Hard Drive Manufacturers: The Definitive Thread

[deda]

Maxtor = Seagate since May,22.

[sonu27]

I trust WD the most cuz I bought a new My Book ext. HDD, I haven't tried the others, but Maxtor I heard can be unreliable.

[jcarle]

I'll say one thing, even if I trust WD over all others, Seagate still has the crown when it comes to capacity and perpendicular recording.

[Incroyable HULK]

Here is my two cents:

In the last 3 years, I bought exclusively Seagate Hard Drives (SATA) from many series 7200.7, 7200.8, 7200.9, 7200.10 and recently the Barracuda ES series.

I never had ANY drive to return out of 200 except for 1 drive that didn't pass a week-en long Burn-In-Test but this could have been caused by handling, etc.

So no DOA, no RMA at 99.5%

Buying Western Digital is kind of a lotery. I remember there was at least 3 or 4 different configuration (platter, density, etc.) for their 200Gb SATA drive BUT being tagged all the same (same part number regardless of the configuration of the drive). I find theses practices innaceptable.

On a positive side I'd like to thank Western Digital for being the first and still the only company to manufacture a 10K RPM SATA Hard drive (since they don't make SCSI drives they don't fear loosing sales in this branch).

As for Maxtor I didn't touch them for a long time... I had a failed 6Gb many years ago. I sold many of them in the retail (before and after they bought Quantum) and it was ok... a bit noisy but ok.

You forgot to add Hitachi (IBM), Samsung, Fujitsu and Toshiba to your list!

Remember that EACH of theses manufacturer had at least one bad series to their record (a series of drive where failure rate is more than 25%)!

Keep in mind when choosing a disk drive is that the less heat they generate, the better durability you get.

Now bring me some SSD (Solid State Drive)!

[bonestonne]

hmmm, yes, where is Hitachi?

I've had a Maxtor for 5 years, worked flawlessly...gave it to a friend because he needed a new HD, still works flawlessly. however, there have been 4 maxtors in this house out of 4 computers. 1 has died completely. that gives a 25% failure to me.

now i'm running a pair of Hitachi Deskstars, a 40GB , and an 80GB..out of the 3 months of having them and many many installs, not a single problem, even in my school, i've never seen a problem with a hitachi.

WD...wellll. we have a new one, my dad insists its dead, i know its not, i wont go into that one. i had a 60GB WD drive, it died within a week of me getting it. now i have this old 13GB WD drive, i plan on making a dedicated Linux box with it, we'll see how long it lasts after that.

Seagate...haven't had one to myself. i've used a pair of SCSI drives made by them and not had a problem, therefore Seagate and Hitachi are very close in my eyes. Maxtor is risky, use it at your own risk, and WD is the same as Maxtor, but with a lower failure rate out of the total number of drives i've worked with.

my preference lies with hitachi.

almost forgot Fujitsu...i've got a little 6GB one that i use to test hardware with this computer, hasn't failed me yet, and its years old...i just don't like it because of its very small capacity. however i've never used a toshiba drive, so i can't say anything.

Edited January 7, 2007 by bonestonne

[jcarle]

Well, I didn't really forget about them per se. I just figured that I might as well limit it to the big three who have the lion's share of the market.

I know that Hitachi, Samsung, Fujitsu and IBM also make hard drives, but as far as I know, their market share is not very large.

[ringfinger]

I trust WD the most and don't trust Maxtor what-so-ever. I've seen entirely way to many go bad..

[IcemanND]

I sold WD for 8 years. RMA'd less than a dozen of the thousands of drives sold.

Had nothing but problems with Maxtor drives in sizes from 1gb to 10gb and finally gave up. Still have a 500mb drive from Maxtor thats 15+ years old and runs great, loud, but they all were back then. Back then WD was the drive to stay away from and Maxtor was the cream of the crop.

It's really a tie for me between Seagate and WD. Laptop drives are a whole different story, haven't found a manufacturer that I like or trust yet.

[LLXX]

the Hdd had no branding on it and the serial code is just zero's and it's really heavy and feels solid, no hdd programmes can get a clear name from the hdd and it has never had data corruption nor loss and has never crashed oh yeah did I mention it is pretty dam quiet even when scanning with an a.v, it sits in my old pc in my room that I use every now and then.

Probably a generic Chinese/Taiwanese-manufactured drive.

Laptop drives are a whole different story, haven't found a manufacturer that I like or trust yet.

Hitachi/Toshiba would be my first two choices.

[Nerwin]

I had WD and Seagate and they both been awesome to me and I did have a Maxtor, all what I had was problems. So to me Maxtor Sucks X_x

Edited January 29, 2007 by computerMan