WTH is up with Hard Drive Reliability Recently?

[TwoHeadsBrewing]

So I've been looking at 1TB+ drives for a download/media server for a couple months now. There are some great prices on newegg for 1TB drives around the $50-60, but I see the reviews are TERRIBLE. I'm talking about more than 18% of users giving a one star rating: DOA, bad sectors, 3 out of 4 drives DOA, etc.

And it just gets worse. Just about every large capacity drive has the same ratings and reports of failure. It doesn't seem to matter if it's Seagate, Western Digital, or Samsung the reviews are all very similar. So what's the deal? Is/was there a production or QA issue related to the floods earlier this year?

And I suppose the best question is, when will they be getting drives aren't total shite?

 

[larkspur]

I haven't bought a HDD from Newegg in about 5 years ever since they stopped using bubble-wrap + styro-peanuts in their HDD packing. Apparently they cut down on their shipping costs by shipping the drives in a box with some crinkled brown paper instead of properly packing them. I received a drive in such a box and noted how easily it rattled around the box during shipping. The drive worked fine, but I wasn't happy. I contacted them about their HDD packing and they confirmed that crinkled brown paper was the new thing. So I stopped buying HDDs from them.

For all I know they started packing them properly again, but either way, I'll buy most everything else from them, but given my experience - not HDDs.

My advice is to buy HDDs from a different etailer and use a RAID-1 for valuable data. Combine that with an optical backup (or an external HDD backup) and you'll sleep better.

 

[TwoHeadsBrewing]

Interesting note about Newegg's packaging technique, but I was talking about the overall reliability of hard drives themselves. If you look at Amazon or any other retailer, hard drive ratings are horrible. On Amazon for a 1TB drive for instance, there are 18% 1 star ratings.

 

[rgd1101]

But how many don't put in a rating if they work? Or do you know how many they sold?

 

[johndan102496]

I was just thinking the same. I wanted a 1TB HDD in my desktop, but the reviews are so horrible I would rather just spend more for a 240GB SSD which has perfect reviews and have extreme reliability. I pretty much don't trust and HDD anymore besides my old one's that never really got used that much for 2008. I have had like 5 HDD's die in the past 3-4 years because the health just goes down and it dies that year or the next.

 

[TwoHeadsBrewing]

But how many don't put in a rating if they work? Or do you know how many they sold?

But look at the other product categories. CPUs, cases, PSU's, RAM, etc...all categories will have a couple products with extremely high ratings with a few more having 4 stars. It's very rare to find a product that has more than single digit % of 1-2 star ratings. However, it's typically easy to find a product with a 4-5 star rating, but not with hard drives. Almost every single drive 1TB and above are under 4 stars average, with a HUGE amount in the 1-2 star, and quite a lot of DOA reports. It just doesn't match other product categories, so it seems something must be going on with QA.

 

[Sakkura]

Optional user reviews are useless.

 

[TwoHeadsBrewing]

Right, we should make them mandatory.

Optional user reviews are useless.

 

[Onus]

Since the floods, many manufacturers have reduced the warranties on their drives, some to as little as one year (e.g. Samsung Spinpoint F3). This suggests a change in materials and/or methods in which the companies just don't have confidence, so neither do I. OTOH, most of the WD Black drives still have five year warranties. Although I did get one DOA (which Newegg promptly replaced), I have put 7-8 of these into service (six in 3x2 Raid1 pairs) over the past few years, and all are still running just fine. Unless someone's budget is really tight, these are the drives I recommend for those seeking reliability.

 

[TwoHeadsBrewing]

Ah, ok, that makes sense. I wonder if the old stock of drives from that period have been flushed out. I can't imagine retailers and of course customers are happy with such a high failure rate.