Hitachi Deskstar

You'll have to be more specific, as Deskstar refers to all Hitachi's drives intended for standard desktop use. What model number? When were they manufactured? Are the drives new or used?
At the Hitachi web site, you can download their "Drive Fitness Test" bootable CD image and burn it onto a CD. The software allows you to do quick to complete tests, reformat the disk, turn on/off and monitor SMART, etc.

You mean deathstar? Seriously these drives plain suck! to many failures! avoid at all cost,sell,run away!

Seems a bit unreasonable to knock every desktop drive produced in the last 5 years by a major drive manufacturer. Don't worry about the fanbois/antibois.

I have a 100GB Hitachi Deskstar. Seems to be fine.

from what I heard in many forums deskstar are famous for their ability to simply die! It won't happen to everyone, but it seems to be happening a lot more (%) than the other brands.

@Mondoman: If I was a fanboy of a certain brand wouldn't I say: hey! buy this one instead? or whatever.

I had a 60Gig Deathstar that die a couple days OOW.

I wouldnt be in the same room as an IBM Deskstar after that...

Post-sale to Hitachi may be a different story.

Just about everything Hitachi makes is near perfect.

I'd say if they are over 100 gig they are prolly new enough and are okay.

And I've also heard about how bad WD drives are, and how bad Seagate drives are, and how bad Maxtor drives are. You should know by now that forums are not a good source of unbiased info on this, especially when all you have is a brand name and not even a model line or model number. Certain Honda models have bad reliability; does that mean all Hondas are bad?

And judging from the forums, 90% of the population is male between the ages of 15 and 25. Are you sure you want to use "forums" as a guide to the real world?

Hence my use of "antibois". :wink:

lol still wouldn't risk it though! I agree it was more of IBM's fault than hitachi's!

I have to agree that a forum may not be the best place to get an overall feel for the reliability of any particular product - a forum post touting how crappy product X or product Y is will inevitably draw all of the traffic from those who have had a bad experience with those products. . . so what about the thoustands, or tens of thousands of other customers of those products who have never had problems? I personally have owned 3 deskstars and never had a single problem with any of them. Frankly, given the nature of hard drive technology in general, there are bound to be a certain percentage of bad drives, but I don't think it's fair to flame the entire product line for the sake of a statistically small number of drive failures. I agree with mondoman when he said that by this logic, there is no drive maker out there with a good product.

It sounds to me like the drives check out ok, so there shouldn't be any worry with them. Different drives from different vendors all have their wieird quirky noises (how bout the head chatter in some drives?), so I wouldn't worry about the 'whine' you described - it's probably just the platter spinning up or something.

my $.02

Its a Hitachi Deskstar
Manufactured DEC 2003
82.3GB
Model= HDS722580VLAT20
P/N 08K0462

No, this drive is pretty silent normally. But once in a while it will whine- its hard to explain. it reminds me of the sound i heard on my dead maxtor- heads crashed.

Yeah, you'll be getting biased opinions. For example, I steer clear of Maxtor Drives because I had 3 of them fail on me. Western Digital is okay, but one of my WD 160GB hard drives developed sector errors. About 20GB in sector errors making the drive 140GB. Now I only use it for temporary storage. Since I only have one bad experience with WD drives I will still consider buying them.

I had one Seagate drive that failed within 3 months, got a replacement and it has worked fine for over 2 years.

The only brand that I haven't experienced any problems with is the IBM Deskstar ("Deathstar") 75GXP 60GB which I bought back in 2000. It is my oldest drive and I am still using it. It is rather small by today's standards and it is getting a little old as well. I'm a bit reluctant to replace it, but I should.

i've had a failure from WD, it's the only drive i've EVER had fail on me, i still buy WD... only WD in fact.

hahahah, you think 60gb is old? i have 2 60's in raid now... i also have a 216.3 MB hard drive laying around somewhere...

Ara

My 80gig IBM deskstar died, but luckily was still under warranty  
Only drive that's ever failed me.

Started making clicking noises, but an hour in the fridge and quick transfer to new hard drive and my data was saved  

My 80gig replacement maxtor starting making odd noises too. So stuck a fan on it and it's been fine for nearly a year now

Good drives for extra storage As a slave drive but most 80gig deskstars or lower only have a 2Magabyte catch witch make for bad use for running any kinde of operating system very short hi speed data burst over PATA interface you would need 8 Mb or mor of catch to make for a speedy drive running any kinde of Operating system I would say the same there Crapy Cheap & slow