Most reliable hard drives?

Natima

Natima

Natima

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Joined
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Hey, Does anyone have any info on what brand make the most reliable, least likely to fail, hard drives?

I'm building a studio PC soon and have LOTS of data that I'll need to transfer over.

I'm looking at the WD 640GB Caviar Black's, but not got any solid info on which brand is best for reliability!

Also I'm considering RAID 1. But I'll be needing cheaper, probably only 500GB hard disks if I go for the RAID option, as I'll have to buy two.
 
I would ALWAYS suggest Western Digital over any other HDD.

Also I would never recommend Maxtor/Seagate as I have had bad experiences using them.

But everyone has an opinion on what is best!
 
Yeah... my logic was basically "Dell uses WD... They gotta at least be a BIT reliable!".
I'll go for a RAID setup I guess. More money.
 
Natima said:
Yeah... my logic was basically "Dell uses WD... They gotta at least be a BIT reliable!".
I'll go for a RAID setup I guess. More money.
Click to expand...

I've seen WD, Seagate, Maxtor and Hitachi in Dell's.. I test/reconfigure a minimum of 30 per week, all different models.

I personally wouldnt buy any other brand except WD though.
 
celliott said:
I've seen WD, Seagate, Maxtor and Hitachi in Dell's.. I test/reconfigure a minimum of 30 per week, all different models.

I personally wouldnt buy any other brand except WD though.
Click to expand...

Ah right.... Dunno why, but I seemed to think they just used WD.
either way, no matter.
 
Natima said:
Hey, Does anyone have any info on what brand make the most reliable, least likely to fail, hard drives?
Click to expand...

Depends on what day of the week you're asking.

Remember RAID is NOT a backup.

Use RAID if you need extra speed and/or minimum downtime.
 
seagate and others will offer you enterpise level 24/7 drives for more money with greater guarantes for reliability

however mostly what we want is cheap reliable drives so we dont pay the extra
 
A longer warranty doesn't necessarily mean the drive will be more reliable. It just means that the manufacturer will be willing to exchange it up to (eg.) 5 years instead of 3. If the drive dies, the data on it is lost regardless of how long the warranty is.

Also if you were to RMA a drive that is a couple of years old, you would more than likely get a refurbished drive as a replacement. Would you be happy using such a drive?

So you can pay the extra £££ upfront for a couple of extra years warranty that should you need it, means you (probably) get a refurbed drive as a replacement, or save the difference knowing that should the drive die, you can buy a replacement with a new warranty.

If the data you're working on is needed all the time without interruption, you need a RAID solution, otherwise a backup will suffice.
 
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What dell use is irrelevant. In fact, it'd probably be the cheapest thing since they use cheap components on the most part.

From my experience, Western Digital make (by far) the most reliable hard drives. I've seen failures from all the other brands (esp maxtor, seagate) and WD seem to be consistently low. I work part time in repairs and the shop I work for always repairs with the WD ones and we hardly ever have any issue with them. The warranties are also quite good, so I can recommend.

For performance on the other hand, you will have to pay a premium to get a WD that is as fast as a cheap sammy for example. Best bet is to always keep backups.
 
Back to the argument that WD may have fewer failures because they are less popular..

Basically there's very little difference between drive failures, short of the occasional avalanche when someone pulls a whoopsie and ships a load off with dodgy firmware..
 
I've got a couple of WD drives that have lasted ages and are still working fine today. Conversely, I had a WD Caviar Black drive a couple of months back that died within three weeks. Ended up getting one of Seagate's new 7200.12 drives which is working just fine, but hey ho - every manufacturer has bad batches from time to time.
 
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