Seagate and Western Digital Reliability

[widbcc]

I've have two Seagate Barracuda Es.2 ST320301NS drives, and I hear the same clink / clunk sound. One did it more than the other so I returned it for a replacement.

I get the same test results - no problems.

The people on the Seagate forum say to defrag the disk.

Huh?

I've never had disks that make anomalous sounds, just the spin up sounds and the faint clicking when heads reposition.

There is something going on with these Seagate disks. And it doesn't give me confidence. I read of disks failing after making these noises.

An interesting website with clips of sounds made by defective disks can be found at:

http://www.datacent.com/datarecovery/hdd/seagate

As quality declines, good luck to us all.

 

[t1n0]

I've worked as a PC tech for over 14 years, ever since that beauty Windows 95 replaced Win 3.1.

I was a fan of IBM IDE until they started failing and sold to Hitachi. And the first Hitachi IDE drives were as reliable as a crack whore, so ...don't what they 're like nowadays. I will tell you that Dell Poweredge Servers use Hitachi SAS drives and the failure rate on those, under constant daily use, is minimal.

Years ago, Maxtor Atlas SCSI were great drives, if not a little noisy (crunchy), but I loved 'em and they were very reliable. I'm sure that when Seagate bought Maxtor, they learned a thing a two.

When it come to desktop drive reliability, regardless of the brand, who knows what your gonna get. I've seen DOA, dead in three days, dead in 30 days, dead in a year, and I've also seen some old drives that just keep working forever. Seriously, I have a couple 8 GB maxtors and western digitals around here somewhere that still work fine, if not relatively slow, but that's bc they are older technology (UDMA 33, etc), but they work and they're over 10 years old for Christ's sake.

And as far as failed drives in PCs, it's about the same for WD and Seagate: either one will fail, with maybe a slight edge towards WD Black drives, but I couldn't prove it.

Currently, I like Seagate, mostly because of the warranty, and the simple RMA process. (Although WD is now offering a 5 year warranty too) Yeah they started charging for fast shipping and advance replacement, but I select the 'free' replacement options. I just replace the drive with a new one in the meantime, and when the RMA drive comes back I keep it until I get a chance to put it in another PC. (and yes, even if the drive is a week old, you WILL get a 'reconditioned' drive as a replacement).

I'm sure you've all read about Seagate fiasco with their 500 GB drives, but that's hopefully not going to happen again. I don't have empirical data to back this up, but I think their 160/250/320 drives were some of the most reliable ever made. Something happened in the jump to 500+, and that goes for all brands.

Ironically, the least reliable disks I've seen are external USB drives, which most people use as a backup. I have seen people have an internal drive fail, and then the backup drive immediately fail when they go to recover their stuff. The backup seemed to be working, but when asked to actually do some work (ie, transfer 500-1000 GB of data) they crap out. I believe it is because people think they can move and knock those drives around while they are operating, and that's a no-no. Never move or bump an external drive while it's operating, no matter what kind of BS it says on the package. Turn it off and wait 30 seconds until it has had time to spin down and park.

The big difference is going to be when you go from a desktop drive to a server drive. (BTW, SATA is not server class, just cuz it came in a server doesn't make it a server drive). I'm talking SCSI or SAS. My desktop/workstation has a pair of 36 GB 15k RPM Cheetahs (Seagate) in a RAID 1 that have been running daily for over 8 years now. ( Cheetahs rock!)

Servers with SAS drives have very little, if any failure (that doesn't mean you don't have to back up). And yet, I also have a RAID 10 array with 4 drives (7200 RPM Seagate 500 GB) that has none of the original drives left, all the drives have been replaced at least once since I built that array 18 months ago.

Without a doubt, SCSI and SAS drives are more reliable than SATA or IDE, but occasionally one of those will fail too, just much less frequently.

I have been installing Western Digital Velociraptors (SATA) on desktops for power users and using them in RAID arrays for servers since they came out, and I haven't had a single one fail yet. They are pricey, but they are very responsive and seem to be very reliable so far.

Fujitsu, no longer making drives.
Samsung...make great phones, but I haven't seen enough of their hard drives to comment. They seem do be doing well on Newegg, though.

So, in summary, the reliability spectrum:
External USB < TB+ desktop SATA < Under TB SATA < under 500 GB Desktop IDE < Seagate/Hitachi SCSI or SAS/ WD Velociraptor (tie for first).

my .02c

 

[awoz]

"Bad shipping practice" is the primary factor for me when choosing to buy a disk drive.

