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  1. Banned
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    if that's something you ask yourself before buying a new hard drive. check this out:

    http://techreport.com/news/25940/hard-drive-reliability-study-names-names
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  2. Member DB83's Avatar
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    Even without checking that out, I kinda knew that Seagate would be tops (or bottom whichever way you wanna read it)

    Only ever had one and that lasted about 6 months.
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  3. Mod Neophyte Super Moderator redwudz's Avatar
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    If I recall correctly, I've had three Seagate failures in the last 5 years, one Hitatachi failure, one Toshiba failure and no WD failures. And I still have four older Maxtor 80GB PATA drives used for boot drives in my servers. My WD drives are a mix of black, green and blue versions, mostly 1 to 1.5 TB. On all the PCs, probably about 40 HDDs.
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  4. Over the last decade: one Toshiba (stopped responding), one Maxtor (failing sectors), one WD (screaming bearing), and one Seagate (lasted exactly one hour). Consequently I choose by price unless there is some special reason to do otherwise.
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  5. Originally Posted by Constant Gardener View Post
    I choose by price unless there is some special reason to do otherwise.
    Same here. I can recall a Maxtor, and two WDs failing over ten years. Maybe another too, but I'm not sure now what brand.

    Currently I have 7 Seagates, 3 WDs, a Samsung and a Hitachi.
    Last edited by fritzi93; 21st Jan 2014 at 12:44.
    Pull! Bang! Darn!
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  6. My WD drives are still working after 10 years here on an XP computer (One internal, one external.) On laptop both WD drives working for 5 years.(Both internal drives) No failures. In use every day.
    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence -Carl Sagan
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  7. aBigMeanie aedipuss's Avatar
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    every drive in my main computer and nas boxes is a samsung. 13 total drives, 8 run 24/7 and have for years. never had one of theirs fail. unfortunately seagate bought the hard drive part of samsung. now i'd stick with wd black drives.
    --
    "a lot of people are better dead" - prisoner KSC2-303
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  8. Member hech54's Avatar
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    A Seagate(c drive) and two Samsungs (storage) in this computer since 2008 - no problems.
    Also a variety of misc externals(Toshiba, WD, Hitachi)....also no failures.
    Never had a HDD fail.....ever.
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  9. Member
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    I used to run Maxtor's with good luck at ~9 years of intermittent use. All my PC's are either off or in sleep mode when not actively being used so they are spun up and down a lot. When they eventually started failing I went with Seagate thinking that since they took over Maxtor they would offer the same lifespans. Wrong!

    I've given up on Seagate hard drives. All were 7200RPM. One failed within the warranty period so they replaced it with a refurbished one at no charge. It lasted less than 2 years and was not covered under warranty.

    I had two Seagate's fail last fall and they were ~4 years old. One was in my Home Theater PC and had a bunch of TV shows recorded when it started the tick, tick, tick. The other was in a Vista machine that I only used to watch live streaming auctions. Tick, Tick, Tick.

    As the Seagate's fail, I've been replacing them with Western Digital blue or black. Still too new to have long term reliability information.

    My surveillance system DVR came with a WD green drive that's on 24/7 and it's been running continuously for a couple of years. The Seagate's may be good for 24/7 operation but in my experience are short lived with intermittent on/sleep/off use.

    creakndale
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  10. Member p_l's Avatar
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    This does indeed mirror my experience.

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  11. Member hech54's Avatar
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    My Seagate is only a 250GB....
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  12. The oldest surviving hard drives around here are a Seagate 20GB and and Maxtor 40GB. I'm fairly sure hard drive reliability of various brands tends to change over the years. At one stage I wouldn't have considered WD drives to be particularly reliable. The WD drives I've owned with capacities of 120GB or less didn't have especially long lives (around 2 years).

    Just looking at the last 5 years or so, I tend to agree with the article, although I've not owned a large number of drives of each brand. There's no Samsung drives in the comparison. I don't think Samsung make drives any more, but of the 5 x 500GB drives I've owned, four are still going strong, often working 24/7. The one which stopped working would probably still be okay had I not dropped it while it was running.

    One drive which surprised me is a 2TB Hitachi drive. It's a pre AF drive with lots of platters so one of the first 2TB models. It's noisy and it runs hot (55 degrees or more on a hot day), but it's run 24/7 without missing a beat since the day I bought it.

    I own a bunch of WD drives from 320GB to 2TB (around 20 of them). I dropped a 1TB Green drive which stopped working after a while and one of the 320GB drives seemed to have a problem with writing files not long ago (it wasn't making noises but it was extremely slow), but it seems to have come good again. I'm not sure what was going on there. Aside from that, every WD I've bought from 320GB and up is still working, although many are 2TB Green drives used for storage so they're not running regularly or for long periods at a time.

    I was unlucky enough to buy a couple of Seagate 7200.11 500GB drives. They were returned 3 times under warranty. Fortunately the warranty was 5 years. The latest replacements are still working, but they're not used regularly (mainly as a portable drive in a USB dock).
    Last edited by hello_hello; 22nd Jan 2014 at 08:36.
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  13. Member
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    My Seagate 1.5TB 2.5" external failed at 1.5 years and was replaced under warranty, but the drive they sent me has a 9% health rating in HD Sentinal. Since Seatools conveniently sees no problems, I'm stuck with it. Seagate NEVER again!
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  14. Member
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    Runs in cycles. Back in the day, IBM Deskstars were the shizzle, with Seagate in the middle and WD on the bottom. Then IBM botched their line and created the Deathstars, WD improved their drives, and Seagate stayed in the middle. Now Hitachi has apparently put the Deskstars back where they used to be, WD second, and Seagate last. In five more years, this will probably look different again, especially since WD bought Hitachi's HD business a couple of years ago and then sold part of that (the 3.5" drives) to Toshiba.

    As always, the rule is buy now what's good now, because like the stock market folks say, past performance is not an indicator of future results.
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