Hard drive Brands? at DVinfo.net

Chris Moore · January 3rd, 2005, 08:24 AM

What is a good brand of hard drive? I hear to stay away from maxtor. Seagate has a five year warranty. Samsung and Hatachi have 3 year warranty. But i dont know wich to choose for video. I want an SATA drive. Newegg has 120 Samsung for about 80 bucks. What do you guys (and gals) think?

Patrick Jenkins · January 3rd, 2005, 08:33 AM

I've got 4 200GB Western Digital (7200 rpm, 8mb cache, SATA) that just fly.

Basically unless you hear of a major manufacturing defect (it's happened a few times), any major hard drive brand is good. Hard drive failure is more a result of how the drive is physically handled before/during it's lifetime, not how it's being used (in the writing data sense).

Treat a hard drive well, it'll generally treat you accordingly.

Barry Lajnwand · January 3rd, 2005, 08:46 AM

I have three Seagates that are quiet, fast, and have given me zero problems thus far. And no one can beat that five year warranty. If you buy the 200GB barracuda, you won't need to replace it for five years (even if you eventually use it as a boot or backup drive). That comes out to roughly $25 a year for your HD at the newegg price. You can't beat that.

Boyd Ostroff · January 3rd, 2005, 09:44 AM

I have heard other people say "stay away from Maxtor" and I wonder where that comes from? Do you have some specific example of problems with their drives?

I have 5 Maxtor drives that I use for DV, never a problem. I also have 3 Seagates and a Western Digital that are all fine. The only hardware drive failure I've had in recent years was the 80GB IBM drive that was factory installed in my G4 tower. It died a horrible death (with a grinding noise) a few weeks after I bought the computer.

Chris Moore · January 3rd, 2005, 10:41 AM

No I have no specific examples...just what ive heard and repeated to you.

I have a maxtor IDE drive. NO problems. But I wondered if anyone had Suggestions relating to Video Editing Performance.

I need a drive no matter what but i wanted to make an informed decision and this is a place where there are a collection of people who have a much greater knowledge than I.

Brandon Greenlee · January 3rd, 2005, 10:55 AM

I agree that any harddrive you choose should be around the same in performance and reliability.

I've always kind of heard that seagate is more of a premium drive however.

In the last 4 years I've had one Maxtor and one Western Digitial fail on me. (Losing all my data as well, because I'm retarded about backing up.) The WD did give me signs that it was on its way down by randomnly not being able to initialize when I booted the computer.

Currently I have 2 seagates that I run my computer off and have only had each about a year. I also have a 40 gb maxtor that I use externally to backup projects. ;)

I like the seagates since they seem very quite and there is a 5yr warrenty on them. Not sure if they will last me longer than my Maxtor or WD did, but we'll see.

Carlos E. Martinez · January 3rd, 2005, 11:56 AM

My luck has not been so good.

I bought a Western Digital WD2000, 200GB, and it died after about 5 months. The problem is that I do not live in the USA, where I bought it, so now that I am going back there I will take it to send it to WD.

It was sparingly used, because I had it on an external firewire case and never moved it. Only switched it on when I was going to use it.

Another problem is that when you send an HD to the factory, the unit they send back to you is not yours that was repaired, but another one that someone else had sent.

At least that was my experience with a Seagate unit some years ago. And it didn't last long either.

So what's the use of having a 5-year warranty if you have to be sending your unit back until you get it right or get a good one?

BTW: one thing I learned with this is never to buy a model that was recently released, which was the case of this 200GB WD unit.

What other higher capacity models are you folks using? Are 300GB or 400GB already proven?

Carlos

Rhett Allen · January 3rd, 2005, 01:05 PM

I've lost several (4 which were replaced and then failed again resulting in 8 total) of the IBM "DeathStars" as they have been lovingly nicknamed. They were replaced by Maxtors which have given me NO problems over the past few years. I did buy one Seagate 120gig that made horrible noises upon it's first boot and I returned it the same day and bought a Maxtor 160Gig to replace it, now I have two of those in a RAID with no problems.
I don't know how they make all of their drives now (Maxtor), but I always made certain to buy the one's with the fluid bearings (they have a different designation) and I haven't had any problems.
Hitachi took over the IBM drives (because IBM was basically sued out of the drive business) but they still sell them under the same "Death, I mean DeskStar" name. I would rather write everything on toilet paper than use another one of those!
Really, every drive manufacturer has had a serious problem at one time or another so your best bet is to make backups and backups of your important backups!
I think Seagate and Maxtor have the best reputations, so I would tend to stick with one of those. Western Digital isn't supposed to be bad per se, but they had a catastrophic failure similar to the IBM's a while back (it almost ran them out of business too) so I've just stayed away from them as well but I haven't heard much lately.

