Problems with 500GB 7200.11 Seagate drives
Between November, 2007, and June, 2008, I bought six 7200.11 500GB SATA disk drives,
all Seagate model ST3500320AS.
Two of those drives failed internally.
On an earlier SATA disk drive, its SATA plastic connection broke,
ruining that disk drive.
I buy 500GB drives because they have only 2 platters, so should be more reliable.
For 10 years, I bought mostly Seagate disk drives; eg, the 2GB Seagate Hawk for $600.
Most of these drives were SCSI drives, so were more for businesses and were reliable until I switched from SCSI to SATA, particularly the 7200.11 series.
I am not sure if this unreliability lies in chance, Seagate, SATA, or perpendicular magnetic fields.
With last year's experience with Seagate, this last month I bought 5
Western Digital RE3 (Caviar RAID Edition 3) 500GB, model WD5002ABYS
marketed for the enterprise market.
While I do not use RAID, others' tests indicate this drive is reliable.
I probably would not buy other Western Digital disk drives
and I have never before bought Western Digital disk drives in my 15 years of purchasing.
These days, I buy 500GB disk drives, either Seagate or Western Digital,
because I seek reliability -- I do not seek performance.
Whatever I might gain in performance gets greatly overwhelmed by a failed disk drive.
I will loose far more time repurchasing and reinstalling a new disk drive
than I will ever gain from performance.
When reliability becomes too low,
I worry even about the failure of all my backup drives.
With the unreliability I have seen, despite multiple offsite backups,
I worry about permanent loss of data over all backups with no possibility of restoration.
I now keep 3-4 disconnected and stored offsite 500GB drives, each with multiple backups
within them.
I physically carry these disk drives to another site.
For this, the marketplace could help:
I have found no physical protection besides the shipping container (foam or a clam shell: Seagate's Seashell) for the internal hard drives I carry offsite.
RELIABILITY, NOT PERFORMANCE!