Hard Drive Discussion: Most Durable?
 

I'm so sick of buying harddrives, and having them crap out after a year. Every time I buy a large capacity hard drive, it doesn't last. I don't know if I've just had bad luck, or if all new large capacity hard drives don't last. So now, I'm going to go for more quality rather than quantity, I lost a lot of shit this time. What brand do you think is most durable? Any particular model? I need to get one soon, so reply quickly! The most recent one I had shit out on me was a 400gig Seagate.

P.S. We're talking INTERNAL, and I hope I didn't miss any big brands on the poll >.<
Please dont JUST vote, tell us about your experiences as well.

If it helps, I have found Western Digital has worked fairly well. However, I have used external-not internal hard drives.

I've been using Samsungs for about 3 years now without any sort of problem. Recently, I purchased two Western Digital 500GBs because the excellent price point and raving reviews.

Maxtor is crap and was bought by Seagate. Fujitsu and Toshiba seem to have no selection at all, thus making them useless.

I can't vouch for Hitachi's line of Deskstars as I've never used them. However, they did earn the nickname of "Deathstars" when the series was under IBM's reign.

I would probably consider WD your best option if you weren't looking for anything specific. However, you are still going to want to read individual reviews on specific models of drives. Some are leaps and bounds ahead of others even when made by the same manufacturer.

I've had good experiences with Western Digital, Seagate, and Samsung. However, I've had by far the most experience with WD, and none of my WD drives have ever failed me, so I voted for them. Additionally, most of their internal drives have 3 year warranties, and their Raptors have 5 year warranties. Like Render mentioned above, the newest WD 500GB drives have gotten very good reviews, so you might want to check those out. Here is a link to them on Newegg ($110 excluding shipping and tax if applicable):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136073

All drives fail. I've had Seagate and Western Digital drives fail on me. My Maxtor drive is still doing fine, but I've heard plenty of stories. In other words, do regular backups if you value your data, regardless of which hard drive manufacturer you go with.

And Hitachi Deskstars definitely suck. Mine just starting failing, had to clone it before it completely died.

Nothing sucked more balls than when my WD drive died on me and took ALL my graphics and artwork with it.

Anyway, I don't know what brand HDD is in my new comp atm, but it's 80GB 7500RPM.

In my oldest computer, I have a Quantum Fireball(I think they are no long around) and a Maxtor 19GB and both are about. . .8 years old and still going.

I really don't know which brand is good. So far I have mix bags with WD drive.

I have one, 80GB WD drive running almost 6 years, still doing really well.
On the other hand, I have 99% died rate on 3 others large capacity WD drive, like they all won't last longer than 1.5 years. Two of them are 160gb, already died, and the 250GB one is dying soon. They are all PATA though.

Don't you like when somebody has a bad experience with one drive from a manufacturer and then because of that proclaims to people "Oh they fucking suck dude, don't get one made by those guys, they fail".

A friend of mine tries to stop anybody from buying a motorola phone because one of her friends had one and the battery went funny. "Oh don't get motorolas, they have dodgy batteries~!" :tpg:

I used to have a Quantum Fireball, though it died. I've had a Maxtor die on me too, and this Hitachi I'm on now is coming up to it's third birthday now and still running fine.

Kudos to whatever brand LaCie uses in their externals; my external has been spun up pretty much for years with just a few short power downs and is usually so hot I could fry bacon on it, though no problems or anything.

On that note, how do you tell that a drive is failing? Is it a noise or just the general activity of the drive that tells you that it's about to die?

http://xs318.xs.to/xs318/07310/speedfan.PNG

Or some other S.M.A.R.T. capable tool, I guess =)

I'm sure to some extent it depends on the amount of activity on the drive. My Western Digital 60 gig crapped out before my 80 gig, but that's because it was my main drive, where I stored torrents and installed games and such.

It's why I always keep an archive drive as a secondary for music and movies I don't want to lose. Course, I don't have full anime series taking up space, but, you know. =p

Yeah, you can use a utility to see how healthy it is. Personally I only had one drive fail on me, and it started making ugly clicking noises. I thought it was the CD rom screwing up at first, but then later on down the line I couldn't get windows to boot, so.

What Roph said, SMART indicated some deteriorating attributes. The most obvious symptoms were the slow access times and whirring -> click noise patterns that happened repeatedly during bootup, which left the computer hanging. I managed boot into Windows after a few tries, and didn't dare to shut down until I had cloned the drive.

If you hear any sort of periodic clicking coming from your drive, it's time to panic.

I've had my best luck with Maxtor's, but really it is a crap shoot. Reliability is only smoke and mirrors. It all comes down to whether the specific drive you bought is a dud or not.

Ive had great luck with Maxtors, and I'm using a newer Samsung now with no issues so far. Best thing to do? Pray to the tech gods that the drive doesnt suck.

Looks like I'll be buying a Western Digital then, I wish more people would have voted though.

I've been using Samsung hdds for years now. No problem at all, so I recommend it for you.

Since it was asked above, LaCie external's use WD drives. I have one, and it worked beautifully. I also subject it to some pretty varied temperatures with no problem.

Well. I never really had a hard drive die on me before, but so far, Hitachi, Seagate and WD all work fine for me. I've been using a couple of Iomega externals for a few years too, and they've been running fine as well.