Most Reliable HDD Manufacturer?

switchgear · Post by **switchgear** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 9:08 am

Hi,
I've been looking around for a new hdd in the 300 GB range, because of cost per GB. The problem I am having is finding a reliable manufacture. I have been reading other posts and there seems to be no clear cut answer to this problem. I will be running them 24/7 in a non raid configuration. I have plans to put them into an usb/sata 5 bay dedicated hdd tower.

From my experience I had lots of problems with western digital. A few years ago I bough a bunch of 120 gb drives from them and had to replace all of them because of drive failure or a whining high pitch noise that developed within a year of operation. I also have a Seagate pata drive that I bought 2 years ago (200GB) and it has been quiet with no problems whatsoever. I have also read the debates about how warranty means nothing 3 year vs 5 year.

The drives I am looking at are:

1. Western Digital WD3200JD
2. Western Digital WD3200JS
3. 300GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATAII-300 7200RPM 16Mb

I have also talked to Western digital about their raid series of drives because of their reliability. I currently have a raptor and it runs great with no problems. But their response was:

Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support.

I typically would not suggest using a RAID edition drive in a non-raid environment. The TLER cannot be turned off. I would suggest using or going with a WD3200JS drive. This is a new drive and works wonders. Please see the specifications below.

I know the Western Digital drives are fast in terms of transfer rates, and are quieter. But I am willing to accept a nosier drive with slower transfer rates if it is highly reliable and does not develop whining problems after a year of operation.

Any help in this manner would be appreciated

Shining Arcanine · Post by **Shining Arcanine** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 9:29 am

I had a Western Digital WD3200JB go on me, but before it died, I got an advance replacement RMA from Western Digital and I was able to transfer all of the data off it without any problems what so ever. It had been telling Windows XP that it was dying months before I read about the problem in the system logs, and yet it never became such that my computer ceased to operate. My recommendation is Western Digital.

I have had several other Western Digital hard disks (4.3GB Caviar, 36.7GB Raptor, 200GB Caviar, 40GB Scorpio), and none of them have ever had problems.

TomZ · Post by **TomZ** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 9:56 am

We've had good luck here with WDC drives. We probably have 20-25 drives in our office, some in RAID, others not. Some are Caviar, some Raptors. Of all these, I think we've had maybe only 1 or 2 stop working. Most have been in service for 3-5 years and are on 24x7.

One thing I would shop for is a drive with a 5 year warranty. Anything less is sub-standard. Some, but not all, of the drive manufacturers offer this warranty. A drive with a 1 or 3 year warranty does not inspire confidence, IMO.

raziell · Post by **raziell** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 10:00 am

i have my W.d. cavier 1 year and i"m happy with them,they are workink
24/7 without problems.

switchgear · Post by **switchgear** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 10:16 am

I want to give western digital another chance but all their drives except raptor and raid have a 3/1 year warranty. Seagate has a standard 5 year warranty and I know Seagate is slow and louder. If western digital has confidence in their product why not a 5 year warranty? I know the drive will be worth nothing in 5 years but still.

Mr Evil · Post by **Mr Evil** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 10:18 am

Don't rely on anecdotes to form an opinion on reliability. For each and every manufacturer you will be able to find people who have had many of their drives for years without a single problem, and other people who have had several drives of theirs which have all failed quickly and horribly.

TomZ · Post by **TomZ** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 10:22 am

In addition to what Mr. Evil said, which I agree with, I would recommend not assuming that your drive will never fail. You should actively plan for it to happen, and have a backup plan. This means different things to different people - maybe RAID0 + backups, etc - but the bottom line is that no drive is 100% reliable.

Stacey Melissa · Post by **Stacey Melissa** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 10:59 am

Anectdotes are entirely worthless. Go visit the reliability survey at storagereview.com to get something halfway valuable. (They're not scientifically valid results, though, due to non-random sampling.) As you can easily tell by looking at the figures there, you can't rely simply on a brand name in judging reliability, since the different models in a manufacturer's lineup can vary drastically. Even different models within a single series can vary quite a bit.

Shining Arcanine · Post by **Shining Arcanine** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 11:07 am

switchgear wrote:I want to give western digital another chance but all their drives except raptor and raid have a 3/1 year warranty. Seagate has a standard 5 year warranty and I know Seagate is slow and louder. If western digital has confidence in their product why not a 5 year warranty? I know the drive will be worth nothing in 5 years but still.