Most user reviews mention DOA as problems, no matter who makes the drive. I've struggled with this and related problems when choosing a drive and have resolved to buying drives locally where no shipping is required.

I do however have a favorite mail order house that ships using appropriate "packing" to minimize damage during shipping. Poor shipping practices are the major cause of DOA drives. If you can hear and feel the drive bounding around in its shipping box, look for another vendor. I forget where I read it, but newegg does a poor job in this regard.

I prefer Seagate drives. Their enterprise class drives raise the bar further.

 

[widbcc]

Bad shipping practice or poorly packaged disk drives not properly protected from shock during shipping - I never thought of that. I had assumed (ass-u-me) that the shippers (Amazon, Newegg, etc. knew what they were doing. After reading awoz' post, I realize I was wrong, very wrong.

Seagate says in its warranty, if a disk receives a shock of 300 G's (G = force of gravity) the warranty is invalid. Their disks apparently have sensor in them because the SeaTest software checks for shipping damage.

Here is a website that describes what a 300 G shock is.
http://blog.orebokech.com/2007/05/hard-drive-shock-resistance-specs.html

The retail packages that contained my hard drives were constructed with plastic shapes to cushion the disk drives. The OEM packages range from drives casually packaged in a card board box to form fitting cardboard boxes.

When shipping a drive back to Seagate for warranty, they require packaging that protects the drive. Here is a link to the supplier of the boxes that Seagate's warranty unit uses to return drives.

https://www.wic-store.com/Seagate-Internal-Single-Unit-Shipping-Pack_p_12.html
https://www.wic-store.com/Seagate_c_8.html

And Seagate's instructions:
http://www.seagate.com/support/service/pdf/pack.pdf

This week I received a new WD drive from Amazon in the manufacturer's packaging, WITHOUT an exterior box. It tested fine, but now I'm worried.

Thanks awoz for the insight. I'm buying locally or calling and requesting special packaging from now.

Sherlock Holmes would have said of me what he said of Watson.
"You see but you do not observe."
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/you_see-but_you_do_not/168728.html

 

[t1n0]

I agree about the bad shipping practices, but I've bought drives from Newegg and the have always come boxed properly: Anti-static bag, suspended in midair by those two endpoint plastic "bookends" (for lack of a better word). But that's because I always choose a retail drive, boxed by the MFG. Lol.

I would not buy an OEM drive through mail order, only locally. That's because those OEM drives are packed many to one box, in a big form fitting cushion. If a mail order place sells them individually, SOMEBODY is going to put their paws on it and put it into another box, and in the process of getting a bunch of them out of the big box and one of them into a smaller box, they are probably going to be placed/stacked/moved around on a table. Just falling over on its side from a vertical position is enough to damage a drive. Those guys working in shipping departments are not go to pull and and test a drive that slapped onto its side, tumbled without cushioning, etc.
Even if it gets packed properly for its trip to you, the damage has been done.

Only buy OEM drives if you are picking up the part at a warehouse and see the guy pull it out of the big multi-pack box and hand it to you.

 

[omeganyn]

So im a little late getting onto this forum, so far all my life i have used WD drives... and so far i have had 2 WD external failers (My Book series) within a year of the manufacter date which WD failed to replace under thier warranty's stating that the drives failed to operator misuse. However i can tell you that the drives never even moved and they simply did not honor thier warranty. I currently have 1 internal WD 640 GB drive that has lasted more than a year and runs well and cool. I just bought an internal seagate 1.5 TB drive and we will see how that goes, tho i expect great things from it as it is my first drive but im prepared for a crash should that possibility arise.

 

[t1n0]

Consider RAID. My Raid 10 array saved my behind, because had I relied on my external backup, I would be out of gas. When I tried to recover from it the 900 GB it had backed up, it didn't make it to the end. Also, external USB drives have a tranasfer rate of about 35 MB/sec. It takes a long time to recover, and during that workload, that's when they fail, when they are asked to work.
Also, I use a synchronization software, so when I back up, I'm just backing up what has been added or changed to my storage drives, thereby lessening the wear and tear on the externals.
As far as my customers, I set up their servers with 2 external drives, in addition to their internal RAID 1 drives, also using synchronization software. The internal data gets synchronized to the first external, and then one external to the other a little while later.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the info. I dont know RAID but will read up. I had an external My Book drive 500GB and it dies within a year. It worked fine when I used it, no noise, nothing, then one day, the dreaded clicking-dance-of-death! I returned it and then again, within a year, it died again.

