starmonkey123

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I'm wondering what the most reliable hard drive is.

I always have problems with hard drives failing within a year or two (usually after the warranty date). I think this is to do with my constant downloading e.g. filesharing programs like bit-torrent.

What hard-drive is the most reliable, and won't give me corrupt sectors after a year or so?

is there any that exist?

I prefer fairly large capacity i.e. 150-250 gig range
Speed is not really an issue, it would be used mainly as storage and not running my OS.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance for your advice
 

blue68f100

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If you keep any of them long enough they will fail.

I like Seagate's 5 yr warranty, And Hitachi drives, 3yr warranty.

I never had any luck with Maxtors.

If you over heat them they fail quicker.
 

FITCamaro

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Go with a Western Digital or a Seagate and you should be fine. Seagates are nice because of the 5 year warranty. But most Western Digitals have a 3 year.
 

INeedCache

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Sorry to disappoint you, but depending on who replies, they all make the best and worst drives. No matter what brand you mention, you'll find someone who thinks it's the best, and some who think it's a total piece of junk. I'd advise going for 3 or 5 yr warranties, and do backups often no matter what you purchase. For example, some here have said not to buy Maxtor, whereas I've had good luck with them. Go figure.
 

pat

Expert
I
I always have problems with hard drives failing within a year or two (usually after the warranty date). I think this is to do with my constant downloading e.g. filesharing programs like bit-torrent.

What hard-drive is the most reliable, and won't give me corrupt sectors after a year or so?

is there any that exist?

I prefer fairly large capacity i.e. 150-250 gig range
Speed is not really an issue, it would be used mainly as storage and not running my OS.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance for your advice

Reality check son.. if all of your drive fails, no matter what brand, then you are the problem..

Check for any overheating you could have created and that kill your drive. Stop using crappy PSU, that kills drive too.

The only drive I had to fail on me was an IBM deathstar.. All the other that I got, no matter the brand are still running good. They have clean power supply, are use in well vented area of the case, not mounted too close together...
 

INeedCache

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That is not quite true. Any hardware of any type can fail, and that doesn't necessarily mean you did something wrong to cause it. Sure, sometimes systems run too hot or cheap PSUs result in premature hard drive death, but not always. How do you explain new drives that are DOA? No manufacturing process or human idea is perfect, and failures happen. You had a drive fail, what that your fault? Maybe, maybe not. You give good advice for cooling and PSUs, but I disagree that if your hard drive fails, you absolutely did something to cause it.
 

weskurtz81

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Definately Seagate..... great drives, quiet, and they run cooler than the maxtors that I have. I have had horrible luck with the hitachi deathstars..... crash waiting to happen..... don't do it man....
 

pat

Expert
That is not quite true. Any hardware of any type can fail, and that doesn't necessarily mean you did something wrong to cause it. Sure, sometimes systems run too hot or cheap PSUs result in premature hard drive death, but not always. How do you explain new drives that are DOA? No manufacturing process or human idea is perfect, and failures happen. You had a drive fail, what that your fault? Maybe, maybe not. You give good advice for cooling and PSUs, but I disagree that if your hard drive fails, you absolutely did something to cause it.

Why is it so hard to admit that users can actually be faultly? I always start troubleshooting by checking whet the user may have do wrong, and most of the time, that's the problem.

But it is easy to blame HW.. they cannot argue back..
 

Sykotic

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I have had fairly good luck with ALL brands of drives, giving about maybe a 5% failure rate within 2 years. But I also never let my drive get more than 50% full. The fuller the drive is, the more work it has to perform to write and read data esp if the drive is full of fragments. House keeping is a must, remove/backup files that you dont need, or rarely use.
 

jerems

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Always been a Seagate Fan myself...Raptors are the best obviously before having to go to SCSI.

Never had a problem with my WD either.

Maxtor....had a few problems...those were older models though.
 

fainis

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any new hdd has a good reliability..all the manufactures have discovered and fixed the problems they had ...if i were to choose i would go for seagate....then wd...
the last choice would be maxtor........that`s only a remanence from the past ..i`m sure they make good drives these days
 

INeedCache

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I am not saying that a user cannot be at fault, and perhaps MOST drive failures are related to user fault, I don't know. However, I think it ridiculous to assume ALL failures are user related. Manufacturing processes are not perfect, and sometimes parts do wear out or fail before their time through no fault of the user. I'm not trying to absolve responsibility, but I reject your assumption that ALL failures are user fault.
 

Sykotic

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had the ANTEC 5.25" cooler, was really cool, and the dual temp probes are great, just that mine were in Celcius, I dont know metric :cry:
 

pat

Expert
I am not saying that a user cannot be at fault, and perhaps MOST drive failures are related to user fault, I don't know. However, I think it ridiculous to assume ALL failures are user related. Manufacturing processes are not perfect, and sometimes parts do wear out or fail before their time through no fault of the user. I'm not trying to absolve responsibility, but I reject your assumption that ALL failures are user fault.

I'm not saying that all failure is user's fault..

But whn drives keep dying in one system, no matter the brand, the type, then there is maybe a part of the problem that is toward the user..

If 2 drives are mounted too close together, and one keep dying, and you are at your third one, what will you do? Keep blaming drives bad quality or take the time to check for another solution?
 

dark-angel

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I agree about the Seagates and Hitachis.

Bottom line is to just stay away from 1 year warranties.

I bought a Seagate 300MB drive which failed RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX :evil: and Seagate sent me a REFURBISHED drive even though my drive was brand spankin' new. Is this the "Warranty" of all drive makers?

Since a NEW drive immediately failed, why would I trust a byte of data on a refurbished model? I donated the refurbed drive to Goodwill and bought a Western Digital and a Hitachi drive and have had no problems since (knock on wood).
 

Codesmith

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I stick to drives with 5 year waranties. Which means Seagetes, or Western Digital Raptors or Raid Edition.

Best Band for your Buck = Seagate

Fastest = 74-150 GB Raptor

Most Reliable = 2 WD Raid Edition drives in RAID 1

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Out of 10 drive I owned 8 still are in perfect working condition.

I had one WD 40 GB with a one year waranty that died in 18 months. It was a gift, or I would have paid extra for the 3 year model.

I had a 45 IBM Deathstar which lasted 2 months and which IBM refused to RMA. Since then I refued to buy IBM or Hitachi which inherited IBMs hard drive business.

I have 4, 4 year old 120 GB Western Digital Drives which are still in perfect working order. Three of which were run 24x7 in a cage with two cooling fans. (One had to be RMA'ed within the 1st month due to noise/vibration, but I didn't lose data and the replacment still works perfectly) After 4 years I quit running them 24x7 and now use then as external USB 2.0 drives.

I also have two 3-5 Year old 40 GB Maxtors in perfect condition, which were run only a couple hours a day.

I have a 2+ year old Seagate 200 GB in perfect condition running 24x7 on my 2nd PC.

Finally in my current gamming rig I have a 1 year old 74 GB Raptor and two 4 month old 400 GB WD RE2's in RAID 1.

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Nothing nothing is a subsitute for a good backup strategy.

I keep my data seperate from my installed programs. I backup my OS regularly with True Image 9 and I backup my personal file and photo's regularly with Retrospective.

The backups go on the RAID 1 array if I am lazy and unto DVD+RW if I am not.

True Image 9 is definately worth $35.

Retrospective 7.5 Pro is worth the $90 if you need to have a backup that keeps track of files changes. For example if I discover that I accidentally deleted some client information 2 months ago and didn't notice, I just recover the file from a snapshot taken 3 months ago.

If you don't need such advanced features True Image 9 will do.

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