Right now I have the following desktop systems with no problems:
Dual G4 Macintosh OS X, 2x80 Gig Maxtors (dual boot with backup) 2x160 Gig Maxtors (Hardware RAID 0)
Dual P3 Xeon WinXP Pro, 2x45 Gig Maxtors (one boot and one storage drive)
Shuttle PC WinXP Pro, 1x160 Gig Maxtor
Shuttle PC Mandrake Linux, 1x160 Gig Maxtor
I also have a couple external 80 Gig Maxtors I use for long term backup via Firewire.
... can you tell I've been fond of Maxtor?

Chris Moore · January 3rd, 2005, 01:31 PM

has anyone had any experience with samsung drives?

Aaron Ferguson · January 3rd, 2005, 01:34 PM

I use Maxtor drives in every computer that I build and have never had a problem. I have had other brands die on me in the past. I just ordered another 30GB and two 200GB SATA Maxtor drives.
Good luck!

Patrick Jenkins · January 3rd, 2005, 01:43 PM

Quote:

It was sparingly used, because I had it on an external firewire case and never moved it. Only switched it on when I was going to use it.

Turning it on and off is actually more stressful to the mechanics of the drive than always leaving it on. The initial power zap is also stressful to the circuits.

IMO: When in doubt, leave it on unless your power bills become an issue.

Brandon Greenlee · January 3rd, 2005, 01:43 PM

<<<-- Originally posted by Chris Moore : has anyone had any experience with samsung drives? -->>>

Way back when they first began I believe they had some not so great lines.

Supposedly now though they are very reliable and a good value for the money.

Definately to be considered when looking at Maxtor/Seagate/WD.

I know of a couple people using them and they have had no problems yet. However personal stories really do nothing when comparing hard drives. Everybody has a different experience. Maybe a person will get the one bad drive in a batch of a thousand and will campaign against the drive from then on. It could be a software or computer problem that causes the drive to fail.

Your best bet is to find one in the major four companies that fits your price range and just make sure there hasn't been any flaws PROVEN across the entire line. You should be fine.

Giroud Francois · January 3rd, 2005, 01:56 PM

As said, there is no good and bad names.
depends the model.
Some seagate are going hot like hell, some maxtor too.
Some drives are very good but noisy,others are quiet only ifyou enable the quiet mode that is bad for performance
IBM and WD has some bad series, but maxtor too

depends what you are looking for.

in order of preferences a take:

-drive that stay cool
-drive that is "naturally" quiet
-drive that are cheap.

Imran Zaidi · January 3rd, 2005, 02:18 PM

Yes, it's not necessarily about the specific brand, but rather the particular run a brand is having with a specific model.

For example, there was a period that IBM went through that was stellar, then they dropped into the pits with a particular revision of it's DeskStar, popularly renamed as DeathStar. But then they got bought out by Hitachi and their drives are fine now. Western Digital has almost always been reliable, but they did go through a slow period. Maxtor sucked as a whole, then they got really good, then became close to the best, and then they evened out.

It really does depend on the brand. Just avoid the total nameless brands, and stick to the main boys, such as Seagate, Maxtor, Western Digital, or Hitachi. And then when you pick a model, do some google.com research on that specific model to see how it's faring.

And, tempting as it may be, never buy a model of a drive that is so new that it doesn't have a track record, unless you are sticking it in a RAID configuration where you're not going to die if a drive dies. And, as always, check tomshardware.com for more info.

David Mesloh · January 3rd, 2005, 02:40 PM

haven't seen it posted here yet, But I have the 500 Gb La Cie External Drive and just love it. I use it on my Mac. Firewire 400 and 800 compatible. Bomb-proof aluminum case. A "friend accidentally "partitioned" it for a Windows machine by mistake and I was able to get all the data back with no problems.

Great Drive and fast too.

