Most reliable hard drives ?

[Niya]

We've been using SeaGate's Barracuda hard drives for a number of years now. As of late I've noticed quite a few of them failing relatively quickly. Some don't even last a year before failure. Only Barracuda drives of 300 GB or less seem to last indefinitely.

I want some input from the community based on experience....what brands and models of hard drives do you guys find to be most reliable. Preferably you guys could focus on 500 GB and ideally 1 TB hard drives. Please share your experiences

[techgnome]

That surprises me... SeaGate's usually my second go-to drive... WesterDigital is my usual favorite. Maxtor rounds out my top 3.

-tg

[Niya]

Well SeaGate generally makes good hard drives, its just their latest high capacity Barracuda models seem to have somewhat higher failure rates as per my recent experiences with them.

So...do you prefer WDs over SGs ?

[techgnome]

I do.... WD Caviar... I had one that acted a server in three different machines over a 6 year period before it finally gave out. For the last year of it's life it was running Windows Server 2005 which was hosting a streaming internet radio station. It gave until it could no longer. My three-year old Home Server also uses WG drives... I can't recall if they are Caviar or another line.

-tg

[Nightwalker83]

We've been using SeaGate's Barracuda hard drives

Yeah, use the same type of types now after having a Western Digital drive that stuffed up after about 6 months.

[jeffshead]

I found this thread because I was Googling to see who's currently building the most reliable HDD's.

I used to be a big fan of WD until I had a couple fail prematurely. I switched over to Maxtor and had great results. Then Seagate because they bought Maxtor.

I just had two Seagate 1TB SATA drives go bad. Both were purchased at the same time, a little over a year ago.

So now what... I guess I'll give WD another shot.

Has anyone heard if the prices are ever going to go back down? This is killing me.

[Niya]

It seems there is not simple answer to this. It seems that WD, Seagate and Samsung are the top brands with no clear answer on which is most reliable.

[jcis]

Interesting site: http://www.storagereview.com/

with Forums: http://forums.storagereview.com

They also have a Reliability Survey section.

[penagate]

The last two drives I replaced were Seagates, in a server. I replaced them with Western Digital RE4s. The Caviar Black line is fine for PCs; I've not had one fail yet (5+ years use). My Samsungs on the other hand only lasted about two years.

[Lord Orwell]

the last 4 times i had a drive failure, it was the exact same drive. I rme'd a seagate barracuda 500gb after only 3 months. The new replacement failed a few months later. The next time they gave me a factory refurbish drive which lasted about 4 months. When i sent THAT one in, they sent me a 1tb drive back. I still have 3 1/2 years of a 5 year waranty. I have oodles of western digitals and have never had one of them fail.

[B61Nuke]

I always run Seagates. 500GB and 1TB drives. Been close to two years. No issues at all. I do run 4 fans in each case if that makes the difference.

[Lord Orwell]

The last one i had fail was only used in a usb dock.

[stanav]

For business reasons, hardware mfg's don't publish the failure rates of their products. Therefore, we can only rely on the return rates which are reported by retailers. While this isn't exactly the measurement of product reliability (items purchased can be returned for a number of reasons, i.e. the wife didn't like it...), but that as close as one can get now until there come some laws that required mfg's to publish their product failure rates (which I guess won't happen any time soon). In the mean time, check out this article:

http://www.behardware.com/articles/8...s-rates-5.html

[penagate]

Stan, that seems to agree with my experience — I have had to return Corsair and OCZ RAM modules and an OCZ SSD, while the Crucial SSDs I've recommended to friends have been faultless. Good article.