CLICK CLICK CLICK, dead, what now?

[SethMoney]

Okay I had this generic piece of crap hard disk for a WEEK, and it click click clicked on me. K, so now as expected it does not work, but I don't want to buy another drive thats just going to click click click die on me, so what do I buy? Who can I trust? Can I trust anyone? I looked online and all I'm seeing under reviews is a few positives followed by a dozen "Died after 2 months" and such. Well, I'm glad this happened sooner rather than later, I had only just settled in, and I hadn't put anything sentimental on that yet, but in the future I can not afford to have a hard disk die on me!!

I mean, even my old 386 will still probably run if I plugged it in.
I noticed the FAQ does not have any info on what brands are best. I'm looking for a 60 gig, 7200 speed (or whatever that is) drive.
Thanks!

(What sucks is this is just after I replaced the power supply... I hate cheap hardware.)

- seth[money]

 

[Crashman]

Newegg.com has the WD 800JB for $72, that's the Special Edition drive with the 3 year warraty and 8MB cache.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[jim552]

"All drives fail, it is only a matter of time....."

I don't know if there are "best" drives available or not, but the following is what works for me.

Many drive manufacturers have recently reduced the warranty periods on their drives so that now the "standard warranty" is about 1 year.

At the time the choice was made it was said that many people replace drives for larger and faster ones often, and that even though the warranty period is reduced the drive will last as long as before, it will just get rid of some costs incurred by manufactuers.

I still like warranties that are longer than 1 year.

It seems that Western Digital has a convention going that their "standard" drives have a warranty of 1 year, "Special Edition"/SE drives have a warranty of 3 years, and the "Enterprise" drives have a warranty of 5 years. Costs, of course, change as well but I tend to view the warranty period as confidence in their hardware.

For decades, Seagate has been a staple of mine.

I have had pretty good luck with Seagate drives. I have "retired" far more drives than those that have failed me.

For much of that time I also purchased Western Digital drives as well, and IBM.

Western Digital was off my purchase list for a while when they had the problem that got through regarding the 6gb and 8gb drives. I WAS NOT happy about that, and thought at the time, I would likely nevery purchase one again.

For a couple of years I DID NOT purchase any Western Digital drives.

IBM sold their business, so they are not available.
(I am not looking for any arguments, "the drives being made are the same design, it's just a different manufacturer". I understand that, but that is NOT important to me.)

Western Digital came to the top of my list recently when they introduced the Raptor drives.

Not so much that they were fast 10,000 RPM drives, but from my point of view it was because they were fast 10,000 RPM drives, with SATA, and with a 5 year warranty.

Because of that single success, my current manufacturer list is:
Western Digital
Seagate

Overall the purchasing pattern will become about 70% to 30%.

I also used to like Quantum hard drives. When Maxtor and Quantum merged I purchased a Maxtor drive. It lasted about 1 year.

The drive failed, under warranty, a couple of weeks ago.

For nearly 11 years they were on my DO NOT BUY list. They are back on that list again.

It may not be a valid test, or valid reasoning, but it is what it is.

One thing I REALLY like about the Seagate drives is that they have a whole bunch of drives that are entirely encased. (Maybe all of them?)

It's not that circuit board damage to hard drives occurs often, but I like the idea of it not being a concern. Just little encased storage bricks.

Mirroring is so common-place now a days that virtually every motherboard supports it, and optional controller cards are easy to be had for very little money.

There are only two sources on my drive list currently. I would like to have more on that list, but I don't see any else out there that interests me at this time.

I hope that helps?

 

[srg]

Hi

Personally, I swear by Maxtor. I used to swear by Quantum but now their just maxtor. I've had loads of Quantums and they just go and go and go. I've got 3 maxtors and they are just as reliable.

I have an old Western Digital, got it second hand (850MB 2850), it's a pain in the ass. Anyway, I "grew up" PC wise in WD's bad patch, so they have always been on my do not buy list.

I have an IBM Deskstar 60GXP and an old IBM 512MB drive, both are superb and just go and go! Yes even my Deathstar!

The only seagates I've ever had are second hand Meadalist 1GB drives (the really slim ones), one was DOA and the other is problematic.

Actually, about two years ago, a friend of mine at the time got a WD hard disk and with it his WinXP made WinMe look like it had industrial Unix stability. Change the drive, fine.

Personally I've never had a brand new hard disk fail on me and I've had Quantum, IBM and Maxtor.

I nearly forgot to mention, my Amiga in the mid 90's had a Conner 2.5" 250MB Hard Drive, I don't have the Amiga any more but the HD worked fine for all the years I had it.

I have viewed this site on my Am386DX-40! it works!!<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by srg on 12/15/03 08:57 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[DarkSlayer]

Difficult to say who's best. Especially when nobody offers numbers. Ther best ppl to answear your question are those who work at large business dealing with thousands of same disk, and have them look at the number of disks returned back to manufacturer.

Samsung is the only one I have such a number from. at least 20% of their disks are returned, because of failure. Most likely because the disk is encapsulated for noise-prevention... thereby help raising the inside temperature ... and create failure.

... so redusing temperature have suddenly become important. i had a WD who cliked on me... just in time to replace it on warranty ( 3year ).

...Waranty is nice, and the price difference is not that big.

If you buy WD, Seagate, Maxtor w/good warranty + put a fan on it. Then i belive you should be safe.

...anyway, you have just been unlucky.

 

[advent]

To add my two cents:
+ Quantum: one of my disks failed (was 10yrs ago)
+ WD: my disk failed (was 6yrs ago)
+ IBM: have one disk which behaves strangely, wouldn't be surprised if it fails
+ Seagate: haven't had any problem <i>yet</i>
But I also have examples of WD+Quantum+IBM disks that have been running for years without problems.

I don't think having statistics would help, because statistics only apply to large numbers, so that if you buy one or two disks, statistics won't tell you anything: if you'r unlucky you get the one disk in the batch that is crap and will fail.

I do believe in Murphy's law and probably whatever disk you choose it will fail when you really need it (before final, end of project, ...).