January 3rd, 2005, 08:24 AM	#1
Chris Moore Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Wentzville Missouri Posts: 59	Hard drive Brands? What is a good brand of hard drive? I hear to stay away from maxtor. Seagate has a five year warranty. Samsung and Hatachi have 3 year warranty. But i dont know wich to choose for video. I want an SATA drive. Newegg has 120 Samsung for about 80 bucks. What do you guys (and gals) think?

January 3rd, 2005, 10:55 AM	#6
Brandon Greenlee Major Player Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: North Alabama Posts: 242	I agree that any harddrive you choose should be around the same in performance and reliability. I've always kind of heard that seagate is more of a premium drive however. In the last 4 years I've had one Maxtor and one Western Digitial fail on me. (Losing all my data as well, because I'm retarded about backing up.) The WD did give me signs that it was on its way down by randomnly not being able to initialize when I booted the computer. Currently I have 2 seagates that I run my computer off and have only had each about a year. I also have a 40 gb maxtor that I use externally to backup projects. ;) I like the seagates since they seem very quite and there is a 5yr warrenty on them. Not sure if they will last me longer than my Maxtor or WD did, but we'll see. __________________ Brandon Greenlee

January 3rd, 2005, 01:43 PM	#12
Brandon Greenlee Major Player Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: North Alabama Posts: 242	<<<-- Originally posted by Chris Moore : has anyone had any experience with samsung drives? -->>> Way back when they first began I believe they had some not so great lines. Supposedly now though they are very reliable and a good value for the money. Definately to be considered when looking at Maxtor/Seagate/WD. I know of a couple people using them and they have had no problems yet. However personal stories really do nothing when comparing hard drives. Everybody has a different experience. Maybe a person will get the one bad drive in a batch of a thousand and will campaign against the drive from then on. It could be a software or computer problem that causes the drive to fail. Your best bet is to find one in the major four companies that fits your price range and just make sure there hasn't been any flaws PROVEN across the entire line. You should be fine. __________________ Brandon Greenlee

January 3rd, 2005, 08:33 AM	#2
Patrick Jenkins Major Player Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Maryland, USA Posts: 382	I've got 4 200GB Western Digital (7200 rpm, 8mb cache, SATA) that just fly. Basically unless you hear of a major manufacturing defect (it's happened a few times), any major hard drive brand is good. Hard drive failure is more a result of how the drive is physically handled before/during it's lifetime, not how it's being used (in the writing data sense). Treat a hard drive well, it'll generally treat you accordingly.

January 3rd, 2005, 08:46 AM	#3
Barry Lajnwand Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: NYC Posts: 41	I have three Seagates that are quiet, fast, and have given me zero problems thus far. And no one can beat that five year warranty. If you buy the 200GB barracuda, you won't need to replace it for five years (even if you eventually use it as a boot or backup drive). That comes out to roughly $25 a year for your HD at the newegg price. You can't beat that.

January 3rd, 2005, 09:44 AM	#4
Boyd Ostroff Wrangler Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Mays Landing, NJ Posts: 11,802	I have heard other people say "stay away from Maxtor" and I wonder where that comes from? Do you have some specific example of problems with their drives? I have 5 Maxtor drives that I use for DV, never a problem. I also have 3 Seagates and a Western Digital that are all fine. The only hardware drive failure I've had in recent years was the 80GB IBM drive that was factory installed in my G4 tower. It died a horrible death (with a grinding noise) a few weeks after I bought the computer.

January 3rd, 2005, 10:41 AM	#5
Chris Moore Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Wentzville Missouri Posts: 59	No I have no specific examples...just what ive heard and repeated to you. I have a maxtor IDE drive. NO problems. But I wondered if anyone had Suggestions relating to Video Editing Performance. I need a drive no matter what but i wanted to make an informed decision and this is a place where there are a collection of people who have a much greater knowledge than I.