Their five year warranties are supposed to set their enterprise drives apart. Their enterprise series Caviar drives come with five year warranties:

http://www.westerndigital.com/en/produc ... anguage=en

The only noticeable differences between them and the regular Caviars are that they they only spend 7 seconds doing error recovery instead of the 15 that their regular drives do (i.e. errors only make them hang for 7 seconds) and that they have different model numbers.

switchgear · Post by **switchgear** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 11:42 am

How important is the error recovery? Does it make a difference if it's 7 seconds or 15? I wanted to get the raid edition, but it's the error recovery thing that is holding me back. Does anyone know how important it is? Will I have lots of data error (reads, writes) if I got the raid edition drive? Why is western digital against that drive for desktop users?

I was looking for these answers on the forums before with no clear answers. Does anyone have a raid edition in a desktop (non raid environment)?

Stacey Melissa · Post by **Stacey Melissa** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 12:21 pm

The RE series drives have a shorter error recovery time because they expect the RAID controller to handle the errors. If you're not using them with RAID, you won't have that controller, and you'll possibly have more problems if there are errors on the drive.

florecilla · Post by **florecilla** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 1:36 pm

My personal experience tells me Seagate drives are quite strong. I don't remember of any dying on me and I have 6 now mounted in different boxes in my work room. I have read top of the line WD are even better but my experience is mostly Seagate.

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 2:39 pm

switchgear wrote:I want to give western digital another chance but all their drives except raptor and raid have a 3/1 year warranty. Seagate has a standard 5 year warranty and I know Seagate is slow and louder. If western digital has confidence in their product why not a 5 year warranty? I know the drive will be worth nothing in 5 years but still.

The length of a warranty is not necessarily related to the quality of a product. Warranty expense is marketing cost, and is somewhat determined by the selling price. It a company wants to sell the product at a lower cost with a shorter warranty, then that does not necessarily make the product inferior than a product which is more expensive with a longer warranty.

In other cases, the marketing people may actually offer a longer warranty to counter perceived (or real) perceptions in the marketplace about the quality of their product. Kia and Hyundai make cars with a poor reputation of quality (although quality has improved recently) that offer 10 year warranties to counter the past perception that their cars are not reliable.

Years ago there was a television manufacturer name Curtis Mathes that made TV's and other electronic equipment with 5 year warranties (most other TV’s have 90 day or 1 year warranties). Curtis Mathes products were well known among industry insiders as the most unreliable products on the market. But Curtis Mathes used the 5 year warranty extensively in their advertising to entice people to buy their product. But the average TV (even with a 90 warranty) will last more than 5 years, so the long warranty was not really a bargain.

TomZ · Post by **TomZ** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 2:58 pm

The length of a warranty is not necessarily related to the quality of a product.

No high-volume manufacturing company is going to knowingly expose themselves to huge future warrany costs. Therefore, the expected product quality is translated to expected warranty costs. These costs are weighed against the benefits (e.g., marketing benefits at you mentioned), and a decision made.

So while I agree there are muliple inputs, the primary input is always going to be the expected warranty cost which is due to quality.

link1896 · Post by **link1896** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 3:09 pm

Howdy guys,

at work we construct media players for cinema use. Basically a computer driving a video projector for pre movie advertising. I have the job of fixing the occasional problem, mostly when the assemblers have stuffed something up.

Anyway, we have a lot of them in use. Think thousands. All use seagate drives. My experience with seagate have been great. Until they became unavailable, drives were the 80 gig 7200.7 Barracuda, now using the 120gig 7200.7 Barracuda

One in a thousand are dead on arrival, and its about eight in a thousand failure in use over a 2-3 year period EXCEPT when allowed to run over 55 deg c. We had in an early player design used seagate 7200 rpm 18 gig scsi drives in the removable caddies which had the tiny 1" fans that did nothing. The drives were running every day at 60 degrees plus, and only lasted one year of 12 hrs a day on time.

First media players are about 5 years old now.

This is a great sample of drive usage, probably better then any user pole so far here on drive reliability. BUT of course seagate exclusive. Surely there is someone reading this who has been apart of a similar situation with thousands of boxes using the same drives.

