Who makes the best IDE Hard Drive?

Your opinion counts! I want to know which manufacturer (on average) makes the most reliable hard drive. I don't care about the biggest, the fastest, the smallest, laptop, scsi or external. Lets just stick to the basics at this point, internal desktop IDE drives. Who do you think makes the most reliable drive? I have my assumptions, how would you rank the top 5? Here are mine - 1. Maxtor, 2. Hitachi (IBM) 3. Segate 4. Fujitsu 5. Western Digital 6. Samsung
What do you think? (Lets try to base the list on actual experience, OK?)

Here's how I would rank mine from personal experience and from what I've gleaned:

1-Seagate. I've owned four, had to have one RMA'd because it wouldn't come out of PIO mode. Replaced in a jiff, lost no data.

2-Western Digital. I've owned four. One died when it was about 4 years old. Lost nothing important.

3-Maxtor. Owned 3. One died at abour three years. Sold the other two on eBay.

4-Hitachi (IBM). Owned six. Never had a bad one, but the Deskstar problem has really killed their reputation.

5-Fujitsu. Owned one. It died at about two years, while being replaced and reinstallation. Didn't drop it, it just didn't work when I reinstalled it as a slave.



6-Samsung. Had one, died at three days.

Keep in mind, this is just reliability. If I rank them according to reliability plus performance, then the rankings change. Good luck.
-Brettster

I'm overqualified to answer this one, because I'm a system refurbisher and have had dozens or more of each drive!

Maxtor failure rate after around 5 years: 20%
WD failure rate after around 5 years: 30%
Seagate failure rate after around 5 years: 35%
Quantum failure rate after around 5 years: 40%
Fujitsu failure rate after around 5 years: 40%

I didn't include IBM. Why? I've never HAD an IBM fail, but I've never owned one of the newer IBM's that are notorious for failing!

One thing I'd like to say about WD: Every replacement drive I've gotten from them has been refurbished and failed withing 90 days of the warranty ending. Example: 1 year left on waranty, fails 1 year +90 days after I get it. 1 month left on warranty, fails 1 month +90 days after I get it. I've speculated that they have a timer in BIOS that says "quit responding on this date".

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Simple math: Computers are usually retired after 3 years in an office. A refurbisher buys them bulk and sells them as used systems. The new buyer usually keeps them at least 2 years. Without warehousing, etc, you're already looking at 5 years!

If you were to hold the drive for 5 years? No, if you were to USE the drive for 5 years! Did you know that most SCSI drives are WARRANTIED for 5 years?

5 years ago, 8.4GB was the common "big" size, just like 80GB is the common "big" size now. As in, the most common size advertized by computer manufacturers. If you had an 8.4GB drive suddenly fail, you should at least be disappointed that you didn't have warning, even though you did expect it to fail "sooner or later"


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