January 3rd, 2005, 11:56 AM	#7
Carlos E. Martinez Trustee Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brasil Posts: 1,138	My luck has not been so good. I bought a Western Digital WD2000, 200GB, and it died after about 5 months. The problem is that I do not live in the USA, where I bought it, so now that I am going back there I will take it to send it to WD. It was sparingly used, because I had it on an external firewire case and never moved it. Only switched it on when I was going to use it. Another problem is that when you send an HD to the factory, the unit they send back to you is not yours that was repaired, but another one that someone else had sent. At least that was my experience with a Seagate unit some years ago. And it didn't last long either. So what's the use of having a 5-year warranty if you have to be sending your unit back until you get it right or get a good one? BTW: one thing I learned with this is never to buy a model that was recently released, which was the case of this 200GB WD unit. What other higher capacity models are you folks using? Are 300GB or 400GB already proven? Carlos

January 3rd, 2005, 01:05 PM	#8
Rhett Allen Major Player Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Plano, TX Posts: 607	I've lost several (4 which were replaced and then failed again resulting in 8 total) of the IBM "DeathStars" as they have been lovingly nicknamed. They were replaced by Maxtors which have given me NO problems over the past few years. I did buy one Seagate 120gig that made horrible noises upon it's first boot and I returned it the same day and bought a Maxtor 160Gig to replace it, now I have two of those in a RAID with no problems. I don't know how they make all of their drives now (Maxtor), but I always made certain to buy the one's with the fluid bearings (they have a different designation) and I haven't had any problems. Hitachi took over the IBM drives (because IBM was basically sued out of the drive business) but they still sell them under the same "Death, I mean DeskStar" name. I would rather write everything on toilet paper than use another one of those! Really, every drive manufacturer has had a serious problem at one time or another so your best bet is to make backups and backups of your important backups! I think Seagate and Maxtor have the best reputations, so I would tend to stick with one of those. Western Digital isn't supposed to be bad per se, but they had a catastrophic failure similar to the IBM's a while back (it almost ran them out of business too) so I've just stayed away from them as well but I haven't heard much lately. Right now I have the following desktop systems with no problems: Dual G4 Macintosh OS X, 2x80 Gig Maxtors (dual boot with backup) 2x160 Gig Maxtors (Hardware RAID 0) Dual P3 Xeon WinXP Pro, 2x45 Gig Maxtors (one boot and one storage drive) Shuttle PC WinXP Pro, 1x160 Gig Maxtor Shuttle PC Mandrake Linux, 1x160 Gig Maxtor I also have a couple external 80 Gig Maxtors I use for long term backup via Firewire. ... can you tell I've been fond of Maxtor?

January 3rd, 2005, 01:31 PM	#9
Chris Moore Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Wentzville Missouri Posts: 59	has anyone had any experience with samsung drives?

January 3rd, 2005, 01:34 PM	#10
Aaron Ferguson Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Lima, OH Posts: 55	I use Maxtor drives in every computer that I build and have never had a problem. I have had other brands die on me in the past. I just ordered another 30GB and two 200GB SATA Maxtor drives. Good luck!

January 3rd, 2005, 01:56 PM	#13
Giroud Francois Inner Circle Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: switzerland Posts: 2,133	As said, there is no good and bad names. depends the model. Some seagate are going hot like hell, some maxtor too. Some drives are very good but noisy,others are quiet only ifyou enable the quiet mode that is bad for performance IBM and WD has some bad series, but maxtor too depends what you are looking for. in order of preferences a take: -drive that stay cool -drive that is "naturally" quiet -drive that are cheap.

January 3rd, 2005, 02:18 PM	#14
Imran Zaidi Trustee Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Orlando, FL Posts: 1,315	Yes, it's not necessarily about the specific brand, but rather the particular run a brand is having with a specific model. For example, there was a period that IBM went through that was stellar, then they dropped into the pits with a particular revision of it's DeskStar, popularly renamed as DeathStar. But then they got bought out by Hitachi and their drives are fine now. Western Digital has almost always been reliable, but they did go through a slow period. Maxtor sucked as a whole, then they got really good, then became close to the best, and then they evened out. It really does depend on the brand. Just avoid the total nameless brands, and stick to the main boys, such as Seagate, Maxtor, Western Digital, or Hitachi. And then when you pick a model, do some google.com research on that specific model to see how it's faring. And, tempting as it may be, never buy a model of a drive that is so new that it doesn't have a track record, unless you are sticking it in a RAID configuration where you're not going to die if a drive dies. And, as always, check tomshardware.com for more info.

January 3rd, 2005, 02:40 PM	#15
David Mesloh Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 94	haven't seen it posted here yet, But I have the 500 Gb La Cie External Drive and just love it. I use it on my Mac. Firewire 400 and 800 compatible. Bomb-proof aluminum case. A "friend accidentally "partitioned" it for a Windows machine by mistake and I was able to get all the data back with no problems. Great Drive and fast too.