Personally at home I have all my drives water cooled, running at 15-21 degrees c all year round. 14 seagates and one western digital. WD 160gig IDE is as noisy as a 15k rpm scsi too. Water cooled from the side of the drive off the aluminum casing.

Hope it helps,
Mark

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 4:50 pm

TomZ wrote:No high-volume manufacturing company is going to knowingly expose themselves to huge future warrany costs. Therefore, the expected product quality is translated to expected warranty costs. These costs are weighed against the benefits (e.g., marketing benefits at you mentioned), and a decision made.

So while I agree there are muliple inputs, the primary input is always going to be the expected warranty cost which is due to quality.

The length of the warranty is EXCLUSIVELY the domain of the marketing department or separate marketing subsidiary. According to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) warranty costs are always a marketing expense on the income statement. The length of a warranty to be offered by marketing is determined by the expected warranty expense, the gross margin (selling price minus cost of manufacture), along with other considerations such as consumer perception of quality and market competition.

Longer than average warranty periods have been used to persuade consumers that a product is better than others, even if it is the same or worse in terms of reliability than competing products. Products that are perceived to be equal in quality, and are involved in vigorous competition with each other, often have the exact same warranty terms (Honda and Toyota), while inferior products may have longer warranties (Hyundai and Kia).

A Lexus ES330 has longer warranty than a Toyota Camry (these are basically the same cars). The cost to the company of the longer Lexus warranty is absorbed by the higher gross margin of the Lexus. (I don't mean to suggest that there are no differences in the cars besides the warranty, but they cars have the same drive train and I would say the cars have equal reliability).

For another example, look at Infiniti and Nissan. They have a few cars which are almost identical, but the higher priced Infiniti has a longer warranty.

Over the past 5 years, PC companies have reduced the standard warranty on their products from 3 years to 1 year. That is one reason (obviously not the only reason) for the fact that PC’s are much cheaper than a few years ago. I don’t think that PC’s are less reliable than before, it is just that the consumer prefers a lower initial cost to longer warranties, and they can always purchase longer warranties if they want one.

Stacey Melissa · Post by **Stacey Melissa** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 5:39 pm

EMC bought out Dantz, and now they offer excellent extended warranties for HDDs from any manufacturer.

My opinion on the whole HDD reliability thing is just to avoid models with especially high failure rates, as listed in Storage Review's reliability survey, (e.g. Deskstar 75GXP) and then choose from remaining models based on price/performance. After all, I'm gonna be making daily backups no matter what, so I might as well just worry about performance, rather than minor differences in reliability.

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 6:13 pm

Stacey Melissa wrote:My opinion on the whole HDD reliability thing is just to avoid models with especially high failure rates, as listed in Storage Review's reliability survey, (e.g. Deskstar 75GXP) and then choose from remaining models based on price/performance.

I had one of the bad Deskstar 75GXP's that I got with a new Gateway system 5.5 years ago. It made some weird noises before it completely went out, so I made sure that I had backups. The replacement drive they sent me (twice as large as I originally bought) has gone more than 4 years without a problem, although that system is now "semi-retired".

I don't believe that the 5-year old Deskstar 75GXP problem is any indication of the reliability of Hitachi (formerly IBM) drives made today.

tjpark1111 · Post by **tjpark1111** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 6:34 pm

if you think about it, data is the most important thing that you need from the hdds, and warranty doesn't do **** about it. Once a drive has completely failed, your data is lost, who gives a **** if they give you a free new drive! 1/3/5 year warranties don't determine reliability and longevity, so just remember that.

shades_of_blue · Post by **shades_of_blue** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 7:39 pm

If my professional experience the most reliable hard drive manufacturer is Seagate. But if you want a SATA RAID-0 solution get a pair of WD Raptor drives. Do not RAID-0 any other brand SATA drive, that's just asking for trouble. If you are simply looking to mirror (RAID-1) your drives, everyday Seagate SATA drives will do fine and serve you well.

And thank you link1896, good to see another soul here who has hands on experience with Seagate drives, who can vouch for the quality in their products.

Mr Evil · Post by **Mr Evil** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 8:19 pm

Stacey Melissa wrote:...e.g. Deskstar 75GXP...

