Best/Most Reliable HDD Manufacturer?

What is, in your opinion, the best HDD manufacturer?

  • Total voters
    46
It is a matter of personal preference. I look at the specs/performance before the brand. I no longer own the crossed out ones, but there was some problem with the drive.

20MB Western Digital
850MB Western Digital
1.2GB Western Digital
1.5GB IBM - (starting to have issues)
4GB Western Digital
20GB Samsung
40GB Maxtor - (starting to have issues)
40GB Seagate - (starting to have issues)
40GB Toshiba
60GB Seagate (SATA)
60GB Western Digital
80GB Seagate
80GB Western Digital - (starting to have issues)
100GB Western Digital
120GB Seagate (SATA) - (starting to have issues)
150GB Seagate
150GB Western Digital
250GB Seagate (SATA)
250GB Toshiba (SATA)
2 x 320GB Seagate (SATA) - (starting to have issues)
320GB Hitachi (SATA)
500GB Seagate (SATA)
500GB Western Digital (SATA)
 
Brogan said:
Every Samsung I've ever owned has failed.

Never buy anything but Seagate now, and have done for years.
Click to expand...

Same here, I have 4 Seagate HD's in my computer, had them installed for getting on for 4-5 years now. None have ever let me down. I even bought a spare one ready and never had need to use it. I would not but anything but Seagate HD's.

Couldn't agree more about Samsung HD's, same goes for Western Digital in the past when I used them.
 
Fujitsu SAS drives would look hella sexy in a RAID array. :cool:

Also consider the possiblity of a Solid-State Disk (SSD), either an Intel, Crucial, or an OCZ disk drive.
 
The Solid-State Disk (SSD) do interest me, they are supposed to be a lot faster on access times. I use SATA here, but not as Raid even though I could. I keep them as individual drives for storage purposes and HD backups.
 
I have to add to this...the seagate 1.5 tb hdd's that were failing were do to the firmware they were running and after they realized the issue they corrected it. After very little complaining the swapped me out (15) 7200.11 1.5 tb hdds for new ones without a hitch just to ease my mind as I was not interested in the explanation at the time. Come to find out they just needed a firmware update and I could have done that myself :)

I use in this tower at the moment, 8 seagates (all being the 7200.11 (1.5 and 2 tb) internally, 8 (1.5tb (x4) / 2tb (x4)) in a raid tower as well as tens of units that I jockey around like discs into my top loading HDD dock (which is the best thing I have ever bought for my pc for under 60 dollars). That is this computer and I have 12 computers all using seagate drives as well as a dedicated media server. Roughly summing it up...I have over 100 seagate drives with no failures. I have tried other brands but they are history in my book and I wont even give their brand names another place to be pulled up from my post via a search....good or bad.

Besides the avoiding obvious brands you hear over and over about failure...(don't forget that a company manufacturing 10 million drives is going to have more errors than a company manufacturing 100,000 but that does not tell you reliability as you have to look at the ratio in relation to how many good builds to how many bad) you must take into account that most problems stem from specific lots and it can happen to anyone to any company making anything requiring assembly line manufacturing.

On the quasi-off-topical
My hdds also survived an explosion in my breaker box which I will be attempting to re-wire today, (this just happened two days ago ) so I guess it's time to build myself a better sub-panel in my bedroom which I think is currently pulling 67 amps as well as the main breaker panel ...either way...the setup has to stay the way it has been repaired to for now as removing the electric meter while the drop is hot and while it is raining outside is just not smart.

photo(1).webp


Time to yet again update the breaker box :-/ At least my hard drives still work :)
 
Seems strange to have both Seagate & Maxtor as seperate brands , they haven`t been so for thepast 2 years...

Seagate bought out Maxtor, when you buy Maxtor you are actually buying a Seagate drive...

Just lost a 1T Samsung, only 2 months old....

Sticking with Hitachi again....

Regards...
 
