Hard drive...

[JimNastics]

Another Samsung fanboy here... currently using an 80gb SpinPoint as my OS drive and it's been superb. One of my 250gb SATAII Seagate drives (DV storage and processing) has popped it's clogs, thinking of replacing with a Samsung now

[aidanjt]

Well everyone seem's to love their own makes... My seagates are showing wear and tear, my maxtor is developing physical errors, and my IBM keeps doing a high pitched beep stall. So I guess its time to get a new one.

Computer is on 24/7 and the HD will be heavily used, so this is a important factor to put in.

Basically I want speed and reliability.

Any recommendations?

If you want speed and reliability then Raptors are the only way to go.. Samsungs are nice and quiet, fairly reliable.. but they don't touch Raptors in performance.

[Agent]

Have been Maxtor for years but as others report, the newer ones seem to be a bit hit-and-miss.

The problem is filtering the facts from the BS that floats on most forums (including these)
I’ve seen it many times where people have claimed they have had devices die on them, to only go back on it or change it to “it was a mates” (which a large amount of the time, it means they have been talking rubbish) when quizzed further.
Unfortunately people feel they have to justify their purchase to the ends of the earth, even when it’s a bad one – this includes slating other manufactures, usually reiterating what others have said to “fit in”, even when they have no experience of them first hand.
Remember that not everything you read on a forum is going to be true.

I looked into this about a year back for the exact same reason. It turned out that Maxtor drives had a MTBF (mean time between failure) that is in line with the industry standard, with one particular model (note: not series) suffering from problems. When these were RMA’ed, Maxtor were sending out drives double the size of the one RMA’ed as a way of pleasing customers. This was when HD prices were no where near as cheap as they are now.

Problem is, people read that one drive had an issue - then through multiple people reiterating the information, it gets changed to “the series had an issue”. Soon after its “Maxtor drives are unreliable” and I am shortly expecting Maxtor drives to be blamed for the problems of the space shuttle Discovery.

Having spoke to several retailers about this, I can confidently say most of the “Maxtor drives have issues” is non-sense. RMA’s of Maxtor drives are around the same as other manufactures. Their Maxline series are superb and are used in many high-profile servers.

I urge you to go and research it for yourself like I have. Speak to retailers - most are happy to talk about it.
If Maxtor drives were that bad, retailers wouldn’t stock them. Not a huge amount is made off Hard drives anyway – why would they waste time in selling them only to have any profit they have made wiped out by having to RMA a drive?

That’s my rant for today

[shaithis]

Well, I am talking from experience...ordered 6 of the 200GB DiamondMax 10 a while ago.....4 for me, 2 for freinds (including a flatmate).

1 of mine has died and so has my flatmates. 33% is probably not indicative of the failure rate, although I am not happy buying more Maxtor drives, especially when I see others complaiing about failures.
Both have gone in the same manor as well: they either dont spin-up from cold or spin down while you are using them, sometimes they come back, sometimes not.

There is no smoke without fires.

[-ChEM-]

which model was it agent?

[Agent]

which model was it agent?

Some of the early series 9 - 80gig SATA 7200RPM drives.
They did a second revision of them that fixed any issues (i have one in my machine now )

[5aboy]

The Seagates are perhaps the best for the semi-high-performance user - thats the wd raptors.

so if you are not going the route of the raptors, then i would suggest a pair of seagates - im in your position myself also, as after i have paid my car insurance i am going to upgrade my 2x160gb 7200.7's to 2x320gb 7200.10s ;

i had issues with one of my seagate drives about a year ago, and i emailed seagate - it took them about 2 weeks to get me new refurb replacements. they have been great from day one.


i just hate the fact that the sata connectors are so amazingly poorly designed that it doesnt take much to break them, even more likely should you have a cramped-ish case.

for me i am going to go seagate again - cant afford raptors, and these drives give good performance and arent hideously expensive - i think ill ask scan to put them on today only once im ready!

[ash_rm]

I'd say its all pretty much about luck really.

I've had a few hard drives die on me in the past: 1 maxtor, 2 Western Digitals and 2 IBM's.

The maxtor was an old one and pretty much just failed, so couldn't recover the data.

I actually had a 2500JD Western Digital fail on my not long ago. But thing I've found the western digitals is that I've always managed to recover the data. Took a lot of messing around and crapping my self that I'd lost 250GB's of data!

The 2 IBM's were the older deathstar models that were known to have a 'few' issues.

