Are HDs just made cheaply these days

[SeattleAD]

I have had two laptops in the last two years and lost harddrives in both of them within 6 mos. The first laptop was a Samsung (lost HD twice) and the second on now is a Dell and just lost the HD in it in less than 6 mos. I find this very hard to believe. It just doesn't pay to get these huge harddrives because you lose your data all the time. I have gotten to where I save most of my stuff on a cloud - dropbox.

Anyone else have this experience?

 

[NRW92]

I can't say I have. I have over 20+ HDD's going back 10 years and none have failed. My most recent drive purchases was [4] HGST NAS about 6 month ago and rock solid.
WD black and RE's are good, Seagate ES enterprise line is pretty solid and that's about it.
Course for bulk storage the HGST NAS is good and the RED pro seems to be durable.

Sometimes it's just luck, how well do you cool your drives because that makes a difference.

 

[popatim]

I find how the drives get shipped to be of primary concern.
Funny but you can ship 100,000 drives from china to the usa and to every single Bestbuy in the country without many having problems but UPS cant get a bare drive fom NJ to NY without it looking like they took it thru a few tornados down in Kansas. LoL

 

[NRW92]

Shipping and handling does result is a vast majority of DOA and infant mortality. The big shippers have upped their game, newegg has some really good shipping containers and amazon ships in hdd cartons but it depends on the drive.
I bought some ES.3 and they shipped in a seagate box with plastic ends suspending the drive.
Even my drives from 5+ years ago just in bubble wrap are still working.

 

[fzabkar]

Laptops are bad environments -- heat and shock. Also, the general reliability of modern HDDs seems to have taken a dive after capacities hit 500GB per platter.

 

[NRW92]

Actually with less platters/heads due to higher densities there are less moving parts thus they should be more robust.
Course abuse or mishandling is going to accelerate failure and yes laptops are often jarred while read/writes are going on, bumped or simple dropped.
SSD's make absolute sense for laptops then desktops, that is where they shine in durability and power savings.

 

[fzabkar]

Today's flying heights are much lower than in the past. I would think that this would mean that the risk of head-to-disc contact would be much greater. Furthermore, the track widths are much smaller, so this would require much tighter tolerances in spindle bearings. In fact I see a great many reports of head failures in the professional data recovery forums.

 

[leeb2013]

Today's flying heights are much lower than in the past. I would think that this would mean that the risk of head-to-disc contact would be much greater. Furthermore, the track widths are much smaller, so this would require much tighter tolerances in spindle bearings. In fact I see a great many reports of head failures in the professional data recovery forums.

Ae the heads parked so they can't contact the disc during transport?

 

[fzabkar]

AFAICT, laptop drives and "green" desktop drives park their heads on ramps.

 

[SeattleAD]

I have lost my 4th harddrive now in 2 laptops. The harddrives have been put in by the manufacturer. This one that just had issues this week is only 2 1/2 months old. I do HEAVY web browsing but my goodness things so last longer than this. I have given up keeping any files on my HD at all. I keep them on dropbox. Since it has come from the computer manufacturer (Dell and Samsung) I have no idea how the heads are parked. I am sure more than upset though. I am seriously considering a MAC now.

 

[JPNpower]

Why don't you try a Solid State Drive? They are good drop in replacements.

 

[SeattleAD]

That may be my next option. On this particular computer I had just upgraded to windows 10 - so if I change out hds yet again, it will mean installing windows 8 with hundreds of updates to get back to windows 8.1 to get to 10 if it even let's me update again. It's only been 2 months since Dell said they put in a new HD. I still think these companies use the cheapest stuff they can.

 

[JPNpower]

That may be my next option. On this particular computer I had just upgraded to windows 10 - so if I change out hds yet again, it will mean installing windows 8 with hundreds of updates to get back to windows 8.1 to get to 10 if it even let's me update again. It's only been 2 months since Dell said they put in a new HD. I still think these companies use the cheapest stuff they can.

No they don't. The problem is on your side even if you did no wrong. (robust lifestyle or plain bad luck) Stop blaming the companies and look for what you can do to fix things. As for Windows updates, just set them overnight.