By this time I had two Western Digital drives that died on me. I lost all my writing, and literature, poetry, photos of my India, Guatemala, etc, trips...No big woop, but all my movies that I had backed up, trying to travel lightly, it was horrible. I sat in dismay and disbelief for a few months. I was too depressed, I eventually found out that it was out of warranty, last December. Of course I should have replaced it sooner, but I didn't: I was too traumatized.

I have heard that the only way to get a secure back up is to back up to some kind of server, yes, for a fee...I dont make any money at all, barely, so that isn't going to happen.

I can of course, for a fee, get an upgrade from WD. Does anyone know which, if any of those external 1TB or 500GB drives are ANY good? And why isn't anyone doing any complaining on our behalf? Im sure that if I lost two drives in two years, that many thousands of others at WD have also.

And what about those companies that are supposed to be doing "reviews"? How many machines do they test, and what does that test consist of? Is it scientific, is it based on any internal WD data? Probably not..If you get a bad doctor, you can complain, if you get a bad drive, and then another bad drive, all you can do is buy another bad hard drive. Now, where's my checkbook....?

 

[perdiem3]

My experience with hard drives is quite extensive and not limited to my own inventory, which is quite large. I will say, however, that Seagate, with a few exceptions, is far superior when it comes to reliability as compared to Western Digital. I typically RMA 3 to 1 WD to Seagate (Only in the last 3 years).

I usually chose a drive with High Cache, Preferrably 32 MB or better. A 32 MB Cache as compared to a 16 MB Cache reduces the amount of heat that a hard drive dissipates (as a direct result of work performed) exponentially, especially in database intensive computers. If all you do is Word processing, then it realy does not apply.

Good luck with WD!

bob@thewizardofos.com
43 years working with computers

 

[Guest]

I will never trust seagate .i had a seagate barracuda 500 gig Harddrive in my hp computer i bought from walmart a year or more ago. and i lost my data because it died. no noise, nothing. And all these rip off overpriced data recovery companies illegally charging prices way to high. I can understand it if it was back in the 90's but now the most should be allowed to be charged is $199. when its starts at $300- $2500 you know its a ripoff. If i knew this back in the 90's instead of autobody classes i would have took electronics classes and open my own data recovery service and charge legal prices highest price would be $300 for Quick need it back in a hurry service and $75 for 5-7 days . Seagate should be forced to pay for recovery of any data lost due to Harddrive failure no matter the cause, especially in computer bundles Like i got from walmart i perfer western digital which i will put 2 tb internal harddrives and 1 2 tb external harddrive. Its time america to start making computer parts again and bring back quality control.

 

[laurent_54]

I have an internal 120 gb maxtor IDe produced in year 2002 working perfectly , also reliable when connected as external hard disk mounted in an usb box to my tower medion akoya triple core 2.1ghz,3 Gb ram . But I bought an external 320 gb samsung in 2008, and since began the nightmare!!! 4 crashes forced me to format it with the loss of all datas. Actually I have been running an internal 650 Gb WD scsi for 2 years and it is a great reference for me. It is fast and reliable, even better with Linux system.
The next external hard disk would be surely a 500 Gb WD one, because of a lower price than Seagate.

 

[gcg]

It's funny how Seagate's image has drilled a perfect image into my mind but with a clear reason: Not a single Seagate hard drive I've had has broken down and the oldest Seagate's I'm using right now is about 7-8 years old. Only way I have switched to newer hard drives has been by just dumping the older ones (after opening and inspecting them, of course ) to the recycling bin.

 

[kerrmillen]

I have had a number of 1, 1.5 and 2.0 terabyte Seagate and WD drives. I have had one failure with the WD and at least 10 with Seagate. All of them were installed in Raid arrays and the WD work fine but the Seagate keep failing. I take them out run Seatools on them and they say they are fine but I put them back and they work for a few days or a couple of weeks and then fail again. I am so frustrated with Seagate that I will never buy another of their drives. Tomorrow I have to go buy two WD 2tb drives to put back on my raid array and I will offer the Seagates to anyone who wants to give me $50 bucks for them. Good riddance.

 

[Dave256]

I'm having deja vu, it's like the tenth time I see this question posted, and again I feel obliged to vote and comment on how a WD has never failed on me or anyone I know or heard of.
Granted the new seagates are faster, but in reliability and noise levels WD has no competition.

