fastest most reliable HD

para08

para08

para08

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1 Aug 2008
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what would you say is the fastest most reliable HD around right now? Would it be right to assume it's one with single head/platter?

Also is a larger hard drive say 1TB any faster that a smaller say 500gb drive? i've heard many conflicting reports on this.

Another thing, does the cache size really make much difference? 16 v 32 v 64...

Sorry for so many questions in one post, i'd just like to get a few things straight in my head so I can make an informed decision when buying.

thanks for any advice..
 
I have only samsung drives in 3 systems: (1x320 F1, 2X 1 Terabyte F3 2x 500 gb F1 and 1x 2Terabytes F4...
I love those as they are fast, silent and very reliable. However my 80 gb WD raptor first installed in 2006 though noisy, is still going strong...In terms of speed I have not noticed any noticeable difference between them. The only drive that died on me was a Maxtor Diamondmax...
 
The fastest 3.5" HDD is the 3TB Seagate Barracuda XT because it has 3 x 1TB platters (and thus a higher areal density than any other drive currently available).

There is no such thing as a 100% reliable HDD so pick whichever make/model you want and back everything up regularly.
 
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Arthur17 said:
The fastest 3.5" HDD is the 3TB Seagate Barracuda because it has 3 x 1TB platters (and thus a higher areal density than any other drive currently available).

There is no such thing as a 100% reliable HDD so pick whichever make/model you want and back everything up regularly.
Click to expand...

I didn't know we were on 1tb platters at the moment.. not seen any 4tb drives about, are they in the wild?
 
Arthur17 said:
There is no such thing as a 100% reliable HDD so pick whichever make/model you want and back everything up regularly.
Click to expand...

This, down to your own experience really.

Only drive that's ever failed on me is a Samsung Spinpoint M5. but contrast that with the fact most of my drives are Samsungs and most are in nearly as good of a condition as when I bought them.

I remember reading WD Blacks have the lowest failure rate somewhere. Quite a price premium but they're nice drives for sure.
 
100% of hard drives will fail eventually. They contain moving parts and they will wear out.

If you’re lucky drives will survive without failing until they are taken out of service for other reasons.

It’s best to assume that every hard drive (or SSD for that matter) is just delaying its demise until the one day that you haven’t got a recent enough backup.
 
Yea, I wouldn't recommend any of the main 3.5in 7200rpm HDDs (samsung F3, WD black, seagate barracuda) over the others based purely on reliability - since they all perform about as well as each other in terms of reliability and luck of the draw does play a pretty big role if you are just buying a small number of drives.

As mentioned above, since you can't guarantee a HDD will be 100% reliable since they will all fail eventually then you are strongly recommended to prepare for a failure if you are storing data which is important (to you at least).

One way is to do a regular backup of your key files (ideally from an independently powered drive that is stored off site).

Another popular safety measure is to use a mirrored RAID array, where file duplication is done automatically between separate HDDs, so if one (or more, depending on the array type) of the drives fails none of the data is lost. However, this is certainly not an alternative to a proper backup since if something occurs which damages enough of the drives to break the array (for example a PSU failure, spilling coffee on the PC or earthquake) then you lose all your data.

As a result, pick the HDD that you like the performance/price the best and ensure you have a safety net in place in case the drive does fail.
 
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