Most reliable hard drive brand - need suggestions

[zekopeko]

I'm looking at buying a 2TB drive but have no idea what is the current decent brand. I was looking at the Western Digital Cavier Green 2TB drive. Are they any good? How about Samsung's Spinpoint?

I usually buy Seagate but they are more expensive than the WD drive.

EDIT: Just realised that the Cavier Green drive is running at 5400 rpm. That would mean the price difference doesn't matter since the 7200 rpm drives are the ones I'm looking to buy. So now it's entirely about reliability.

[sffvba[e0rt]

Can't go wrong with Seagate or WD... I don't know Samsung drives so I can't comment on them...


404

[spiceminesofkessel]

I have both Seagate and WD drives currently in use at home and I have had no issues with either of them. In all honesty, I don't think there is a better of the two. I guess you could just judge for yourself by reading user reviews on a site like NewEgg. Every hard drive has the ability to fail.

[Aquix]

What brand that is on top varies all the time. When I bought my disk a few years ago Samsung spinpoint was great and what I bought. If samsung is good today I don't know.

[3Miro]

In 2001 I got a Samsung, it dies after 5 years of (ab)use.

Since 2007, all my HDD are Seagate and I haven't had a single failure (that is 5 - 6 drives bought over the past 4 years).

[disabledaccount]

After horrible firmware failures of thousants of Seagate drives, starting from .11 and "succefully" continued trough .12 series I don't want seagate hdd to even stay near my pc's.
Situation only get worse after "interesting" discovery that latest firmware is hidding some vital SMART information (eg. pending sector count) - so no, thanks.

Every HDD can fail - that's why redundant arrays are mandatory, especially for data files that are dynamically changed. Many failures are caused by improper handling or low quality PSUs. That beeing said, IMO today most reliable HDDs are manufactured by WD and Samsung - at least in consumer grade, because enterprise products are completely different thing.

[drawkcab]

What brand that is on top varies all the time. When I bought my disk a few years ago Samsung spinpoint was great and what I bought. If samsung is good today I don't know.

I think this ^^^ about gets it right. You buy a great product from a brand and, a few years later, that brand might be junk. I feel this is especially true of hard drives where it seems the only prevailing wisdom is that you be aware of the fact that you're playing Humean roulette when you purchase.

You can get all bent out of shape about who offers what warranty but 1. little good a warranty does when you've lost all your data anyway and 2. who wants their failed product replaced by another iteration of that same product?

Hence I have one of those cheapie 2tb Fantom green drives with the esata connection. I'm not sure what's in the enclosure but it's been great for the last 8 months. I've recently seen them at $89-$100. I use my old 120 gb Seagate to back up vital files. If it fails I'll replace it with something else.

[cariboo]

I'll add a +1 to what tomazzi said, I've had a 750GiB Seagate HDD replaced under warranty twice. The only good thing I can say is the drives both came with a full 3 year warranty.

[AllenGG]

This old discussion continues, well, Maxtor at one time, were the best, and Seagate, the worst. Now Seagate bought out Maxtor.
Think : MTBF and Warranty.
Discs spin at different speeds, note the access limits. (seek)
HDD as we know it, will be gone in a few years. SSD , solid state drives are the future, followed by "biological" drives, (if that ever happens)
Presently I have, several old Maxtors, a few WD's likely a Seagate or two. my "Pad" is SSD, slow as molasses. Kindle is not much faster.
EIDE is dead but "Tiger Direct" is still selling them. Same time they have an "OCZ" SSD @ 360G's, a real buy at $1200.
(where is the sarcasm font?)
BUT A 2tb SAMSUNG CAUGHT MY EYE, @ $70. seek avg 8.9 msec :cool:

[jerenept]

Western Digital.

[elgordodude]

Been running a Hitachi Deskstar 2 TB and haven't had any problems, if you want to save some money over the Seagate.

[KUU]

WoW I know for me Enigma & IBM have been rock solid and still the best for as long as ever, Seagate had 1 fail and still run a 5 year old Samsung, WD still running well after 2 years.

[forrestcupp]

After horrible firmware failures of thousants of Seagate drives, starting from .11 and "succefully" continued trough .12 series I don't want seagate hdd to even stay near my pc's.Yeah. I've had Seagates, Western Digitals, and Maxtors all fail. Seagates were my worst experience, and Maxtors were probably my best.


This old discussion continues, well, Maxtor at one time, were the best, and Seagate, the worst. Now Seagate bought out Maxtor.
That sucks.

[Inodoro Pereyra]

OP, you didn't state if you want the drive for a laptop or a desktop PC, so I will assume is for a desktop.

After almost 2 years fixing computers on my own, while I look for a job, based on the HDD's I have had problems with, and my own personal experience, I can tell you this:



WD's are about 4 times as likely to fail as Seagates (not accounting the relative numbers of each brand HDD in the market, as I don't know them).
The best brand, by far, seems to be Hitachi. I've had 10 year old PC's, running Hitachi HDD's, and still running fast (relatively) and strong. And silently, which is something the Caviar seldom does.
7200 rpm drives are inherently less reliable than 5400 rpm drives.

That said, if reliability and speed are really important to you, and if your MoBo supports it (and if you can spare the money), make a raid of smaller, slower drives. It'll be way more expensive, but faster, and virtually bulletproof.

[mips]

There is no such thing. It's pretty much luck of the draw and dependent on the weather & wind direction on that particular day.

[akand074]

Western Digital and Seagate are the top two. Caviar green is good for saving power, but if that's not an issue for you I've heard mixed reviews about them. I'd go with a Caviar black :D

That's not to say any of the other brands are no good. There are a number of companies starting to build their name in the hard drive sector (specifically solid state drives), but for normal HDDs those are definitely the top two.

