Which is The Most Reliable Hard Drive Brand?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar

Which Hard Drive would you trust your data on?

  • Western Digital

    Votes: 296 45.7%

  • Seagate

    Votes: 217 33.5%

  • Maxtor

    Votes: 35 5.4%

  • Hitachi

    Votes: 47 7.3%

  • Samsung

    Votes: 53 8.2%
  • Total voters
    648
Status
Not open for further replies.
I

ic144

Distinguished
Oct 3, 2006
3
0
18,510
Hey guys,

I have a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250GB that died last weekend. My friend is recovering the data for me. In the meantime, I'd like to get a new HD to store my photos, movies and MP3s which would require about 250 GBs of HD space.

I've heard Maxtor's had reliability problems in the past and Western Digital was the way to go. But After going through Newegg.com, I noticed quite a number of people had to RMA their new WD HDs.

So I'd like to ask everyone here.

In your experience, which hard drive company is the most reliable?

I'd want to buy another hard drive that'll die out on me in an year and now all my data is at risk.

Any opinions would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
 
I have had very good luck with Western Digital. I haved used 10 and never lost data on one while it was under warranty.

I am pissed right now with Seagate because they charged me $27 to Advance RMA a hard drive when Western Digital will do an Advance Replacement for free and I only end up paying $5 for return shipping.

I read the same reviews before purchasing my two WD 400 GB Raid Edition hard drives, but both have been running 24x7 for about a year without a hint of a problem.


I think maybe they had problems when they were first introduced, either that or people are having difficulties because 1) they are SATA and 2) Non SP1&SP2 version of Windows have problems with large hard drives.

I have my RE drives in a RAID 1 config, so both have to fail at the same time before I lose any data!

If anytime durring the next 4 years+ one starts to fail, WD will advance ship me a replacement and I end up only losing about $5.

Of course I still use Retrospect to backup all my really important files and photos as RAID 1 can't protect against a virus or a fire for that matter.





---

If you are really concerned, buy two hard drives and put then in a RAID 1 config. The if one starts to fail, WD will ship you a replacement and you can send the old one back in the replacements packaging for about $5.
 
www.storagereview.com

I believe this has by far the most extensive reliabilty survey, where users indicate which drives they have and have not had problems with.

Unfortunately, looking at the survey will reveal that there aren't any drives or drive manufacturers that are truly safe these days - likely due to the increased heat and lower tolerances of modern drives.

Another factor to potentially consider is the amount of platters. It is widely agreed that heat can kill a hard drive, so having a fan to cool it is worthwhile. However, a hard drive with more platters will also naturally generate more heat - so it doesn't pay to go with the ultra-high capacity drives if you can make do with less not only because of the price premium, but the potential reduction in reliability as well.
 
One thing to remember about hard drives is that they may come out of the factory fine but runs into some bumps along the way to its final destination. When going through its distribution process there are people who just toss boxes and this is a good way to mess up a hard drive no matter how well its packed. And then there is the occoasional oops.... while stocking the drives in retail box or OEM. I have a 2.5GB western digital in a 486 computer I use as a fax machine and it still works fine. The 80GB in my current computer is 11 months old and have not had any problems. In my opinion western digital is a good brand.
 
Also by the time you have good statistics on a particular model its no longer being sold.

I used to only buy WD and Seagates that had 5 year warranties. Now I am down to Western Digitals with 5 year warranties becauese of Seagates warranty policies.
 
That’s not so easy to answer. It heavily relies on personal experience. If I absolutely had to cast a vote I would personally go with Seagate.

I never had to return a single Seagate drive in all the time I’ve been using them. Right now I have a 6 year-old Seagate on a machine of mine that has been working strong and fine since I’ve first bought it. And it’s always been the primary drive of that system running about 12 hours a day nearly every day of the week.

On grounds of reliability I‘ve been presented with no reasons to look anywhere else… So far...

But that’s just me, and I admit that it might have a lot to do with luck.
 
Unfortunately that's true. I've gone with seagates as well as their reported reliability has been good. However, I have had a couple of seagates go bad - so I really don't think there is any manufacturer who is perfect.

As another poster said, the results at storagereview are limited as you have relatively little data for new drives. Still, the reviews can point horror drives that have a high failure rate after only a short time, and you can also look at previous model reliabilities to get a guage of the potential reliability of the most recent model. Certainly the data isn't perfect, but it is the best you can do - and certainly better than by going by a thread where a few posters give their idiosyncratic experiences with particular brands typically without giving specific models.
 
It depends on a lot of different things, even within a given brand they make different lines to different specs and MTBF.

Even though the HD is among the most likely to fail group of components, HD's from all of the manufacturers are pretty reliable considering what they do.

I'd say in my experience all of the brands are roughly equivalent.
 
I think the poll results speak for themselves... As I've at least found personally, and through searching, Seagate makes the most reliable and durable hard drives... Western Digital would be in second place, and Hitachi would be third. All three make pretty reliable units. The other brands, in my opinion, are crap.

