About 8 years ago I heard from a lot of tech that they would swear by Western Digital (especially if you didn’t want to pay for and expensive High end Hard drive), but lately I have been hearing from techs that they've replaced more Western Digitals then any other drive and that they, now, swear by Seagate. I've never owned a Seagate, I have three Western Digitals (all running as main drives) and one of them is at least 8 years old (No problems what so ever), and two Matxors (Only had one issue, and fans solved that). And with customer reviews on retail web sites like Newegg, I find that Western Digital, Seagate, and Hitachi drives tend to have the same Ratio of DOA’s and drives fallers. I would like to know, from the tech community, which HD Company you find more reliable for the Price (in the home user/ work computer side of the market), why do you think they’re more reliable, and what’s your opinion on why these techs complain about replacing more Western Digitals then any other drive?

Wow, first time being first reply. Currently have 6 Raid 0's on 6 machines of my own or Brothers/friends in age from 4 years to 1 month old. 5 of them with Seagates, 1 with Hitachi, and 0 failures from them all (at least till I posted this and cursed myself.)

Medic

I personally trust Seagate more, because they're known to be quality hard drives, and the really sweet 5 year warranty period. You don't offer a longer warranty when your hard drive fails often, it's not economically viable.

Having owned many WD's and a number of Seagate's without ANY issues I believe both companies are producing good products. The only drive I have ever had that failed was a Maxtor (years ago). In three machines I have a Seagate now and at least 2 WD's that are 5 years old I believe and also have a number of newer WD's and Seagates (less than a year old) and all are running fine.

got more clutter with my 250GB seagate...wd runs cooler

It's not scientific, but look at the reviews on Newegg for drives from the various manufacturers. I went with Seagate for my new system; it seemed that there were a larger number of people reporting DOAs or infant failures for the WD drives.

I've used both Seagate and Western digitals for years now, mainly buying whichever was on sale at the time. During the past year, I got a couple DOAs from WD and replaced them with Seagates which ran prefectly. Except for the Raptor, which many people dislike for varying reasons, I prefer Seagate at the moment.

I do have a Raptor and I think its great, but I also believe that its built to a higher general quality or gets a more thorough inspection than the rest of the WD line. May be wrong about that, but its a belief.

Not one single WD drive that I have purchased in the past 20+yrs has failed on me yet, all still work but not in use due to their low capacity. Always use a power supply with enough juice to run your system properly and a WD will never fail on you imho.

Owned only one Seagate (SCSI Ultra160) in my life and it was problematic not being recognized half the time at boot up. I have witnessed the death of one Seagate used in my Brother's comp and I promptly replaced it with a WD which again still operates to this day 10yrs later. My perception of Seagate drives is that they are fast but run hotter than the competition therefore shortening their lifespan and overall reliability.

Well, so far, my family has only had Dells. The current one is about 4 years old, and we had another one that was 6. The older had a Seagate, and I could still turn it on to this day (although, it's gone now, it worked a few months a go before we got rid of it). This one has a Western Digital. Both of which have run perfectly fine.

On another note, I have a Samsung Spinpoint T 500 GB drive in an external enclosure. It doesn't get too hot. Well, except when ambient air temp is near 80F; thing gets toasty, but never shuts off ... I've been using it for over two months and no problems yet. However, from what I've heard, Samsung's Spinpoint F1 series isn't the same. Now, mind you, they are fast, cool, and silent; all of which is excellent. Contrary to all of that, though, they tend to not be as reliable. Also, both Spinpoint T, and even more so on the F1, don't seem to like RAID too much.

Overall, both Seagate and Western Digital are excellent, but I have to go with the later more so; I've heard excellent reviews of the My Book and Passport external drives from them, even after a year of use.

I have used WD and Seagate all my life, as have my friends and family. I currently have a WD 250gb a 7200.11 250gb Seagate and a 7200.11 1TB from Seagate. All are working well, fast, and quiet. The WD hard drive does run the warmest out of all of them though.

i have had the seagate barracuda 7200.7 8mb cache 80GB in my old system since 2004 or so and transferred it over to my new build 2 months ago and put it along side the new barracuda 7200.11 32mb cache 500gb and o problems ever, no clicking, no noise, excellent performance

go with seagate's new drives

I'm having deja vu, it's like the tenth time I see this question posted, and again I feel obliged to vote and comment on how a WD has never failed on me or anyone I know or heard of.
Granted the new seagates are faster, but in reliability and noise levels WD has no competition.

I'd like to add that I've only seen 2 hard drives fail in my entire life, one was a samsung and the other was a Seagate, but I don't count the seagate as failing because it was after it survived a fire that leveled the house to the ground, it happened to a friend o mine and he still could get his data back (mostly porn I might add).

In the poll, IBM after their DeskStar (aka DeathStar) lawsuit, they do not make HDs anymore.
The company that took over the HD division is Hitachi.

Funny that you should mention the IBM Deskstar. I had one and transfered it through three computers before it was just too small to be useful anymore. It was a bit noisy, but never died from use.

In the past 3 years I have had two disk drive failures. One WD was noisy and a Seagate became unreliable on spin up when cold. The Seagate was outside the retailers warrenty but inside the Seagate Warrenty and they replaced it quickly and painlessly.

Overall at the moment I prefer the Seagates as they seem quieter.

Seagates have been FAILING a lot in the last months. Personally I will try to avoid OEM (barebone) Seagates because I had a lot of problems with it.

Maxtor has been perfect for me. Western Digital with its raptor has also been nice. Samsung.... Heard good but also bad stuff.

I have a Deskstar and a Quntam from IBM, I have been using them in computer just so I can play around with a few different versions of linux, and the quntam is finally dieing, but the Deskstar is still working.

I Put IBM in the poll, because I happen to know a few people who still like the Old IBM drives.

WD and Seagate are the best for me, some models better than others, make sure you get HD with 5 years warranty. One thing for sure Hitachi and Samsung disappoints me more than others.

i always prefer seagate.owned 4 of them since 1996.used samsung once-its simply crap!! i've got a hitachi drive too for about 7 months now-no issues yet.