) then they certainly are great drives, cheapest normally with 1tb only £68 last time i looked . Are they louder than WD drives?.

[Zak33]

Well if real world performance is similar(even better) then they certainly are great drives, cheapest normally with 1tb only £68 last time i looked . Are they louder than WD drives?.

no, they seem really quiet. Can hear my 250 or my dad's two 500 gigs.

Reason I posed this is because they're just great value!

[Clunk]

My deathstars are still going strong, got them in external caddies now, bless 'em.

[[GSV]Trig]

I used the old deathstars a hell of a lot but had so many deaths and data losses that unless the head of hitachi came round to my house with a cheque for £30k then I'll not be using them again personally.

[Hicks12]

no, they seem really quiet. Can hear my 250 or my dad's two 500 gigs.

Reason I posed this is because they're just great value!

Any idea what size drives are the best? 320gb use 1 platter or 2? Might get one for an external drive .

[Zak33]

I have no idea at all