Oh, and if you're going to be making a RAID 1, (or any RAID array aside from 0, for that matter) make sure you get your drives SEPERATELY, and not from the same batch! They seem to be like festive light strings in this manner... One blows, they all go out!
 
I've been using hard drives in personal computers for more than 20 years. Drives from all manufacturers fail. In the last month, I've seen two WD fail completely and a Hitachi develop bad sectors. I've RMA'd drives from every manufacturer over the years.

Overall, based on the last five years, I tend to rely on Seagate rather than Western Digital, Hitachi/IBM, Maxtor.... I've never tried Samsung and are considering them, primarily because of their low noise reputation.

Guy
 
I've had a ton of bad luck with HDD's over the years but Maxtor takes the cake in terms of the failures I've had. Before I made the switch to WD I had something like 5 seperate Maxtor HDD's fail on me. I've never used Seagate but as BMFM said, I've had to reason to look elsewhere.
 
Before Maxtor was bought by Seagate, I remember some people saying that Maxtor had extreme reliability problems. It was pretty obvious due to their fat contract with Dell and other major suppliers.

I wish I knew this before I got this Maxtor HD.
 
Really depends on your place and personal preference. I've had a seagate 80gb simply go bad before. Though it died gracefully. 😛

Then I got a 30gb maxtor for another pc that's still running though its really damn slow.

Then i've had another 80gb seagate and another 80gb maxtor which are still quite running though the seagate seems to be slower than the 80gb maxtor. Just not sure if it's the drive or it was simply a slower design.

Then i've had a new 200gb seagate for 1 year now and hasn't gone bad yet. And a separate 500gb seagate that's still chugging along.

Well I guess it depends on preference, availability and luck. WD's are only starting to be imported here in my country.

(you may notice i'm a seagate fanboy which i am 😀 )
 
Its a toss up between Seagate and Western Digital for me. All my Maxtors have gone bad before their time, and the others were simply too slow for my tastes. Might be different now, but I'm not going to be anyones guinea pig when it comes to my data. WD and Seagate for the win.
 
Seagate, all the way. I've had three WD drive go bad within a year of buying them. Can't RMA them if you want to recover the data, so their in my closet until I have the money to get that data off there.
Anyway, go seagate, 5 year warranty!
 
I've been a die-hard WD fan since I was running my Pentium 2. I loved em, but a year or 2 ago I had a 200GB drive and a 250GB drive both go in the same year.

Since then I tried a different brand, Seagate. I haven't had a bad Seagate now that I think about it...

So far I've had my Seagate 300GB for 6 months? I haven' t had a problem with it yet.
 
I have... 4 Seagate's, 1 Hitachi, 1 WD, 1 Maxtor, and 1 Fujitsu... well, and now an I/O Magic external, which prolly has a Maxtor inside, but I can't tell...

I had a 60 gig 7200RPM 2.5" Hitachi for my laptop, died on me 2 weeks ago, replaced it with a 100 gig Fujitsu after I got most of my data off...

Seagate's, no problem so far. Maxtor died on me before, RMA'ed it and they gave me a new one, albeit 50 gigs bigger so I'm a happy camper. Fujitsu's brand new, can't say anything there. WD... only one and it runs fine... meh...

2+ TB of storage now... I'm running out of surge protectors and sockets for my room since I have so many electronic components...
 
I don't see the IBM DeathStar mentioned. Man, what a wonderful HD. Too bad it doesn't weigh very much. It would make a pretty good boat anchor. :lol:
 
In my PC I have 2 Maxtor and 2 WD hard drives and I rate them equally, although one of the WD's is very loud and both the Maxtors are very quiet.

I also have a relatively old Seagate 80gb in my Xbox which is whisper quiet in general, not just for it's age.

I've still got a pair of 7 year old Maxtor 16gb drives (one in a PC and another in my B&W G3 PowerMac) that are still going strong, and the 6gb Maxtor in my PS2 is also working very well still.

All-in-all, I have most experience with Maxtor, and they've never let me down.

(BTW, if anyone knows how to re-flash Maxtor firmware please PM me, my brother managed to corrupt his 160gb DiamondMax doing a dodgy disk clean and it buggered the firmware)
 
One more thing I want to say about these things... you only hear about people with the bad cases complain, I had to return HDD after HDD, yadda yadda yadda... I'm sure those are just a few cases out in the world... if everyone with good experiences post, then our view would definitly change, but we all tend to focus on the negative...

One more thing though, the reason why I like Seagate is the 5-yr warranty. That tells me they believe their products will last that long, and they will back it up. That means balls, and that means they have faith in their product, which is what sets them apart from others.
 
I used to be a big maxtor fan but there drives have gotten a little flaky over time & I switched to WD about 5 yrs ago. Since then I've only used WD on my personal drives even though on occassion I do use Maxtor on systems I sell. Either or aren't bad but I've found WD offers less trouble overall.
 
I used to be a huge fan of WD but now I always go with Seagate. Maxtor seem to fail most in my PC repair world. But absolute worst is Excelstor, yuk! that is some nasty hardware.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom