Most reliable 7200rpm HDD?

I generally use Western Digital Blacks, but I also have 2 Greens. The largest capacity I've used is 1TB.

The only hard drive that ever failed on me was a Maxtor 40GB back in 2002.

I generally replace hard drives every 5 years even if they still function fine.

Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB or Samsung Spinpoint F4 2TB (but 5400rpm).

You are gonna paid more for 7200rpm drives larger than 1TB. And really not see any benefits.

See THG Review of Hitachi's 4TB HDD.

In the end, 2TB were better and cheaper, the last page pretty much sums it up:

So I guess I'll fill my drive cage with five WD Caviar Black 2TB drives or five Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB drives. They are both priced about the same, and although I'd get 5TB more if I go with the Seagates, I'm more interested in which of them will live longer if I keep them running 24/7 (which I do). I already had one barracuda drive of 120gb that I bought 2005 die on me.

BTW I'll wait till the prices drop back down like they used to be.

Probably the most reliable would be the Western Digital Black Caviar RE series. They are Enterprise Class hard drives meant to be used in RAID configuration in the corporate sector and are meant to operate 24/7.

Here's a RE4 2TB version currently selling for $256.
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Cache-Enterprise-...

The RE4 1TB versions are selling for $127. That's actually cheaper than the RE2 1TB drives i bought about 2 or 3 years ago.
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Cache-Enterprise-...

These hard drives are rated at 1.2 million hours Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) will running at 100% duty cycle.

^+1 Great info.

Forgot that point: RE drives are meant for RAID.

Although others will RAID, RE will get you more reliablity.

1.2 MILLION hours? That's insanity

This topic has been closed by SR-71 Blackbird