What is the Best Notebook Hard Drive?

Every notebook hard drive brand will tell you that their hard drives are the best when it comes to reliability and performance but it is "us" consumers who used their HDD and therefore in the best position to evaluate with honesty their HDD. That said, I hope that this poll will help members of this forum as well as visitors to have an idea what HDD brand to buy when the time has come for replacement or upgrade of new HDD.

I have listed major HDD brands. If your brand is not listed, sorry.

To all voters of this poll, please (if you can) specify the reasons for your vote.

 

I'm a big fan of Western Digital -- at least for desktop drives. I've only had one die on me and that was after 5 years of near-continuous use.

 

I have a Samsung and its good so far!

 

Fujitsu- because they run cool & are relatively quiet.

Seagates/Hitachi/WD probably provide better performance, but I have found them to run hotter/noiser than the 3 fujtsu HDD i used.

 

I recently upgraded to a Samsung 160GB HDD after using Seagate drives for several years. Performance may be slightly below the best (see http://tomshardware.co.uk/storage/charts25.html for an excellent set of comparisons) but I was impressed by the quietness. One noticeable aspect was that there was no sound of head movement. The reason is explained at http://www.digitalmediaasia.com/default.asp?ArticleID=19764 , which also says that there is an on-drive free-fall sensor to park the heads if the computer is dropped. I also think that the Samsung HDD runs slightly cooler than the Seagate 120GB which it replaced. So, at the moment, my vote goes to Samsung.

John

 

Seagate is the best I think if you want performance. Hitachi is also a good performer but it generates more heat.

Fujitsu and Samsung hard drivers are great too. I have the Samsung in my M1437G. Perfect drive, never had a problem. Can take temperatures up to 50* Celcius!

Charlie

 

I would also say the Fujitsu drives. Mine is very quite, when compared to some others. The performance may not quite be up there with Seagate and Hitachi, but I don't mind that all too much. I haven't had any problem with my drive, but then again, I've only been using my notebook for a few months. I have heard good things about Samsung, but I have not had any personalexperience with them.

 

Hitachi for notebooks.

Seagate/Western Digital/Maxtor for desktops.

 

I have the Seagate 100GB 7200.1. It's the best hard drive I've used. It is near silent and performance is very good. I have three Hitachi 7200RPM drive and was happy with them until I got the Seagate.

 

Other than objective factors such as RPM speed, seek time, cache, etc...is there any difference between HD manufacturers? I would think they are all the same. If two hard drives, of the exact same specs, from two different companies are put to benchmarks, what would distinguish a Seagate (current leader) to say, a Samsung?

 

I will choose Seagate and Hitachi for 7200rpm notebook harddrive. I'm using a 80GB 7200rpm Hitachi one, it works great!

 

Seagate....I've used them for many years and still can't find much to complain about.
I've used Maxtor, WD, and Hitachi in the past and have had decent performance from them.....the only company that has given me any problem was Maxtor.....the HD just stopped functioning normally one day and no matter how many reformats ect, I performed it just seemed to get worse and worse until I finally decommissioned it and replaced it with a Seagate. Then again....I have an extHD from Maxtor that seems to work perfectly fine....perhaps it was an isolated case, who knows.

 

Im between hitachi and seagate.

 

Replaced a Hitachi 60GB 5400rpm, with a Hitachi 100GB 7200rpm and I'm happy. So I figure in the future I'll stick with Hitachi.

 

I fix computers on the side for extra cash, and from what I have seen Hitachi is probably the worse for longevity, about every other computer that gets brought to me for a dead hard drive ends up having a Hitachi in it, but this is just what I have seen. I have NEVER had a western digital die on me, and friends of mine have had really good experiences with maxtor.

 

Maxtor!?!
*Shudder*

 

Maxtor is great. they dont make laptop hard drives though.
Western digital is great. Their laptop hard drives are great too. Right now I have a hitachi in my laptop and a western digital from my old laptop in an external case.