I'd like to add that I've only seen 2 hard drives fail in my entire life, one was a samsung and the other was a Seagate, but I don't count the seagate as failing because it was after it survived a fire that leveled the house to the ground, it happened to a friend o mine and he still could get his data back (mostly porn I might add).

I would agree with SirCrono 110%, many years later, that Seagate and WD still make the best hard drives. The WD drives,specifically the Caviar Green and Caviar Black drives, do run much quieter than the Seagate drives, while the Seagate drives offer the hi-speed 15K rpm version, mostly for hi-end servers and workstations that handle HDTV editing. When it comes to hi performance servers, chances are they will have Seagate 300GB or higher SCSI drives running RAID 5 or 10. For hi performance workstations, WD Caviar black drives are the best for very high capacity (1TB - 4TB) and still run quiet, and offer 6Gbps data rate. Hopefully the workstation allows for RAID 5 or 10, to get the most out of such expensive hardware.
I have not seen either a Seagate or a WD hard drive fail without a good reason. I lost 2 WD HDD plus the MY171 MOBO when one of my Dell 690's cracked it's bench and hit the floor. The Seagates tend to run hotter, especially the 15k RPM versions. Today, most servers and top-end workstations have sturdy power supplies and cooling fans for the HDD cages.
The only HDD I know of that was a major problem were the older Maxtor drives, which usually did not last even a year. Many companies replaced them en-mass, including the company I was working for at the time. Stick with the expensive hi-speed Seagates for servers/Super-Workstations and the WD Caviar green or black series for desktops/workstations and there should be no unusual problems.

 

[AFree]

I can't comment personally on Seagate hard drives, but I can comment about Western Digitals. I have a 80GB WD800 Caviar from late 2001 that is still working beautifully, although almost two years ago I upgraded to a WD2500 Caviar that's still working great. I had a massive problem with 7B stop errors the first few months and ended up spending 6 hours straight with a tech till we had tried everything and finally switched SATA ports and it powered up as if nothing happened.
We never really figured out what caused that clusterf%#@$. Still wouldn't turn down any insight as to WHY that happened if anyone has some. Especially since I'm still using the HD. hahaha.
Chris Wilkins from Dell, if you're on Tom's Hardware, I'm still your biggest fan. This guy sat with me for 6 hours STRAIGHT and made it his personal mission to get my computer fixed. Love love love. Plus he was funny as Hell.

My friend has a Seagate that failed, but it had Vista on it that took a massive dump, so I don't think it was on part of the drive itself, but the crappy OS. She now has a Hitachi and says it's fine, just very hot.
I'm planning on buying a backup WD to have around if this one ever fails. I can't see myself using anything else unless something catastrophic happens that ruins my opinion of WD's.

 

[Dave256]

As of this date I now have 4 Dell 690's running a smooth software RAID 1 on Windows 7 64bit, with 3 WD 750GB HDD in each machine. Because of the SAS controller issue, I turned it off and only use the 3 SATA connectors. This gives me 2.25TB in each machine, with the maximum being 2.5TB-the SAS controller will only allow 2.0TB if you use the regular HDD connectors. I have 4 1TB WD Caviar Blue drives in a Dell PowerEdge 840 running RAID 5 with Ubuntu 10.10 Server and it runs with no problems. All of these machines have robust power supplies and an HDD cooling fan. The Dell 840 uses the Intel 3124 chip, which accepts SATA drives for RAID with no problem.
To make a long story short, I have not had any problems with any of these WD drives, though this is the newest generation of them. Silicon Nitride ball bearings now allow for cheaper 15K RPM drives and last 5 times as long as the expensive Sapphire bearings (which cost 100 times as much) of a decade ago. I would buy either Seagate or WD drives today without even blinking.
I have had SATA ports go bad on me, both on the MOBO and the HDD, and had to change ports, drives, or replace the MOBO to fix the problem. They are super-sensitive to static and EMI noise from nearby machinery.
Also remember that SATA drives will NOT work well on a port designed for SCSI drives, as they use different protocols and signal levels. SCSI ports accept a much stronger signal from the SCSI drives which makes them mostly immune to nearby noise and static, plus they are much more RAID friendly, if you do not mind paying 5 to 10 times as much per drive.
Today, if a new SATA drive is not working for more than a few hours and you are getting STOP errors or NO DRIVE FOUND errors, I would suspect a protocol issue and change ports, as well as making sure my BIOS and HDD chips had up-to-date drivers, especially if you are installing a hi-capacity drive in an older PC. If the drive does not work at all or only works in another port, I would suspect a SATA port chip has blown and find out if it is the HDD or the MOBO at fault. It is a great idea to keep one hand on the computers chassis or use a ground strap on your wrist to avoid a static charge when you are changing drives and especially MOBO's.