I had two of those. Both started making funny noises a short time after I bought them, with one subsequently dying. The other seemed to "recover" and is still working today, although it's not trusted with anything important.

ladams · Post by **ladams** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 12:26 am

If Maxtor has a drive of the type you're looking for you might consider them. I've got a Diamond Max that's been running continously for 10 years in an industrial PC application. It's mounted in a cabinet on a hefty metal plate on rubber groumets for shock protection. This is in a non-conditioned environment. Based on this experience, I put one in another industrial PC I built three years ago and have had no trouble from it or the external Maxtor I bought a couple years ago.

FrankDC · Post by **FrankDC** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 1:01 am

People who tell you to look for a 5 year warranty are correct.

People who claim warranty period doesn't matter are incorrect.

Server class drives are superior in every way. Better components, better design, tighter tolerances, more stringent QA etc etc.

Beyond that, whether you have good or bad "luck" with your drives depends on how cool you keep them, how well they're mounted (e.g. overtightened mounting screws severely impacts a drive's lifespan), and how solid your enclosure is (probably a nasty thing to say on SPCR, but the fact is, isolating drive cage/enclosure vibrations from a computer case forces these vibrations back onto a drive's housing. Definitely NOT a Good Thing.).

As for brands, I recommend Seagate. But again, server class drives from any manufacturer will last longer and take much more abuse than workstation/desktop class drives.

Slaugh · Post by **Slaugh** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 3:56 am

Both companies make excellent drives. Most of the HDD's we're selling right now are made by Western Digital, and their return rates are pretty low. However, a few years ago (6 or 7 years IIRC), we had to stop buying Western Digital drives because a lot of them were DOA or failed within the first month. Even some of our suppliers didn't want to stock them for a while, and removed all Western Digital products from their price lists... A few months later, we gave Western Digital another chance and since that day, most of the Western Digital drives we get are very reliable. Seagate also makes pretty strong drives, and they recently acquired Maxtor.

Stacey Melissa · Post by **Stacey Melissa** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 5:23 am

FrankDC wrote:People who tell you to look for a 5 year warranty are correct.

People who claim warranty period doesn't matter are incorrect.

Server class drives are superior in every way. Better components, better design, tighter tolerances, more stringent QA etc etc.

I don't think we're talking about super expensive server class SCSI drives here. We're talking about desktop versus "nearline," which are the same drives as each other, coming off the same assembly line, with only differing different burn-in times, longer warranties given by the marketers, and higher prices to offset the higher warranty costs. Don't trust me, though. Go read it at Storage Review.

Beyond that, whether you have good or bad "luck" with your drives depends on how cool you keep them, how well they're mounted (e.g. overtightened mounting screws severely impacts a drive's lifespan), and how solid your enclosure is (probably a nasty thing to say on SPCR, but the fact is, isolating drive cage/enclosure vibrations from a computer case forces these vibrations back onto a drive's housing. Definitely NOT a Good Thing.).

I've got my own useless anectdote to share. The thing that got me interested in quiet computing in the first place was a pair of ball bearing Maxtor D740X drives. Those things were screamers, to put it mildly. Not having any idea what I was doing, and not having the yet-to-come SPCR to guide me, and also going slightly insane from the noise, I thought it a good idea to work up a different sort of mounting system to reduce the noise. So I found some 1/2" thick foam sheets in the shop, and proceeded to encapsulate the drives entirely in the foam, and clamp them to my case cover. They had no airflow and no conduction in an already hot case. They ran like that for six months before I discovered that they literally ran too hot to even touch. The noise was still too much, and I got a FDB Maxtor DM9 to replace them, but one of those drives still runs continuously today in a friend's system, and the other I keep around for times when I need a spare PATA drive.

There's my moderately amusing, yet otherwise worthless anectdote, which no one should trust, because it's not scientifically valid data. I just got lucky. Don't go out and buy a pallet of Maxtor drives just because I had a couple that withstood major abuse. Don't buy used ball bearing D740X drives on ebay if you value your sanity, and don't encase your drives in foam with no airflow if you value your data.

Mari0-Br0s · Post by **Mari0-Br0s** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 5:55 am

Western Digital of course!

