Best SATA (80-160gb) drive for Raid Stripe

Magic · 20 Dec 2006 at 10:31

Hi Guys

I have a SATA1 raid controller on my mboard and was wondering which drives in the SATA (80-160gb) category were the most reliable, as im sick of drives dying on me and i love the raid performance.

Western Digital, Maxtor, Seagate, IBM/Hitachi i've had all of these drives before and pretty much all have died within 2 years, apart from the seagate which isnt old enough yet.

As far as i know SATAII drives work on SATAI controllers (correct me if im wrong pls), i think a cheap raid array will give my aging system a good kik up the rear for a while, just want reliability as performance is garunteed with a striped array is it not?

Thanks

Dr_Evil · 20 Dec 2006 at 10:34

get WD - most reliable.

rpstewart · 20 Dec 2006 at 11:00

Hard drive reliability is very subjective, people (myself included) are prejudiced by their own experiences. Personally I've had:

Hitachi / IBM
At least 18 at home in the last 6 years - 2 dead but self inflicted (didn't plug the power in right), 10 running fine at present. 1 dead laptop drive out of 4 or 5.

Seagate
Haven't used one at home for 10 years+. Used plenty of SCSI Barracudas & Cheatahs in work, the odd failure but nothing I would describe as unusual.

Western Digital
Had a bad batch of 4-6Gb IDE drives in work about 5-6 years ago, 20 machines all died within 6 weeks of each other. Haven't used them since as a result.

Maxtor
Two 120Gb SATA drives both died shortly after going out of warranty. 250Gb drive in Lacie external enclosure still going (touch wood!).

Samsung
Never used a desktop Samsung but I have a 100Gb 2.5" one in a caddy -going great despite the abuse it gets.

Dr_Evil · 20 Dec 2006 at 11:58

all this is based upon personal experience. I've never had a WD fail on me, had 2 Seagate's fail and 1 Maxtor.

Magic · 20 Dec 2006 at 12:19

cheers

it does look as if personal experience is more of a factor than brand (maybe with the exclusion of maxtor - you can feel the love for maxtor in these forums

)

Probably leaning towards two 160gb WD's.

ZUTON · 20 Dec 2006 at 13:40

Are these any good --160GB SATA WD Caviar RE 3.5" 7200rpm ATA300 Hard Drive 16MB Cache

andrewnorth98 · 20 Dec 2006 at 13:57

i've had 3 WD Caviar 120Gb hard disks fail on me over a 1.5 year period, and no problems with the seagate disks i've been using the last 5

Andy

beast · 20 Dec 2006 at 14:07

I bought the cheapest, nastiest "excelstor" hard drive in 2002, and it still worked fine right up until I sold it on ebay yesterday. I guess I've been lucky then?!!

rpstewart · 20 Dec 2006 at 14:17

beast said:
I bought the cheapest, nastiest "excelstor" hard drive in 2002, and it still worked fine right up until I sold it on ebay yesterday. I guess I've been lucky then?!!

excelstor drives are actually the final generation of drives that IBM designed and built before the Storage Technology division was sold to Hitachi. They're either 75GXPs or 120GXPs, can't remember which, built as a budget range for PC manufacturers.

jbloggs · 20 Dec 2006 at 17:42

ZUTON said:
Are these any good --160GB SATA WD Caviar RE 3.5" 7200rpm ATA300 Hard Drive 16MB Cache

Yes...also 5 year warranty.

jaykay · 20 Dec 2006 at 17:51

i would go for the hitachi 7k160 speedy little drive with its perpindicular platters