Which hard drive manufacturer do you prefer?

I chose Western Digital (WD) as my favored hard drive (HD) manufacturer for several reasons:

1) I consider reliability to be the most important aspect for HDs, given they contain the life essence in every PC and, when they fail, major inconvenience is the least consequence and sometimes more (as I learned from neglecting to back up for several months). WD is the only manufacturer currently providing 5-year warranties on its conventional HDs (Seagate also provides a 5-year warranty for its hybrid HDs); all other manufacturers cover their HDs for 3 years. Buyer reviews on Newegg and Amazon seem to report notably fewer DOAs and early failures for WD HDs than other manufacturers.

2) Although I haven't yet had to activate warranty coverage for a WD HD, the WD RMA process seems comprehensive and relatively hassle-free based on the WD description on its website.

3) I have acquired and extensively used several WD external HDs since 2006 and have been very satisfied with their reliability and performance, such that I generally do not consider other manufacturers when I need another external HD. I have had much less experience with WD internal HDs to date. I had to replace the HDs of two notebook PCs in the past 3-4 weeks and I chose the WD5000BEKT for both. They are performing very well so far, but I'll have more relevant experience after I've lived with and used them for 2-3 years.

 

So far I've owned the most Seagate's, and they're the one brand I've never had fail. The horror stories in reviews are indeed terrifying, but then I see them for every brand (I've held off buying a pair of external back up drives for 6 months because of all the horror stories!)

So far though my Momentus XT is fine, and my 320GB/16MB/7200RPM one that's about 2 years old is fine too.

Western Digital has been okay though-at least the one that died on me was a few years old, although my Seagates have lasted much longer.

Used to swear by IBM until the 75GPX or whatever....two of those died in the same week, so I went back to seagate.

Oh, Quantum I liked too when they were around (did Seagate buy them? I can't even remember).

 

WD all the way. Maxtor has always sucked, although they've since been assimilated by Seagate, and there's a good reason why they call it a Hitachi DeathStar.

Personally, when it comes to storage devices, I'm not one to skimp just to save a few bucks. That is, given the choice between a comparable Samsung or Seagate drive, I'll chose Seagate over Samsung, and WD over Seagate. Sure, Seagate and WD are typically more expensive, but no one can put a price on your data when your HDD shells out.

I believe Maxtor bought Quantum, whereby Seagate then purchased Maxtor. I liked Quantum hard drives as well. I still have a couple of Fireballs still kicking around.

 

I pledge no allegiance to any brand, product line or company and will happily jump into bed with anyone thats giving me the most hard drive for the least money.

That sounded way more horrible than I intended...

 

Its far from scientific but actually samsung has the most reliable reviews on newegg not wd. Toshiba has the worst.

 

Wasn't that a long time ago, though?

 

Through all my years of computer experience I have had failures of Maxtor, Quantum, Hitachi and Western digital. Never have used Samsung or toshiba. Only in the past several years have I used Seagate, have not had one fail yet.
So my vote is there all the same to me.

Whatever is priced right, and available is what I would recommend.

 

Thanks for pointing out the Samsung Newegg reviews, I stand corrected. I was unaware of this, admittedly because I had not considered Samsung seriously when purchasing HDs; I looked primarily at Hitachi, Seagate, and WD, and I should have stated as such in my earlier note.

 

it was not the hitachi deathstar in the first place

it was the ibm deathstar

Hitachi bought out IBM after the deathstar.

The failures were the desktop drives anyway.

I just want to throw in laptop hard drives ive owned that have failed within one year are : toshiba x 2 and fujitsu x 2

Hard drives ive had that never failed? 2 x wd I dont know that Ive owned another brand

I use my laptops a lot everyday.

I have a 54k 500 gbseagate that goes into lock up mode way too easy but technically works fine. will be better as a non boot hd or eventually an external hd.

My backup laptop has a 320 gb 54k toshiba that has never had a problem in one year. Have to give them one step forward.

 

Yep, seems to be the consensus with Seagate and WD being the top two commonly heard names anyways.

And I have also had great luck with Samsung drives.

 

actually, does not matter to me.
no one is alway the best, i just read the reviews before making a decision to buy ....

 

I have used many drives over the years, and never throw them out (to prove that, I do have sitting down stairs in the garage a 16gb out of an old Compaq from the early 90's) .

I have only had one drive fail on me, I cannot remember which, but I know for a fact it was either a Maxtor or a Western Digital (yea probably Maxtor but I do not recall). Anyway, the large majority of the drives I bought were Maxtor, so I am confident HDDs really are a case-by-case basis.

 

would seem Western Digital are the most popular on this forum!

*gold star sticker for western digital*

 

My first computer with a hard disk had a whopping 20MB, I thought I was in hog heaven (about 1984). I have used them all over the years and none longer than 3-4 years. The last failure was about 3 years ago, a Seagate. I now like Hitachi but am about to have my first SSD. I hope I am done with HDD's now.

