Who makes the worst IDE hard drives?
What manufacturers' IDE (including SATA) hard drives have you had the most problems with?
And, since I can't post a poll ATM because there's something wrong with my internet connection, here are the options I WAS going to list within said poll...
//EDIT
Tnx. Keebs
And, since I can't post a poll ATM because there's something wrong with my internet connection, here are the options I WAS going to list within said poll...
//EDIT
Tnx. Keebs
0
Comments
Alternatively, with every make, make a list, blindfold yourself and stick a pin in the list. There's your answer
I've never had any problems with Maxtor. My oldest Maxtor, a 60GB ATA133 7200RPM drive is 2 years old, and the other two are both 120GB ATA133 8MB cache 7200RPM drives that are about 10 months old.
Western Digital on the other hand... I bought a 17.2GB drive, lasted about 3 years (2000-2002), my Brother bought a 40GB Western Digital, it lasted about 1 year (2003- Oct 2004). I then had them buy a 60GB Maxtor for that computer.
I originally bought a 20GB Western Digital in 2001, I gave it to someone after buying the 1st 120GB in 2003, I don't know if its still going.
Brand: Owned/bad-died
Conner: 2/2
Western Digital: 16/0
Maxtor: 4/1
IBM (Deskstar): 1/1
Hitachi: 3/3
Seagate: 2/2
Conner doesn't, ExcelStor does, dunno about Trigem. Just because they've gone out of business doesn't mean that they're not the worst manufacturer tho... it just means that they were so bad that they went under
as for the other brands, i have one of each of the major brands in my computer.. seagate a maxtor and a WD i'll let you know which dies first ;p oh and i've also got an IBM deathstar so i'll see how it goes ^^
By a landslide, the worst drive I have seen/worked with are IBM travelstars. We use Dell Latitude C600/C610 laptops at work, and all of the C600 models had IBM travelstar drives. We had approximatly 60-70 of them. Today, I believe there are just a handful of original drives still alive, maybe <5. All of these machines were purchased 2-4 years ago. Dell never admitted that there was a 'known issue' with these drives, even today. What a joke. :shakehead
On the flipside, we had many old IBM 300PL/GL machines with older 6-10GB deskstar drives, and I dont remember a single bad drive from that era. Looks like it was just a mass defect that was not addressed.
Maxtor was exceedingly prompt on getting me a replacement, so no harm done. I'll stick with WD/Maxtor until I see a clear third contender.
WD 11/3
Maxtor 2/0
That's all the drives I've bought in my experience and the ratio with WD is way too high to make me recommend them highly. I like the way they work when they're not dying but still a 30% failure rate is unacceptable to me.
Conner: 2 / 0
IBM: 12 / 1 (all UltraStar SCSI Drives... so they don't really count)
Seagate: 3 / 0
WD: 7 / 2 (2 died mysteriously - no idea why either)
Maxtor: 4 / 2 (HDD still works... just won't take an OS. Screwed up somehow).
Fujitsu: 1 / 0 (still chugging along today - 2.62 GB from 1997)
NEC: 1 / 1 (died due to age... 2.1 GB drive just wore out after 7 years)
Quantum: 2 / 0 (drives were still working when sold)
While the data above shows I've had the most failures with WD's, it happend as a freak accident, so it really can't be attributed, as there was a Maxtor hard disk hooked up at the time that died as a result of the same system malfunction.
Worst hard drives in my view? Gotta be the old 60 & 75GXP IBM DeskStar's that were/are dropping like flies.
AFAIK, back in the mid 90's they did. The label on the drive was purple and read NEC very clearly. I think Versa or something like that was the main model name.
Seagate & Conner (bearings, stepper motor and rotaional motor drive trains, and embedded HD controller card O\H on the drives with rubber\polymer sheets under the controller for noise absorbtion-- they could randomly be good to gawdawful lemonish things).
Quantum (media coatings, stepper motor drive trains)
Fujitsu (QC, not evenly reliable, and note a lot of the so-called Deathstars WERE mfr'd OEM to IBM by Fujitsu, and that IBM uses more Hitachi OEM'd HDs now). Mitsubishi was about in line with Fujitsu, between them and Maxtor. Samsung is about at Maxtor's level.
Maxtor (compatibility and reliability issues in batches at once), for consumer grade HDs, but for Enterprise level HDs they are very good (and expensive in those high-end grades, to very costly for the fiber-channel Maxtor lines and the Atlas lines of HD).
WD and Hitachi are some of the best, overall, HDs I have used and sold. WD edges Hitachi a bit, not much.
That's my experience. Samsung is middle-of-the-road to equal to Maxtor, more compatible but with some batch problems moreso than WD overall.
I'd have to say the ones i've had the most problems with have been WDs
my maxtors and hitachis are rock solid, my WD has some problems...
Maxtor 5/4 ( i had rma the dead drives all were taken but after they were repaired they failed again shortly after after)
Westren Digital 4/1 (only drive by them that died was a 2gb drive on my p1 (computer got knocked over durring a defrag . Drive still worked kinda made clicking sounds when starting (think heads got stuck on park stoped after the drive went for data) and had bad sectors)
IBM 1/0 (had a 20gb one very relieable never had one problem)
Seagate 2/0 (had a pair of 20gb drives sold them to a friend there still working today)
Samsung 1/1 (had a 500mb in my 586 cyrix died a year after buying it)
Fujitsu 1/0 (500mb Used in my Cryix till i sold it no idea if its still working)
Quantum 1/1 (got it for $20 from a buddy a 10gb bigfoot drive was extreemly slow,loud and didnt have a park mode died durring this summer when i moved into my new house durring moveing)
Trigem (i havent owned any of these but i do co-op at a computer store and we have 10 dead ones pilled on top of each other. more of these dead then any other brand.
I've got like 14 Maxtor DiamondMax 9s... altho they've been flawlessly reliable so far
/me goes to back up <strike>porn</strike> important documents
Own 11 maxtors since '99 one died last month (bought in '99)
(Own one Quantum from '98 still going strong)
Had a Segate die on me within one year back in '98
Own 2 WD's one died but got a new one(?) RMA'd immediately
I have a Segate 512MB drive that actually still works (I keep it around as an antique souvenir).
As a side note, I opened up the dead (past warranty) Maxtor two days ago. Very cool! Now here's my question:
There are two magnets in the drive and they are quite strong. I'm wondering if one needs a magnetic force as strong as these magnets to be able to corrupt the data on the hard drive. In other words, how strong a magnetic force in actual contact to a hard drive will corrupt the data?
BTW I don't expected anyone to answer this.