[KUU]

but for normal HDDs those are definitely the top two.

That's a big statement to make without anything to back it up.

:DFor me the best HDD is the one that you never know is there, never ! ever !

[johnnybgoode83]

I have a 3TB Western Digital external HD that is rock solid.

[akand074]

That's a big statement to make without anything to back it up.

:DFor me the best HDD is the one that you never know is there, never ! ever !

First and second place in terms of consumer market share. At least in North America. I understand market share doesn't always mean better quality. But they seem to be the top two sellers even among the tech savvy.

EDIT: first google search gave me this (http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/30dayshare.html)

[Khakilang]

Samsung die on less than a year and it took 1 month to claim their warranty. I would go for Seagate or Western Digital. Haven't much failure even after 5 years.

[Paqman]

Asking which is the most reliable hard drive brand is a bit like asking which is the most child-safe chainsaw. None of the traditional spinning drives are particularly reliable IMO.

Just get any of the decent brands and have proper redundancy and backups. The security of your data comes more from active steps you take to protect it than it does from the reliability (or otherwise) of twirling drives.

[LowSky]

Asking which is the most reliable hard drive brand is a bit like asking which is the most child-safe chainsaw. None of the traditional spinning drives are particularly reliable IMO.


Ye of little faith. I still have a old WD raptor (74gig model) still kicking!


I have no issue with any manufacturer. I have used them all. I had one failure and it was my fault because I left the chip side down flat against my PC's casing and it overheated and shorted out.

My best advice is pick drives at the lowest cost you can find one. If you can buy it in retail packaging only because OEM sold drives can sometimes arrive not so well wrapped. In the latter case blame the seller not the drive. For instance a few online sellers at one time were selling OEM drives with poor packaging and not labeling the packages fragile. Just guess what happens when you express mail a drive and it isn't packed right. The larger the drive capacity the higher rate of failure due to poor shipping and handling.

I usually pick Western Digital. They usually have a 5 year warranty, not that I ever tried to call them on it. But I like the reassurance.

[Grenage]

I'm looking at buying a 2TB drive but have no idea what is the current decent brand. I was looking at the Western Digital Cavier Green 2TB drive. Are they any good? How about Samsung's Spinpoint?

I usually buy Seagate but they are more expensive than the WD drive.

EDIT: Just realised that the Cavier Green drive is running at 5400 rpm. That would mean the price difference doesn't matter since the 7200 rpm drives are the ones I'm looking to buy. So now it's entirely about reliability.

I have Seagate/Samsung/WD green drives in my media centre at home; they all run just fine, and I have had no complaints.

At work, the failure rate seems reasonably even across the board. Due to the nature of the things, reliability is mostly pot luck - any of them could last a day, or they could last 10 years. One can't claim Seagate to be the best, simply because a handful of people have 11yr drives still running fine. Equally, one can't claim that Samsung drives are unreliable simply because they had three fail on the trot.

[eldergeek]

As has been said, WD and Seagate are both good. I like to search newegg and sort by best rating. Then, if I can afford it, I go with the whichever (of the item I'm seeking) has the highest rating by the largest number of people, even if I buy it somewhere else (which happens once in a long while), newegg's ratings help me decide which model I want.

[Paqman]

any of them could last a day, or they could last 10 years. One can't claim Seagate to be the best, simply because a handful of people have 11yr drives still running fine. Equally, one can't claim that Samsung drives are unreliable simply because they had three fail on the trot.

^This.

Any one person's sample size is going to be too small to say anything meaningful about reliability. The probability of failure is highest when the drive is either very new or very old, but should otherwise be considered random. Get whatever one has the price/performance you require and plan for failure.

[Lucradia]

According to newegg and whatnot, all brands of harddrives are un-reliable about 70-80% of the time, the same with wireless routers.

[Evil-Ernie]

For out and out reliabilty you need to look at SSDs. SSDs are 50% more resistant to knocks and vibration because of no moving parts, mean time between failures for SSD is 1.2 million hours to HDDs 600K hours blah blah blah.

Id have to say Intels SSDs are ace, Im using one now!

[flemur13013]

This is worth reading:

Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population (http://www.usenix.org/events/fast07/tech/full_papers/pinheiro/pinheiro_html/)


Our key findings are:



Contrary to previously reported results, we found very little correlation between failure rates and either elevated temperature or activity levels.

Some SMART parameters (scan errors, reallocation counts, offline reallocation counts, and probational counts) have a large impact on failure probability.

Given the lack of occurrence of predictive SMART signals on a large fraction of failed drives, it is unlikely that an accurate predictive failure model can be built based on these signals alone.

[spikeh]

It's impossible to ascertain which brand has "the best reliability" from anecdotal evidence.

Take note of warranty when you buy drives, especially OEM from online etailers. I've had Seagate honour their warranty on a 4 year old drive that had 5 year warranty, though the replacement was "Certified Repaired" and not an original.

[forrestcupp]

I always liked the Commodore 1581 hard disk drives.

http://commodore128.mirkosoft.sk/images/c1581.jpg

[LowSky]

According to newegg and whatnot, all brands of harddrives are un-reliable about 70-80% of the time, the same with wireless routers.

People will write a poor review versus a good one 5 to 1. I read that somewhere.

The reason for high failure rates for things like hard drives also comes down to the user who is trying to install. Some of the reviewers leave clue to why the disk failed and you can only laugh. For instance some users complain of a disk failing in RAID, and yet some of these drives specifically say they cannot be run in RAID.

Wireless routers failure rate is based completely on user stupidity. They think they work out of the box or don't realize that they might need an Ethernet cable to set them up correctly.