It could be as simple as maxtor customers need an easy way to reach their manufacturer in order to receive support on their product. Renaming a drive manufactured as a maxtor to seagate wouldn't change the markings on the drives already sold so it would confuse those who don't know and they would not get their help...my guess is the maxtor branding will be phased out. I think that is just a responsible business taking the proper steps but I do not actually know.
 
TheBoss said:
Seems strange to have both Seagate & Maxtor as seperate brands , they haven`t been so for thepast 2 years...

Seagate bought out Maxtor, when you buy Maxtor you are actually buying a Seagate drive...

Just lost a 1T Samsung, only 2 months old....

Sticking with Hitachi again....

Regards...
Click to expand...
Actually they haven't been separate brands since 2005. Liz
 
TheBoss said:
Seems strange to have both Seagate & Maxtor as seperate brands , they haven`t been so for thepast 2 years...

Seagate bought out Maxtor, when you buy Maxtor you are actually buying a Seagate drive...

Just lost a 1T Samsung, only 2 months old....

Sticking with Hitachi again....

Regards...
Click to expand...
Samsung have really inferior products, and I'm even hesitant to buy monitors by them now.
 
Must admit, I did used to have a Samsung monitor that served me very well. Going back a few years now, it wasn't a flat screen one like today. Had very good graphics and never let me down. It's the just the HD's by them I would not personally rate.
 
mrGTB said:
Must admit, I did used to have a Samsung monitor that served me very well. Going back a few years now, it wasn't a flat screen one like today. Had very good graphics and never let me down. It's the just the HD's by them I would not personally rate.
Click to expand...

Samsung's Monitors, and Televisions are the premium stuff since they manufacturer their own LCD panels. The only other company who makes their own panels is LG. Everyone else pretty much buys the panels from them.
 
Brogan said:
Every Samsung I've ever owned has failed.

Never buy anything but Seagate now, and have done for years.
Click to expand...

I have to agree every Seagate drive I've owned has lasted. The only Seagate I've seen that failed was due to improper maintenance, the desktop computer I worked on was never cleaned and had a ridiculous amount of dust and debris built up in the bottom of it, I assume something overheated. Yet, I used the tools provided by Seagate to recover about 98% of the drive data, and as far as the owners or I could find the only data loss was related to system files that were easily recovered by the installation disks. In the end I was able to repair the damaged sectors of the drive, reformat it entirely, and transfer all the lost data back onto the drive. The computer has been running just fine for about a year now using the same drive.
 
I do clean my own computer, seeing as it is custom built by myself an cost a small fortune to build. I take the side cover off and hover it out about every 3 months. That's most likely why it's lasted 5 years with nothing breaking in it. I can tell anyway when it needs a clean, I have desktop monitors running that tell me fan speeds and temp of CPU. Motherboard etc. So know when it's getting due for a spring cleaning based off average temp shown! :)

Snap1.webp
 
In thinking back to all the history of my past HDD's and all of the problems associated....

By far, Western Digital has been the most consistently reliable drive over the last 15+ years. I have had failures of their drives as well, but not nearly as common as those I've seen with other brands. Maxtor had the highest failure rate in the time frame that I had an opportunity to use them. My first job as an IT Manager, oversaw about 500+ workstations with various HDD brands, so I'd say that my sample size of each brand is quite sizable.

So, for desktops/laptops - I prefer the current WD Black Series, Velociraptor where appropriate. For heavy use servers, I prefer the Seagate Cheetah (15k RPM SCSI U320/SAS) drives. My oldest server currently operating, has 4 Cheetah drives that have been spinning 24/7 for over 9+ years now. That's due to be cycled out of service or sent to the back-line for smaller services and I'm now spec'ing a new box to replace it...

My first hard drive was a 10MB Seagate, sometime in the late 80's. It still worked when I scrapped the system sometime in the late 90's.

Have not bothered to delve into the SSD market as of yet.
 
Nothing but Hitachi drives for me. I have about a dozen 1-2 TB drives and they have been rock solid since I bought them.

Had nothing but misery with Seagate and Western Digital.
 

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