Reliability of PC Hardware

[Ross1]

For the past couple of years, my main source of information has been:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/8...s-rates-6.html

I have never really seen much other data published (there was an article about hard drives that google used, but they never mentioned specific brands, just information like temperature was quite a big factor (both too hot and too cold killed off drives quicker...)), and also stuff like: http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/1...ightingale.pdf

Again, doesnt really mention brands (apart from very vague 'branded' vs 'white box' terms), but again contains some useful information, and some more obvious (overclocking decreases stability, who would have thought!).

Heres my question. Do your individual experiences dictate your next purchases more than larger collected samples like the top link? I know a lot of people who will have one hard drive die and then proceed to claim that brand is awful Despite the knowledge that my individual experience with past products has no bearing on reliability, Im sure I still suffer from a subconscious bias.

Also I would be grateful if anyone had any other sources that publish failure rates or something similar.

[kalniel]

Neither - I tend to go on construction quality (from reviews) rather than historical reliability records, as the latter as only looking backwards and don't take account of usage (eg you would expect a brand popular with overclockers to be under more stress than one that isn't, so if historical failure rates are still only average then they were more suitable for overclocking than a brand that tends to only be used in office machines.

[Newblet]

For HDDs it's the amount of platters that affects reliability the most. Hitachi's 5k3000 (manufacturing facilities recently purchased by WD IIRC) drives are supposed to be the best at the moment.

[PmanUk]

Personally I tend to go with brand. Evga have been good to me, as have WD reliability wise, OCZ on the other hand keep failing.....

[K3V]

thanks for the behardware link tho, makes an interesting read

[DennisMenace]

Performance/Price is still the main factor for me, but with such a competitive market, Reliability/Service plays an important factor. This is why I'll pay a bit more for Intel/WD/Corsair components (and Dell monitors) as they have a good name for quality/reliability, and you seldom hear a nightmare story about their Customer Service.

The only HDD I've had completely die on me was a WD (~10 years old), but this didn't put me off as there's enough data out there to see they are pretty reliable (maybe less so recently?). Some manufacturers do trade on their previously good name to shift rubbish, so user forums like this are a great place to get a sense of what to avoid (eg OCZ/Sandforce SSDs!).