The wd is slightly barely faster according to hd tach.
It is definitely quieter the hitachi is very noisy.
s
Im not aware of a test that shows power draw. But the wd consumes less power than my old toshiba laptop hd . I know this because it required 2 usb plugs and the wd only requires one.


Unfortunately western digital is not competitive with hitachi or seagate in size or speed.

They just make your generic 5400 rpm 100 gb or lower drives

I can definitely tell you the worst laptop hard drives :toshiba. my toshiba hd lasted 370 days and died all at once completely, no chance for back up.

 

Western Digital for desktop, Hitachi for notebooks.

 

Hitachi & Seagate make the best notebooks hard drives. Fujitsu, Toshiba and Samsung are also good.

 

IMHO they are pretty much all the same, I work in a datacentre and we have about thousands of desktops + laptops with a good mix of all the brands here. About 120-150 racks of servers and storage. I have to do a monthly report on all the disk failures, and it seems they are pretty much the same. We do have more WD / Toshiba disk and thus more faults with them. So from my experience they really depends on the batch. If your unlucky you get a batch of faulty ones that doesn't last very long.

But my personal preference is Western digital. Their online RMA is so easy to fill even as a home user. Don't have to explain much before getting a RMA. They also got warranty date checker on their website which save me from ringing supplier up.

 

Heard of and have experienced Toshiba HDDs going bad, also had ones thart have lasted for 3 or 4 years pretty well.

WD in my experience have always been good. My current Fujitsu is generally ok but loading times aren't what I'd hope for.

 

I never tried all of them..
But from what i've heard,
The best are between: Maxtor, Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital

 

7200rpm 8MB; ST910021A, ST910021AS, ST98025AS, HTS 100 GB 5400 /8 {HTS in ext USB enclosure} The 5 year Seagate warranty is a deal clincher for me when=$$$ !
Did have a bad sector on a ST, but I figured out how to use most recent SeaToolsDiagnostics. After exhausting all the MS Win methods it recommended to correct file errors, I then low level formatted in Linux, a retest w/ S T D showed all was fine. I may have dropped the HD that had the Bad Sector Error. Of 2 HTS, 1 is bad, no turn @ all! Must RMA still.
I like the methods of SeaToolsDiagnostics CD (DLd latest version), [but it DOES not detect latest sata3.0 DT HDs] S T D seems to perform some fairly decent looks @ HD. Having xpPRO, vistaUltimate & GNU/Linux bundles on same HD real interesting to see what it showed (* btw, Linux FS not recognized! *)

My ST910021A has a lot of noise when vista ULTIMATE resumes from sleep or hibernate, but is O\S problem, not HD. Must reboot OS then HD is quiet, ie hibernate/stby in vista=USELESS, Hopefully it gets fixed before public release!

PS; As I recall Seagate bought out Maxtor, so not sure why quality should not be same. but have had Max & WD360GD problems on DT boxes

 

I have a "Toshiba" HD in my notebook and it's very silent, only makes a slight buzzing sound when searching.

Toshiba's are not popular on these boards, hopfully the new ones are improved. *crosses fingers & toes*

 

Best HDD will vary.

It appears that all the HDD manufacurers has had troubles with some of their drives at one point (IBM, Seagate, Maxtor, WD) over the past 20 years.

How good are today's drives? I wish I had a very clear crystal ball to predict the future for this one!

As most experience computer technician will tell you, it's not if a HDD will fail but when will it fail.

HDD being mechanical in nature with plater spinning faster today then 10 years ago and their heads being precise lightweight devices hovering thousands of an inch above the platter, crashes are less frequent then before but still happen.

I have been pretty lucky in the past 20 years, loosing only a Fujitsu SCSI drive that was replaced under warranty 4 times that ended up in the trash after my confidence in the product collapsed.

 

Remember the IBM DeathStar?

Come on, you know what I'm talking about

 

Yes I do, also Seagate had an history of issues about 12 years ago.

 

oh ya

seagate was the largest hd manufacturer by far in the infant days of the pc.

But they went straight down the toilet and were completely off the market for years.

They re entered the hd market with small fast drives and now have a positive brand name

seagate used to mean the worst.