 

[developeraslam]

Seagate 7200.12 is fine. Tho they kind of lost rep with firmware issues of earlier series. But i wouldn't say people shouldn't buy 7200.12 because its less reliable than the competition. That's simply not true, if there are any minor differences in overall failure rate, its too small to change anything.

What does it matter if the drive has 1% failure rate instead of 2%? Oh yes only half, but would it matter? Would that make you say "oh i don't need a backup" ?

It should only be an inconvenience when an HDD fails; something you can restore quickly because you have all valuable data elsewhere too. HDDs are just too unreliable to store important data by itself - at least I don't trust HDDs for that task. I would trust SSDs tho.

I have been using same seagate HDD for more then 7 years and i have not seen any bad sector till now and it never crash.

for quality wise every one should go for seagate.

 

[Dave256]

I have been using same seagate HDD for more then 7 years and i have not seen any bad sector till now and it never crash.

for quality wise every one should go for seagate.

I trust both Seagate and WD drives made since 2008. I tend to think of Seagate as a SCSI drive (15K rpm) for servers, which may need the high noise immunity that SCSI has, and are RAID friendly. As for the WD drives, I trust them for my workstations and they cost a fraction of the SCSI drives. Sub Mesa brings up the most important point in all of these HDD issues, and that is having at least one backup drive. I always use RAID 1 or 5 or 10, and still have external drives for archiving data. Not running RAID or backing up your data is asking for trouble, as no drive is immune to failure. Even with the flash drives you are trusting the controller chip and power supply in the drive to never fail. Never say never. Nasa had 5 computers running the now obsolete space shuttle, even with all the testing they do. I agree that overall Seagate makes that best quality hard drives, especially those that run at 15K rpm, but the WD drives have a much lower cost and are just as dependable, even if a bit less RAID friendly.
Regardless of who's name is on the drive, even a SSD, I consider RAID and archiving a mandatory part of the setup. It is not unusual for me to have 4 or 5 copies of important files spread across 2 or 3 computers and USB backup drives.
This helps avoid those times when even the best drives fail, or the manufacture puts out a new line of drives with a high failure rate. We should not be discussing HDD and SSD names and failure rates as if they were competing in a war, but how much backup we have and what kind it is. If most drives made today are very dependable, what is in a name?

 

[mr_flappypants]

Oddly I've only ever had horrible experiences with Seagate. For starters, we use Seagate Barracudas (1.5 TB) in many of our compute nodes here at the lab. We went through a spell one summer ago where pretty much every single Seagate started going bad on us. We did bad block tests, official commercial testing, the works on the drives and were running into bad sectors, etc etc. Since they were under warranty with the company, we got them replaced with more Seagate Barracudas that were refurbished. We had to go through about 3-4 replacement rotations before we actually got some that worked.

Also I had a 500GB external official Seagate Barracuda that I babied from day one. Had it for about 3 years and it just up and stopped working. At first I thought the electronics in the external casing shorted out or something so I hacked the drive out of the case, popped it in my computer as an internal but still no luck.

That being said, here is the one WD story I'll share. Had a 2.0GB WD HD in an old windows 95 computer bought back in 1995. I just threw it in my new computer for fun to see what was on there just yesterday. It worked... 15 years later.

 

[Dave256]

Oddly I've only ever had horrible experiences with Seagate. For starters, we use Seagate Barracudas (1.5 TB) in many of our compute nodes here at the lab. We went through a spell one summer ago where pretty much every single Seagate started going bad on us. We did bad block tests, official commercial testing, the works on the drives and were running into bad sectors, etc etc. Since they were under warranty with the company, we got them replaced with more Seagate Barracudas that were refurbished. We had to go through about 3-4 replacement rotations before we actually got some that worked.

Also I had a 500GB external official Seagate Barracuda that I babied from day one. Had it for about 3 years and it just up and stopped working. At first I thought the electronics in the external casing shorted out or something so I hacked the drive out of the case, popped it in my computer as an internal but still no luck.

That being said, here is the one WD story I'll share. Had a 2.0GB WD HD in an old windows 95 computer bought back in 1995. I just threw it in my new computer for fun to see what was on there just yesterday. It worked... 15 years later.

