Who makes the best HDDs?

[Jrecee]

Well I said I would get a 1TB HDD when I got down to 500GBs left on my current drive and it happened much sooner than expected (8 hours of footage over 2 days will do that). I was looking at Newegg reviews and they seem to favor Western Digital though Samsung has the best rating. I know someone who swears by hitachi. Buuuut. . . I figure I will get some more opinions before I spend the money.

[sevin0seven]

this is out of the topic but i just noticed the car in your avatar is moving now. (looks cool)

oh and i would go with Seagate by the way.

[Ziggy]

From my personal experiences, I like Western Digital. I've had long lasting WD drives, while I've seen Seagates go out. One could easily claim the exact same thing with reverse companies, so I guess it's what you have the best luck with.

I'm gonna recommend the Caviar Black drives. I got three of them (1TB, 2x 750GB) now and they've all been great so far.

By the way, if you have the room, I would recommend using multiple smaller drives over one large drive. Only because the larger the drive is, the more stuff you're gonna lose if it craps out. Of course, you could have a backup system in place which would get rid of that problem. But that's my opinion on the matter. 1TB drives scare me.

Wait, wasn't the car always moving? I can't remember now.

[Jrecee]

Nope it was just on a white background. As nice as challengers look sitting still, they're more fun when going somewhere.

I was looking at the caviar drives. I was told that I should look into enterprise drives, but they're substantially more, and I plan on having an external backup drive as well, so a 3 year warranty should be enough. I have two Western Digital external drives right now, a 500GB Mybook, and a smaller 250gb one. The firewire stopped working on my older computer with the mybook, and I haven't tried it on my new one yet, but it seemed like more of an issue with windows than a flaw with the drive.

Whoever I end up going with, I'll be getting a 1tb mybook to go with it.

[Hobie-wan]

Opinions about hard drives are tricky. Most people will say "I hate brand X, I've had one die on me" or "I love brand Y, they've never failed me". Old IBM Deskstar (Deathstar) drives are the only ones that were definitely a problem for everyone that comes to mind. Hitachi bought out IBM's HD business, but it seems they must have worked out the issues that occurred back then.

I myself have pretty much seen 1 of just about every brand die too soon. But I also have drives that were used 24/7 for years with no issues and have 10 year old drives that get occasional use and have never been a problem at all. I'd say absorb as many opinions as possible, but try to take some with a grain of salt.

[Jrecee]

That's what I was gathering from looking around. I think I'll just go with the WD since they're readily available at nearby stores and if it's dead I can just go back and return it. The enterprise drives are too expensive and since I'll have an external backup I'm not extremely worried. How exactly do HDD warranties work? If it stops working within 3 years do I get a replacement? Or is there a bunch of small print that goes along with the warranty making it nearly impossible to cash in. If the things last me 3 years I think I'm good, since solid state drives seem to be the wave of the future, and should be reasonably priced by then.

[JordanPlayer]

I have a Seagate from my first PC build about 6-7 years old now; running pretty much 24/7 that hasn't run into any issues. I had to go through a reformat b/c I used to have Norton Antivirus running and an update corrupted Windows so it would blue screen while loading up... even still the drive has run like a champ. Hobie is right though about HDD opinions being tricky to base a purchase off of. I say go with what looks to be the best performance for the price because in the end, I would assume almost all of these drives from different manufacturers have near the same failure rate... just luck of the draw.

[Jrecee]

New question, external HDDs. I was pretty happy with my current one, but it seems since I got it a couple years ago western digital has tried to push it as some sort of auto backup drive with annoying software that constantly tries to install, and apparently requires a rediculous amount of resources. So. . . anyone know of any good external drives without that issue?

[nate]

I have 2 external Seagate 1tb drives and my old computer (10+ years old NT) has Western Digital and it will still boot up fine. it's got 2 smaller (under 20 gb) drives raided together.

I thought I had a used Western Digital drive die on me but it turned out it was the external housing kit. I took it out and connected a drive adaptor kit and got the stuff off it fine.

funny how 20 gb lasted me 10 yrs but after I got a new comp I filled up a TB in about 6-8 months.

one of my 1 TB Seagate externals is a "Black Armour" backup drive, it's got backup software like you mention but it never nags me to install it.

[Hobie-wan]

New question, external HDDs. I was pretty happy with my current one, but it seems since I got it a couple years ago western digital has tried to push it as some sort of auto backup drive with annoying software that constantly tries to install, and apparently requires a rediculous amount of resources. So. . . anyone know of any good external drives without that issue?

For every drive I've had to RMA when I started having issues, I ran that manufacturer's particular HD utility which would tell me more or less what's wrong with the drive and maybe give me a failure code. Then go to the manufacturer's site and punch in the serial to set up an RMA. You send the drive in, and they'll tell you how to pack it carefully if you don't have the original box, to use tracking and maybe insurance. Then they test the drive and generally you get a refurbished drive of the same model back.