I just bought 2 new large capacity HDD's for my desktop. 1 - Toshiba 2 TB,7200 RPM (DT01ACA200) 1 - Samsung 1TB (HE103UJ) When I built my "current" computer about 9 years ago, I started with 2 Samsung 500GB drives. That was the biggest at that time. I'm not certain why I went with Samsung, because Seagate was supposed to be the best there was (emphasis on "was"). Those Samsungs went on and on and never gave me any trouble. At some point I had amassed a lot of media and replaced #2 with a Seagate 1.5TB. Then around 2007, when I went to Win7, I decided to replace #1 with a Seagate 1TB. I used to keep apps on drive #2, so as to keep #1 (OS) less used. Within a few years, both of those drives had failed. I've heard something about Seagate large cap. Barracudas failing due to firmware problems, but that was supposedly on units made before mine were. After that, I put the 2 Samsung 500GB drives back in and still, not a single problem with either one. I suppose one question is, are larger capacity drives (1TB+) just that much more prone to failing, or has Seagate become just so much crap? I've had Fujitsu's in laptops, and those have been OK. I've heard bad things about some other brands (Hitachi Deathstar anyone?). What brands have you all had? Which ones have been good and which have been bad?
I don't know, I've been using computers for a long time and I've only ever had one hard drive fail on me that I was still using. Rather, only one failed on its own. I've messed up a couple through my own carelessness. I've had Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor. I've generally sworn by Western Digital. Never had one of their drives go out on me. I did have a laptop drive crap out on me once, and I think that was a Seagate.
Agreed. I'm a Western Digital fan. I don't like Seagate. When I worked for Dell, I had to bin so many Seagate drives it was ridiculous. I do like Samsung, though. I had a spare Samsung laptop drive (which I let someone borrow until they could get a new one, and 2 years later is still "borrowing" it), that ran flawlessly. Back in the late 90s, I had a few Maxtor drives, and never had trouble from them. So I've had a plethora of different brands, but Western Digital is still my go-to drive when I'm putting a system together, or recommending a hard drive to someone.
^ I've seen "Dell" brand HDD's listed. Do they actually manufacture them, or are they made for them? I never thought Dell made any of the components themselves. I put WD's in a couple machines I built for other people and never heard back that they had problems.
Dell doesn't make any of their own components, they just re-badge them. If you see a Dell desktop drive, it's likely a Seagate; if it's a laptop drive it's more than likely a Toshiba/Matsushita.
Hope the Toshiba desktop drives are better than their notebook drives. Had a client who had several VAIO laptops. They used Toshiba drives and they kept failing. The real bugger was they also set the mahines up in Raid-0 so a drive would fail and we'd lose the lot. Seagate had a very bad run about 5 years ago but seem to have recovered. Though the worst might be the IBM deskstars circa 2003. Got the nickname of death stars and so many were failing IBM used any excuse to dodge the warranty. Best drive I've got is an original WD raptor 10k rpm 36gig drives that is the better part of 10 years old and still going strong (current the is driver for my hyper-v server)
ALL manufacturers have had bad streaks with drives, find reviews and ask around. Of course the best drive ever is the Seagate ST-225.
My first Vaio (2002 model) had only one harddrive it's entire run of 6 years, the rest of the laptop fell apart first from years of constant travelling. This one, is on it's 3rd HDD in 5 years, but the current generation of Vaio's have terrible motherboards, cheap and badly put together that cause power spikes and burn out the drives. They're also made of flimsier material with the HDD actually further forward pretty much right under where you rest your hands. Any pressure compresses the enclosure. They are all Toshiba though, with lower capacities than stated at the time. I use WD drives for external backups and the PS3.
I bought a 750GB external HDD for the purpose of copying media off my DVR several years ago. When the Seagate 1.5TB began failing, I popped the 750GB in and was able to copy everything off the 1.5TB. The 750GB is a "Magnetic Data Technologies", which I've never heard of, it was just supposed to be a cheap external drive with it's own power source. It managed to last longer than the Seagate it replaced. I'm leaving all the media on it as a sort of back-up.
^This. I worked in a retail computer repair shop for 9 years, and we would get 2 or 3 batches of good Maxtors, then a batch of bad, then switch to WD, 2 or 3 good batches, then a bad one, and time to go to Seagate, etc, etc, and eventually we'd give Maxtor another shot, same pattern. I think the nature of the beast in manufacturing them is that if a little dust or a slightly inferior batch of materials get into the assembly area, you get a few bad batches, and there isn't enough profit margin to allow for proper QA, and even if there was, the pressure to get product to market quickly still wouldn't allow it. And if you compare them to data capacities on hard drives just 25 years ago, honestly, in some respects I'm kind of amazed they are as reliable as they are.
Magnetic Data Technologies doesn't make drives, it is a really big refurbishment firm, lets say the maker of your external harddrive busted a Hitachi, Seagate or Samsung drive then it will be sent to Magnetic Data Technologies which will repair/refurbish it for them, after refurbishing the drive they remove all the original stickers and markings and replace them with their own stuff so it can't be sold again as a new Samsung, Seagate etc. Its possible to obtain a refurb drive, they tend to be cheaper than the usual OEM or retail drives but they tend to have a rather high failure rate and I have never seen one that lasted as long as a new drive.
Well, I just noticed it does say "recertified" at the bottom of the sticker. I did only buy it for a specific purpose, but ended up using it a lot longer. As it turns out, the 1TB Seagate that failed was still under warranty and they're sending me a new(?) one. The 1.5TB was older and no longer under warranty. If the 1TB replacement is brand new, it's going on ebay. I don't need another drive anyway, plus I'm still leery of Seagate at the moment.
I doubt it's a brand new drive. Only time that generally happens is when you've got a DOA (i.e it's failed in the first 30 days). Anything else and it's a refurb'd drive but you keep the remainder of your original warranty.
This past week, I bought a 250GB Seagate Barracuda drive for $9. I ran diagnostics, made sure to wipe it and repartition it, and now it's running like a Swiss watch. Yes, it's used, but I got it through a reputable parts supplier. I still can't believe I got it for $9, though. As I said before, I am not a fan of Seagate, but for $9? I can look the other way.
Seagate isn't bad in general, just now and then they make a series of iffy drives, the oldest drive I have is a 1983 Seagate ST-412 10 Megabyte drive coming out of an IBM XT, its still working flawlessly after 31 years. Sometimes you just happen to get your hands on a one-in-a-million drive, I've got a 1Gb JTS drive which has a very bad reputation but this one is still working fine..
I have four WD external drives, 3x 3 gig and one 2 gig. I had a Seagate once, that model had the flaw where it would never stop spinning... needless to say it went back to Costco right away.
So far this drive is running like a champ. I'm using it to stream media, and it hasn't missed a step so far.
I usually seem to go for WD, but i just bought a 2tb Toshiba for £45, price being the deciding factor here. 2TB, to think just 20 years ago i was installing a 1.44meg floppy disk onto my massive 20 meg HDD. lol