Once again, having multiple backups and RAID if possible is the ONLY sure way to keep your files protected. ANY mfr can have a bad product run with latent defects. Maybe the bearings were not the best quality, etc. Every mfr tries to lower the cost of a perfectly good product because the all-powerful bean-counters will squabble about anything, especially expensive hi-end bearings. That is why I trust multiple backups much more than any single HDD or SSD drive. The public is always caught between what engineering wants to build and what sales is willing to accept as a minimum profit margin. Changes in management can directly affect product quality, as they usually think "build it cheap".
As the saying goes, there is safety in numbers. Backup your data. Period.

 

[mr_flappypants]

Once again, having multiple backups and RAID if possible is the ONLY sure way to keep your files protected. ANY mfr can have a bad product run with latent defects. Maybe the bearings were not the best quality, etc. Every mfr tries to lower the cost of a perfectly good product because the all-powerful bean-counters will squabble about anything, especially expensive hi-end bearings. That is why I trust multiple backups much more than any single HDD or SSD drive. The public is always caught between what engineering wants to build and what sales is willing to accept as a minimum profit margin. Changes in management can directly affect product quality, as they usually think "build it cheap".
As the saying goes, there is safety in numbers. Backup your data. Period.

This times a million. ALWAYS keep a backup. Just to throw this in there...

1.) We didn't lose any data from our compute nodes. They are just that, compute nodes. We use them to run high level quantum calculations. All data is automatically transferred to a main head server for storage and backup. The only thing we really had to do was reinstall OpenSuSE and our PBS queuing system.

2.) The 500 GB external was backed up thank goodness. I didn't have to cringe at trashing the drive which was a huge relief. If it hadn't been backed up I would be hurting very badly.

Always, always, always back up your data.

 

[nikulpatel23]

hello,
1 ) I m using seagate hdd since last 10 yrs.During these period i saw seagate hdd firstly when buy within first year it always blown.i have purchased 500gb seagate barracuda then i had changed it in warranty by first year from purchased,then now it working continuously after first replacement.
2) Then I purchased new 250gb seagate hdd, it works not good since purchased time I have done replace it for three times in 6 months.Yet it is not working good.

 

[Dave256]

hello,
1 ) I m using seagate hdd since last 10 yrs.During these period i saw seagate hdd firstly when buy within first year it always blown.i have purchased 500gb seagate barracuda then i had changed it in warranty by first year from purchased,then now it working continuously after first replacement.
2) Then I purchased new 250gb seagate hdd, it works not good since purchased time I have done replace it for three times in 6 months.Yet it is not working good.

That is an absurdly high failure rate!
1. Either it is an environmental issue (being jarred or kicked around while the drive is active, or the drives are getting too hot and may need a cooling fan blowing right on them).
2. The newer Seagate drives may not be compatible with the HDD controller on the MOBO. You may need to insert a jumper in the back of the drive to slow it down to 1.5gbps data rate.
3. The other possibility is that you have a bad power supply that is putting out too high of a voltage on the 12 volt or 5 volt or 3.3 volt lines, and is slowly burning out the controller or analog chip's inside the drive.
There are too many variables here to point to one and say "that's it", so I would make sure the first 2 possibilities I listed are not the issue. If the new drives are still becoming defective much too fast then I would have a computer technician check the power supply voltages to the hard drives.

 

[mparmenide]

My answer is none, contrary to all popular belief the best hdd I had dates from 2003 and till this day it is laboring, it says Maxtor on its label. I wish they still make disks like that and I'm absolutely not joking, I guess I was lucky considering the reputation Maxtor got

 

[hyoungiii]

I've used nothing but Seagate for the past 6 years - unfortunately. I had two 7200.7 160GB drives fail three years ago. One had the OS, the other was supposed to be the backup for data. When the OS drive failed, I discovered that the "backup" had apparently been going bad for a while (Corrupted files on both. Some data files were recovered after numerous read attempts, but mostly unrecoverable).

Obviously I needed a better backup strategy, so I put together a QNAP 409 RAID array for backup. It has 4 Segate 7200.10 750GB drives. After three years, one failed SMART so I replaced 3 of the 4 drives with identical refurbished drives from Seagate. Now, just 5 months later, one of the replacements has died (read failure). I'm off of Seagate. I've been using computers for 23 years, and until this series of failures I had only ever seen one drive failure (can't remember the brand, was a long time ago). The warranty etc. don't matter to me because the cost of drives compared to the data they hold is negligible. I've never bothered to return one. I'm going to try Hitachi in my RAID backup for a while and see how they do.