Omega Owners Forum
Chat Area => General Discussion Area => Topic started by: Mr Skrunts on 04 September 2008, 17:04:23
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I know there are a load of members interested in computers on the forum. The last couple of years I have lost touch with whats happening.
I use a lot of hard drive space purely for storage, but end up moving some large chunks of data about at times.
Over the years I was a fan of the Fujitsu drives and then Hitachi. Used to feel that Seagate were slow and lazy and Samsung rattled as if they were about to fall apart.
Last 2 years I had a 300 GB Maxtor fail on install, annother maxtor fail after 6 months. Eecenly, I had a 320 and 500 Hitachi go down on me, saying dynamic drive - offline, could not get them back online whatever I tried.
Had to bite the bullet over the last few days and format the hard drive partition with the system on it, but did a memory upgrade in the mean time. (Long story, but this motherboard only wants to work with the 2 stix that were supplied by mistake 2 x 512 by ebuyer. so now back on 1 GB)(Can talk about memory in annother thread - Keeping this to hard drives) All installed, all data on other partitions still safe.
Just reformatting the 320 and 500 Hitachi drives having sacrificed all saved data, 1st drive (320) slit into 3 and formatted.
Shut down and attached the 500, tried to split into 5 parts, seems XP Pro would only let me have 4 (did all as primary though - dont kow if it made a difference) all going smooth. Opened IE6 had heard the hard drive lock, machine came to a standstill, reboot and all seems ok.
Right, the reason for the thread. My question is?
What do you rate as the most realiable brand of hard drive.
Am talking Sata II with a minmum of 16mb cache.
TIA. :y
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What do you feel is the most reliable Sata II Hard Drive Brand?
TIA. :y
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I'm a tad out of touch now, having closed my little "side company" down 2 years back, but I always rated Western Digital, over the 5 years I had the company I must have used around 150 hard drives, early years were Maxtor and I had a 30% failure rate .. changed to WD and the failure rate dropped to less than 5%
HTH
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I've got 5 Seagate Barracuda's in different sizes and systems at home and I've not had a problem yet with any of them. 2 of them must be 4 years old and are still whirring away quite happily. :y
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3 working Seagate, 1 Maxtor blown and at work Maxtor blown
Fujitsu lap top are good too - have a 100GB in my Pace Twin
Now being recommended to get Samsung for my next PC
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I'm a tad out of touch now, having closed my little "side company" down 2 years back, but I always rated Western Digital, over the 5 years I had the company I must have used around 150 hard drives, early years were Maxtor and I had a 30% failure rate .. changed to WD and the failure rate dropped to less than 5%
HTH
Was in the same situation up to about 3 years ago.
Had 2 Fujitsu issues, Both caused by me. Dropped something on my desk, ended up with a bad sector (the only time that I ever suffered one) and annother was a hard drive I fitted in an alluminium cooler, had not seen the DO NOT COVER THIS HOLE LABEL :-/
But it;s only recent years I am suffering failures, they just dont make them how they used to. :-/
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WD have generally been good to me, and quiet. Been really really harsh on SATA2 drives, and find them to be very reliable by and large. Dropping lappy's doesn't go over well though.
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Maxtor are RUBBISH! had THREE go awol in the last 6 months, two of them new, (replacements!!) Nasty pieces of pooh in my opinion >:(
Current Western Digital been going for 6 years now, (40gig) and has outlived all three 'Maxcrap' ones. :) Want to replace it with a bigger one, but it's so reliable, can't be assed!
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WD have generally been good to me, and quiet. Been really really harsh on SATA2 drives, and find them to be very reliable by and large. Dropping lappy's doesn't go over well though.
Certainly doesnt help.
Who makes the 10K RPM Raptors, is that Western Digital?
Any one got one?
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My WD has been going strong for about 5 years now - bit noisy though :)
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Had many WD's all been good.
Had to swap one out nearing 5 year warrenty - no worries dead easy.
They let you 'pay' by giving card details, they send out new drive, you sen own back at your leisure (1 month i think) and they dont take any money :y
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Agree with the coments on the Maxtors, they're awful.
I'll have another 60 SATA2 Seagate 500GB drives for sale soon again with 3 year warranties - http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=260277298244
If anyone is interested PM me and I'll deal outside eBay for OOF members with +50 posts & should be able to do a bit of discount.