I've been using WD's drive for the last five years now. That's a total of sixteen drives! Only one was defective, and it was this winter, after one month, it was a manufacturer issue. The windows S.M.A.R.T.'s log files had reported the problem two weeks before, but the drive did not fail, I had the time to backup everything.

With a fast RMA service and 3 years warranty, you're good with WD.

Since January 2005, WD has made great improvement in noise reduction by adopting the liquid bearing technology. I'm presently using two WD2500KS, one just came back from RMA, and they work like a charm!

For someone who's always downloading/uploading like me (P2P powa

), WD is for sure the way to go. I had 3 maxtor in my office's systems and all three died in less than two years....

Devonavar · Post by **Devonavar** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 5:05 pm

FrankDC wrote:People who tell you to look for a 5 year warranty are correct.

Why?

FrankDC wrote:People who claim warranty period doesn't matter are incorrect.

Why?

FrankDC wrote:Server class drives are superior in every way. Better components, better design, tighter tolerances, more stringent QA etc etc.

Why?

Someone has already pointed out that, for several models, the Server-class drives are identical to the desktop models ... the one the comes to mind for me is the Maxtor DiamondMax 10/Maxline III. The ONLY difference between these drives is the burn-in test (Maxline is more stringent) and possibly the firmware. Aside from that the drives are identical.

I don't mean to be rude, but blindly asserting your position on the matter does not help move the discussion along. If you have such strong feelings on the matter, why not express why you have those feelings? Otherwise, you're just adding to the heap of (mis)information without helping to reach a conclusion at all. You're obviously not reading the arguments presented against your opinions, so why post here at all?

TomZ · Post by **TomZ** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 6:09 pm

The ONLY difference between these drives is the burn-in test (Maxline is more stringent) and possibly the firmware. Aside from that the drives are identical.

OK, you are saying they are identical except for these differences. But as the Storage Review article pointed out, the purpose of the longer burn-in test is to weed out more drives due to infant mortality, leading to a higher MTBF, to support a longer warranty. This is the definition of a more reliable drive, right? So this difference is significant.

FrankDC · Post by **FrankDC** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 6:13 pm

Devonavar wrote:Someone has already pointed out that, for several models, the Server-class drives are identical to the desktop models ... the one the comes to mind for me is the Maxtor DiamondMax 10/Maxline III. The ONLY difference between these drives is the burn-in test (Maxline is more stringent) and possibly the firmware. Aside from that the drives are identical.

Exceptions do not disprove a general rule, and if Maxtor is selling certain models as both a desktop and server drive then that's great.

Devonavar wrote:I don't mean to be rude, but blindly asserting your position on the matter does not help move the discussion along. If you have such strong feelings on the matter, why not express why you have those feelings? Otherwise, you're just adding to the heap of (mis)information without helping to reach a conclusion at all. You're obviously not reading the arguments presented against your opinions, so why post here at all?

I'm not here to debate the issue, and as someone else pointed out, all one can expect to receive in threads like this is a bunch of anecdotal (and therefore practically useless) opinions. So what's the point of reading three pages of opinions? Just add mine to the list. I gave my recommendations based on first-hand experience in server qualification labs, discussions with hard drive engineers and 26 years experience as a hardware design engineer.

FWIW. YMMV. Etc.

Devonavar · Post by **Devonavar** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 7:09 pm

FrankDC wrote:Exceptions do not disprove a general rule, and if Maxtor is selling certain models as both a desktop and server drive then that's great.

And "superior in every way" does not suggest a general rule. It suggests a hard and fast rule. You're saying more than you intend to here. Also, this is not the only exception; some WD drives are also "double-branded".

FrankDC wrote:I gave my recommendations based on first-hand experience in server qualification labs, discussions with hard drive engineers and 26 years experience as a hardware design engineer.

Then please make clear that they're recommendations. It's your assertive tone that suggests that there is nothing left to debate on the matter that is bugging me.

Also, two of your recommendations are not about hardware at all but about warranties. I very much doubt that hard drive engineers take warranty length into consideration when they judge how reliable a hard drive is. I certainly hope not...

Another point to consider is that most people here (and the OP in particular) are looking for drives in a desktop context, not a server. Warranies mean much more in a server context, because servers are much harder on drives and see a higher rate of failure. And, thanks to RAID, it's the loss of the drive that matters, not the data, so the warranty can actually provide compensation for the loss of a drive.