UsernameX

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My hard drive crashed this morning. Fortunately the data recovery program that I have was able to recovery some of my information but not all of it. I ran diagnostics on it and there are numerous bad sectors that were reported. Anyways, I need to order a new hard drive and will be doing so, most likely from newegg.com. Any advice on 300GB+ RELIABLE hard drives?
 

PCcashCow

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What drive crashed on you? And what type of system do you have. Some board dont have support for certian drives, say NCQ and drives over 200gigs.
 

UsernameX

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Pentium 4 3.2GHZ w/ HTT
Intel PERL850 MOBO (latest bios installed)
Windows XP SP2 (with latest updates)
450WATT ANTEC PWSPLY
Current hard drive 160GB SATA


I am looking for extra space though. I only had 2 GB free when I crashed.

Thanks for your help!!!
 

Nitro350Z

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if you really are looking for reliable then I suggest Maxtors Maxline III line of harddrives, they are server grade and have a million hour MTTF.

some people have had problems with maxtor but I've had at least 10 of them without problems

stay away from IBM/Hitachi Drives - Had 6 fail on me

but otherwise any other drive maker has good drives - WD, Seagate, Maxtor
just depends on what you like
 

TrentB

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I am a computer consultant and I have had several customers run into drive failures. I have sent them to a company that specializes in data recovery on drives, even if they will not even spinup. If you have critical data that you did not recover you might want to look into this. I had one customer that had a 120GB drive and ended up spending around $1100 but it was critical to his business. You just have to decide if you can justify the cost.
 

Mobius

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GetDataBack will retireve all the remaining information from that disc, bad sectors or not. BUT stop using the HDD right now. Disconnect it and do not touch it until you have GDB installed and ready to go.

As to reliable drives - well HDDs have moving parts, and are therefore inherently unreliable. Plus they ar emagnetic in nature, which makes them even more unreliable.

To put it simply: You can NOT rely on a hard drive. EVER.

To lessen the risk of losing your data, set up a RAID 1 array, or have some actual disciplne when it comes to making backups onto a removeable Hard Drive.

At least with data on 2 HDDs, you suffer only half the risk. And, if that 2nd HDD is stored off site, then you are quite well protected against data loss.

As to recommending a drive - take your pick. But remember - a 3 year warranty drive is equally likely to fail as a 1-year warranty drive.

FYI: the most reliable HDDs are SCSI - without a doubt.
 

maury73

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SATA-II interrface is fully backward compatible with SATA-I by specification. Any SATA-II drive will work fine with a SATA-I controller and similarly any SATA-II controller works well with SATA-I drives.

For the HDD I recommend Western Digital: they are quiter and much more reliable than Maxtor (excluding Maxline III that is OK) or Seagate.

And finally, it's not true saying SCSI HD are more reliable than SATA: SCSI is an interface, not a mechanical specification and all the issues with HD concern mechanical faults.
The more reliable HDD are those targeted to server applicatons (24/7 operation) but they costs more than stadard ones and there's still a problem not considered in server environment: the most critical moments for an HD are spin-up & spin-down, but none server HD does more than a hundred on-off cycle, so be aware and do frequent backups.
 

blue68f100

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I have been using Seagates (5yr warranty) and Hitachi (3yr warranty), with little to no problems. I have had numerous problems with Maxtors and WD. The only good drive WD makes is the Raptor. As with any and all, you will get good and bad drives. All have multiple lines for different needs. You can always move up to a Server Class drive but expect to pay a premium.

The single item that kill drives is HEAT. So if your drives are running in the 50C+ range expect failures. I Think all have moved to FDB, runs smoother and quiter.

As for recovery GRC SpinRite is a good program for recovery work.
 

ZOldDude

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My hard drive crashed this morning. Fortunately the data recovery program that I have was able to recovery some of my information but not all of it. I ran diagnostics on it and there are numerous bad sectors that were reported. Anyways, I need to order a new hard drive and will be doing so, most likely from newegg.com. Any advice on 300GB+ RELIABLE hard drives?

Goto www.grc.com and get the program called SpinRite.
It will recover all the info on your drive and repair all the bad sectors (make them read/write again) as long as the drive still spins.

Z
 

ZOldDude

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http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136003

Looking at this hard drive. Do you know if it's SATA 1 compatible? It only says SATA 2.


Thanks for your help and any thoughts about this drive I'm looking at. Thanks!!!

There is no such thing as SATA2 it is a marketing ploy,but yes,it will work.