The drives will be here at the end of the month.
Admins - if i'm not allowed to put this here please bin it!
Ta :y
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Had seagate for 9 years now various capacities never had a failure.
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WD have generally been good to me, and quiet. Been really really harsh on SATA2 drives, and find them to be very reliable by and large. Dropping lappy's doesn't go over well though.
Certainly doesnt help.
Who makes the 10K RPM Raptors, is that Western Digital?
Any one got one?
Yes got two of them in two systems, 100% reliabe to date 18 months old. But they don't seam to run at 10,000 rpm under windows, more like normal 7200 rpm drives. Unless I have done something wrong. If you use the supplied software to test the drive it will spin up to max.
HTH
Mike
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Pretty much every manufacturer has had trouble with the higher speed drives on the multi platter technology in the last few years, its only since the advent of the fluid bearings that they have got better.
I have just had my 80G western digital die and replaced it with another (I already have one) Samsung unit.....and I rate the latest Samsungs.
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Built thousands of PCs when i had my IT business - used Maxtor & Seagate (dependant on best price deal at time) - never had a duff one.
Used to find most repairs bought in for hd failure were either Fujitsu or Samsung.
WD good brand but can be difficult to get to co-exist with another make.
IBM good but pricey.
Still got an old original 286 pc lying about (Win 3.1 ;D ;D ;D). Hard drive is a massive 40Mb - made by DEC - must be 17-18 years old - no bad sectors and quiet operation! They used to build them good in those days!!!!!!!!!! ;D ;D ;D ;D
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Built many servers and PCs including 10K -15K RPM raid systems and high avail. clusters during Bank and private jobs
# 1 Samsung (Never seen one fail) (moderately fast)
# 2 Seagate (Seen some SCSI and IDE models fail) (not too fast except Cheetah)
# 3 Western Digital (fast but seen many models fail)
Fujitsu (not bad but seen many SCSI fail in the past )
Maxtor (will never touch again)
IBM some were good but seen some fail..
but truth is: the service life of those disks depend on the conditions you keep them..
if very dusty and hot and there are many low frequency shakes around the disk will not survive long..
as a precaution you can check the disks G level before buying..
And always a faster RPM means low latency..
And a higher cache is much better..
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WD have generally been good to me, and quiet. Been really really harsh on SATA2 drives, and find them to be very reliable by and large. Dropping lappy's doesn't go over well though.
Certainly doesnt help.
Who makes the 10K RPM Raptors, is that Western Digital?
Any one got one?
yep..but they dont seem to be that fast. some high cache 7200 Samsungs are faster..
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Consumer level drives (pretty much all SATA) are not as reliable as enterprise level drives (pretty much all SAS). Unsure of the differences mechanically, though they do tend to lag behind in capacity to consumer drives.
Generally, most drives are reliable, but can fail at any time, so backups critical.
The most unreliable ones we come across at work - bearing in mind we tend to stick to HP, Sun Microsystems, Netapps, EMC and Dell - are without doubt the Sun branded ones (they are rebadged). Bloody things always failing.
I have just got the Samsung Spinpoint F1 1Tb 32Mb cache one, delivered for £81, for my Media Center, and have to say I'm impressed with speed and quietness of it.
I should add that a 200G Maxtor in my PC (the one that started smoking) is banging about, non stop recalibrating, non stop retrying, but refuses to die, and still has not lost a byte of data. I refuse to replace it, want to see how long it will last ;D
Those that have seen my Tech2 laptop will know that drive in that has been failing for years, but again won't die ;D
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There were MTBF times (some are 1 million hrs) on SCSI and SAS drives.. Havent seen these specs on IDE or SATA :-/
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Built thousands of PCs when i had my IT business - used Maxtor & Seagate (dependant on best price deal at time) - never had a duff one.
Used to find most repairs bought in for hd failure were either Fujitsu or Samsung.
WD good brand but can be difficult to get to co-exist with another make.
IBM good but pricey.
Still got an old original 286 pc lying about (Win 3.1 ;D ;D ;D). Hard drive is a massive 40Mb - made by DEC - must be 17-18 years old - no bad sectors and quiet operation! They used to build them good in those days!!!!!!!!!! ;D ;D ;D ;D
LOL
I chucked out my very 1st PC about 6 yers ago, an Amstrad 1640 with twin 5.25 floppys and BW Screen.