 

Western Digital although I've had Samsung, Seagate and Hitachi HDD's. I just love my WD Caviar Black the most, it's so fast and very quiet.

 

Western Digital ftw! Surprising that Seagate was rated higher than Samsung..

 

WD FTW! I'll also buy samsung... I've had 8 Hitachi disk in the last 6 years... only 2 of them is still spinning.

and Seagate... the newegg reviews of there 2TB scares the *** out of me... I'd never buy a seagate desktop disk >1TB.

 

Of the six hard drives I have owned or currently own in my life, none has ever failed on me.

*knocks on wood*

 

A report by Google a few years ago showed most drives they used had similar failure rates.

Heat had nothing to do with failure rates, even high heat, so long as it was in tolerance. Remember engineers build in extra.

What they eventually determined was that vibration was the biggest factor in drive failure. Small vibrations like case vibration from high speed fans and such were enough to shorten the lifespan on the drives. Now think of all that your notebook goes through. Other industry testing has shown each batch performs similar, so if you have 10 drives from a single batch under similar load, as in a Raid, they will all die at relatively the same time, it could be a month, or 5 years, but they will fail at nearly the same time. I have heard of a few businesses purposely buying drives from several places around the country to populate their raids just to avoid this. Every manufacturer had good batches and bad batches, which helps explain some peoples loyalties, it's just like the cars, you buy one and get burned you never go back, even if it was a one time thing.

Personally, I replace so many WD's that I wont touch them unless it's a Black, or Raptor. Samsung, the few I have run into all were dead. I replace very few Seagates so that's what I run.

Years ago I used to frequent a place that refurbished old drives. We almost NEVER saw old WD drives or anything else for that matter. The biggest supply he had of working drives were always Seagate. The other brands always ended up in the garbage. I was already sold on them, but after seeing that, I really was. Other than the famous 1tb failures, they have done consistently best for me.

 

So far so good with both my external 2.5" Seagate 1.5TB drive, and my 500GB Momentus XT (I'd highly recommend that by the way...really does make a noticeable performance difference from the regular 7200RPM Momentus I upgraded from.)

 

You bunch of fanboys...

My Quantum Fireball EL Rules!!!

 

LOL, leme look in my parts bin I think I have some of those still from stripping desktop parts. may even be an old 500Mb!

 

Hitachi on laptops, Samsung second.
Samsung on desktops, nothing else i like, specially dislike WD.

 

Western Digital, by a country mile. I've bought dozens of their drives and have only had 2 fail. When that happened, the return process was the easiest I've ever dealt with. Their advance-exchange program is top notch. A WD 20 GB hard drive that I bought 8 years ago is still in use today in one of my friend's rigs.

I'm not a huge fan of Seagate. Thanks to an unexpected Christmas bonus, I'm going to pull the Seagate drive in my main notebook for a WD Caviar Black. I'll also swap out the Seagate drive I'm using in an eSATA enclosure for a WD as well.

 

^^lol. I had 4 WD drives die in the space of 6 months. The best one lasted 6 months and the worse one 1 month, was some time ago though. When my last laptop came with a WD I was a bit wary and when the drive started making clicking noises I decided to replace it with a bigger Segate (sound familiar saturnotaku, hehe). The Seagate over the last 2 years is still running fine with over 9000 hours clocked up. The WD I took out and just use externally for "unimportant things" is still working fine too.

The best drive I've had so far I think would be a Conner CP2124. A 120MB (huge for it's time) drive that was still going strong long after the laptop was scrapped some 10 years later with the drive finally giving up after ~15 years. Not that there was much use for a 120MB capacity drive after the laptop was laid to rest.

Anyway, whatever drive brand you prefer to use, they can all fail so remember "backup is your friend".

 

That is one thing I will give HD, they make drive replacement easy. I guess if you do something enough times...

 

I have had the most failures with Western Digital, but seen just as many with Seagate.

I would buy from WD Seagate or Hitachi, used to be a huge Maxtor fan as well but thats now seagate, was a little mad when Maxtor absorbed the worst HD manufacturer ever Quantum... the fireball truly was its name.

 

Is the WD RMA process very smooth? I wouldn't know as I've never had one fail.

 

If you have a credit card, you can use their advance RMA service. You give them a CC, they put a hold on it, and send a replacement drive right away. IIRC, you then have 14 days from the day you receive the replacement to send back the bad one before they'll charge your card. I'm not sure if it's changed much because it's been a few years since I've had to replace a WD drive.

 

What do you guys think about letting drives spin up and down? I'm old school and leave it running 100% of the time when I have the system on.

My Seagate Momentus XT is still doing fine so far

 

The few long term tests have shown it makes no difference.