HDD Russian Roulette

regeneration

Okies, I need to get a second HDD, the lack of one for the scratch disk in photoshop is realling annoying me now that Im getting into large files.
Now, I bought a seagate barracuda for my sister, which subsequently failed in about 3 months
https://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=116436
so i wanna steer clear of them; Ive also heard some bad things, possibly about Maxtor (i lost a dell/maxtor HDD) about a year ago), and their own reliability - sacraficing stability for capacity. that leaves Western Digital it seems for buying a new HDD - are they any good?
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=123331&cks=PRL
This seems a half decent one, but I need to know which brand to go for, and Im looking for the most stable brand as this HDD wil be used for backup storage/scratch space...

thanks guys

kasintahan

regeneration wrote:

Okies, I need to get a second HDD, the lack of one for the scratch disk in photoshop is realling annoying me now that Im getting into large files.
Now, I bought a seagate barracuda for my sister, which subsequently failed in about 3 months
https://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=116436
so i wanna steer clear of them; Ive also heard some bad things, possibly about Maxtor (i lost a dell/maxtor HDD) about a year ago), and their own reliability - sacraficing stability for capacity. that leaves Western Digital it seems for buying a new HDD - are they any good?
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=123331&cks=PRL
This seems a half decent one, but I need to know which brand to go for, and Im looking for the most stable brand as this HDD wil be used for backup storage/scratch space...

thanks guys

I've never had a Segate fail (owned 3, new and old all working).
Maxtor had a problem 3 or so years ago but not since(owned 3/4, very old all working).
Hitachi = IBM had HUGE problems 5 years ago, google "IBM Deathstar" none since then (owned 3, 1 dead)
Western Digital have a good rep but not so big in recent years (owned 1, working)
Fujitsu are small producers, don't even know if they do 3.5" anymore (owned 1 2.5", working).
Quantum = gone, lct 15 series was awful.
Connor = gone (owned 1 (20MB) working!).

Seagate is my favourite because they are VERY quiet, they have now got 5! year warrenties on all their disks.

Performance wise you'd better google the roundups.

kasintahan

Samsung also do 3.5" HDD's I never had one.

kasintahan

BTW - HARDDISKS FAIL!

Never rely on a hardisk as your single repository of data.

Always and Frequently backup to DVD+R's or Second Harddisk.

snappieT

Had a ****ty Maxtor, made a fool of itself. Western Digital ever since (and that's 1.1 terrabytes of Western Digital) never with a problem.

regeneration

kasintahan wrote:

BTW - HARDDISKS FAIL!

Never rely on a hardisk as your single repository of data.

Always and Frequently backup to DVD+R's or Second Harddisk.

hehe i know, I already am backing up on DVDs - but I can't afford to back up a DVD every month; so i'd prefer a backup drive as a fallback, with DVD backups every 6 months or so. Plus as I said, I need a scratch volume for Photoshop.

I only ask cos there was one brand, possibly maxtor who got a bad rep for stability...

BigEejit

Generally hard disk reliability has gone down a lot over the last 6 years (I have a 9gig scsi drive that has a mtbf of some 1.5million hours, I also have a 73gb drive by the same manufacturer that has a mtbf of .8 million hours) ... but some manufacturers are still better than others .... seagate, hitachi, maxtor and western digital have all released absolute ****e drives (deathstars as mentioned, also seagate had a problem with fluid dynamic bearings and I have vague memories othe the other two having troublesome drives) ... some are new(ish) like samsung and so long term reliability is an unknown (I have one and no problems, quieter than my seagate sata drive)
....
The current generation of drives from all manufacturers dont seem to have any catastrophic design defects, so they should all last 4 years with no problems ... but they are all liable to malfunction at any time .. being disks spinning at high speed and all ...

for performance, pick one with 15k rpms and as large a cache as possible .. for value go for a 5400rpm with 2megs of cache .... you'll probably go for a 7200rpm with 8megs cache though ...

And yes I'm flaming

SouperComputer

ive found maxtor to be the most troublesome in recent times. This year I have returned 3 maxtor drives, none from any other. Last year I think was about 4 maxtor and 1 WD, the WD was thumped by the client (idiot!) . Also noticed that the thermal dissipation from Maxtors seem to be a bit higher than others, sujectivlely that is.


make sure you have good case ventilation with any drive. By that, i dont mean just banging in 5 case fans. theres a fre good guides on google.

Samsung spinpoints seem to be doing quite well, havent used one myself. My next HD's will most likely be WD or Samsung in 3.5, and seagate in 2.5

checkout www.storagereview.com for handy stats.