[BeoWulf]

If you want speed and reliability then Raptors are the only way to go.. Samsungs are nice and quiet, fairly reliable.. but they don't touch Raptors in performance.

Sadly the raptors cripple you in the wallet department heh.

[BeoWulf]

The problem is filtering the facts from the BS that floats on most forums (including these)
I’ve seen it many times where people have claimed they have had devices die on them, to only go back on it or change it to “it was a mates” (which a large amount of the time, it means they have been talking rubbish) when quizzed further.
*snip*

Well damn.. thats one comprehensive reply heh. Thanks for the info, but when you get bitten a few times, its not human nature to go back (referring to the non-bs'ers). The ones i tended to have fail, were 80 gig'ers, if I get the tendency to take apart my computer I will get a model number for you, I think its serial number started with 68yop, something like that, although im not too certain.

[BeoWulf]

Well, I am talking from experience...ordered 6 of the 200GB DiamondMax 10 a while ago.....4 for me, 2 for freinds (including a flatmate).

1 of mine has died and so has my flatmates. 33% is probably not indicative of the failure rate, although I am not happy buying more Maxtor drives, especially when I see others complaiing about failures.
Both have gone in the same manor as well: they either dont spin-up from cold or spin down while you are using them, sometimes they come back, sometimes not.

There is no smoke without fires.

Sadly, hard drives are pretty open to failure something moving extremely fast on a bed of air, scary stuff. But im of a similar accord when it comes to failures.

[BeoWulf]

The Seagates are perhaps the best for the semi-high-performance user - thats the wd raptors.

so if you are not going the route of the raptors, then i would suggest a pair of seagates - im in your position myself also, as after i have paid my car insurance i am going to upgrade my 2x160gb 7200.7's to 2x320gb 7200.10s ;

i had issues with one of my seagate drives about a year ago, and i emailed seagate - it took them about 2 weeks to get me new refurb replacements. they have been great from day one.


i just hate the fact that the sata connectors are so amazingly poorly designed that it doesnt take much to break them, even more likely should you have a cramped-ish case.

for me i am going to go seagate again - cant afford raptors, and these drives give good performance and arent hideously expensive - i think ill ask scan to put them on today only once im ready!

2 weeks for a turnaround, I would say thats a little slow in this day and age Sata connectors do suck in that respect, luckily my case is fairly open. Sadly im in the same boat with the raptor situation, good drives, just insanely expensive.

[The Codfather]

I might have a look into these Samsung drives, they seem pretty good value as far as price/reputation is going.

I've got a 40GB IBM Deathstar to replace that's been running nearly 9 years now and could probably do with being put into retirement before it decides to die on me.

[BeoWulf]

I'd say its all pretty much about luck really.

I've had a few hard drives die on me in the past: 1 maxtor, 2 Western Digitals and 2 IBM's.

The maxtor was an old one and pretty much just failed, so couldn't recover the data.

I actually had a 2500JD Western Digital fail on my not long ago. But thing I've found the western digitals is that I've always managed to recover the data. Took a lot of messing around and crapping my self that I'd lost 250GB's of data!

The 2 IBM's were the older deathstar models that were known to have a 'few' issues.

Deskstar/deathstar do have a reputation I must admit. I like the WD recovery rate youve had, although the data probably wont be all that important im storing on it.

What about more of the feature wise, such as how it deals with failure recovery etc, access rates and the like. And propriety technology that might give a drive a edge.

I did look at the samsungs, but they have a apparent total lack of 16meg cache in their range. I was hoping for one with that little tidbit.

[BeoWulf]

I might have a look into these Samsung drives, they seem pretty good value as far as price/reputation is going.

I've got a 40GB IBM Deathstar to replace that's been running nearly 9 years now and could probably do with being put into retirement.

Well done! heh. Still can't beat my 2 gig bigfoot, it takes up a full 5 12 drive slot, i think it only has 2 physical errors on it heh.

[da.Guvna]

Both myself and my friend have been happy IBM/Hitachi Deskstar customers for years now...never had a problem at all.

Having said that, it doesn't translate to their laptop hard drives. Had more of those fail on us here at work than any other make of laptop drives. We had a whole bunch of them which *literally* lasted to about a month beyond their 3yr warranty, and then just collapsed, lol.

As far as desktop HDDs go, the most reliable ones we use at work seem to be Seagates. Plus, they have that 5 yr warranty now, so they must pretty pretty confident of their own reliability.....or are they just playing mind games? Argh!