WD AAKS drives question. Can I trust again?

karm100fists

Distinguished
Nov 1, 2007
41
0
18,530
Building a new system, I am content with two of this product... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148136

Sorry that I'm not good with html/ezcodes, but it implies two of the " Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

Everyone is reccomending WD AAKS drives BUT...

I have RMA'd (with significant loss of data) 3 Western Digital hard drives in my lifetime.

I made a pact to buy from Maxtor and Seagate until it was no longer an option (almost 4 years ago).

Now I see that everyone reccomends WD AAKS as the HDD of choice when I had two perfectly good Seagate Barracuda 7200 500MB 3.0 SATA drives picked out for my new setup.

Can anyone give me a good reason to trust my valuable (comparatively) data to a company that has reamed me good in the past?
 

RPAaggieDude

Distinguished
Oct 8, 2007
14
0
18,510
Hard drives are mainly a brand preference issue. Ive owned Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi, and a Western Digital. The Seagate and Maxtors both went out on me and I lost all my data, so I will not buy from those companies again. Ive had EXCELLENT luck/performance with my Hitachi and Western Digital drives. Out of all those drives, the Seagate was clearly the worst. It lasted for a total of 6 months and I lost all my data. On a side note, my friend who just built a 4000 dollar computer had ordered 3 Seagate 500GB drives and they ALL arrived DOA from newegg, which is another reason why I dont trust Seagate. Also, the WD's tend to perform a little better than most hard drives on the market. However, if you have never had problems with your Seagate stuff, I don't see any reason to switch from them.
 
Everyone has a sob story when it comes to HDD's, X company screwed me and Y company has never failed me. I think when it comes to these sort of things it's just luck (or lack there of) of the draw. Seagate carries a 5 year warranty if that's the sort of thing that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy. I have used Seagate, Quantum, and Western Digital. The only drive I have had fail on me is a Western Digital (80GB IDE) and it failed during it's warranty so I RMA'd. When I say failed, it started making clicking noises and would freeze my system while it did this. I bought a new drive, backed up my data and RMA'd the drive. The Quantum drive I bought in 1999 (8GB) is still running.

So if I were you I wouldn't obsess about what brand to buy so much. Get the capacity you need with the speed and features you want and have a decent backup regimen in place in case of failure. The key here is your backup practices. You only get screwed if you don't backup. If you back up and your drive goes during the warranty coverage, you get a new drive for free. If it fails after the warranty coverage, you buy a bigger and better drive for cheaper than the one that failed. It's really that simple.

As for RPAaggieDude, wow you friend must have really bad karma if he received 3 Seagate drives all DOA. It's more likely there was some BIOS conflict with the drives (happens all the time, especially if the motherboard is new), that or the courier was doing an Ace Ventura with the box that the HDD's were shipped in.
 
I have had issues with all hard drives (HDD touch of death I suppose). The only one that has not failed me is IBM Deskstar 75GXP before it got sold to Hitachi.

4 of 5 dead Maxtors
2 of 6 WDs with bad sectors
1 of 1 Seagate that die within 3 months
0 of 1 IBM with problems

Haven't bought any Samsungs yet, but most likely I'll be buying their TB drives. If not then it'll be WD's TB drives.