I still have a PC in the old Denco Case (had the big smilie lights for HD/Power etc) Intel 2,3 MMX, 256 Ram. Fujisu EL 2.5 and 5.1 GB hard drives. Rage 3d 8MB VGA card and a Pair of 12MB Voodoo 2 Cards in SLI. Along with a Panasysnc 21" Pro Screen.
Still feel reluctant to prt with it and the other PC's collected over the years. :-/ :'(
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What interests me about this thread is that, we are all recommending latest drives based on experience on the reliability of old types from certain manufacturers which will be totaly different technologies!
Bottom line is that you can select a drive from what was a good manufacturer on thier last setups but, there latest incarnation might be a right crock of shite and its not until its been around a few years we will really know!
Ahhh, the joy of MTBF's on electro mechanical items!
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What interests me about this thread is that, we are all recommending latest drives based on experience on the reliability of old types from certain manufacturers which will be totaly different technologies!
Bottom line is that you can select a drive from what was a good manufacturer on thier last setups but, there latest incarnation might be a right crock of shite and its not until its been around a few years we will really know!
Ahhh, the joy of MTBF's on electro mechanical items!
True, but the thread was started specifically for Sata II 16MB or above cache drives.
Not really keeping up with technology during a couple of years of illnes I have totally lost track.
Being a domestic user I run with was I see advertised on the likes of Ebuyer, aria and other sites.
I have the Scsi UW2 cards that were available last time I dabbled with scsi speeds of upto 160 I thik at the time
I also have a couple of servers with the LVD drives in that are on the swapple plates. I think there is a Compaq ML 370 (older type)(dual 733 intels) and a Dell Power house, dual 933 xeons (if I could find a 2nd matched slot type cpu)
Whilst reading this thread I have heard the mention of SAS drives, and if being honest have not heard of them.
So as technoly improves I have yet to catch up with it.
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What interests me about this thread is that, we are all recommending latest drives based on experience on the reliability of old types from certain manufacturers which will be totaly different technologies!
Bottom line is that you can select a drive from what was a good manufacturer on thier last setups but, there latest incarnation might be a right crock of shite and its not until its been around a few years we will really know!
Ahhh, the joy of MTBF's on electro mechanical items!
True, but the thread was started specifically for Sata II 16MB or above cache drives.
Not really keeping up with technology during a couple of years of illnes I have totally lost track.
Being a domestic user I run with was I see advertised on the likes of Ebuyer, aria and other sites.
I have the Scsi UW2 cards that were available last time I dabbled with scsi speeds of upto 160 I thik at the time
I also have a couple of servers with the LVD drives in that are on the swapple plates. I think there is a Compaq ML 370 (older type)(dual 733 intels) and a Dell Power house, dual 933 xeons (if I could find a 2nd matched slot type cpu)
Whilst reading this thread I have heard the mention of SAS drives, and if being honest have not heard of them.
So as technoly improves I have yet to catch up with it.
SAS is serial attached SCSI. PITA to find SCSI drives now, obsolete. SAS share the same connector as SATA, so current backplanes and RAID cards can handle either/or.
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So is SAS better than SATA
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So is SAS better than SATA
Well, yeah, server style drive. Have to have a SAS card to run it though, and overkill for a desktop. I run servers on SATA drives, as long as the load isn't super high they last several years. On desktops they are great. If you're worried, get a cheap 2-channel SATA raid card and run mirrored drives on your desktop, still cheaper than one SAS drive and card.
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One important component is the controller for the drive(s) if SAS configuration is choosen..There are some models with built in batteries for the internal cache (for protecting the last minute cache data) ..Toms hardware guide and some other siites may have tests about those controller cards..
However I think for home purposes SAS disks with raid is really more power than necessary (unless you are running web sites in your home..)
But generally depending on a single disk is risky even in home so a mirrored (from motherboard BIOS) SATA configuration with 7200 RPM (2 disks) is mostly adequate..
sorry for the bad English in hurry to bring some friend to home..He repaired the broken water pipes in home we were about to swim ;D
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Which are the best hard drives ... all Sata I-II
I run several different makes & they all run good ,Seagate,2xMaxtor, 2xWD,Hitachi I usually buy using the system of the Warranty (5yrs if poss) and price ££ /gb
Seagate just about wins as always 5yr gtee but WDigital been a close second for me have 2 & they have been excellent :y