[TriLUG] OT: hard disk recommendation

[Joel Ebel]

I'll have to throw in my comments as well.  First off, Quantum hard 
drives aren't sold new anymore.  Neither are IBM.  Quantum got bought by 
Maxtor, and IBM sold their storage division to Hitachi.  So now, the 
major brands are Western Digital, Maxtor, Seagate, and Hitachi.  They 
all have their strong points.

I recommend checking out storagereview.com.  Not only do they 
extensively review the performance of drives, but there is a reliability 
survey.  You can get an idea of the experiences of others.  It's a 
sufficiently large sample size as to gather some useful information. 
But it's true that a new line of drives won't necessarily match the 
reliability of any previous model by the same manufacturer.  I'll let 
you come to your own conclusions from the site.  But here are some of my 
thoughts about drive manufacturers.

Western Digital drives are very popular.  Mostly, in my opinion, because 
they were the first on the block with the 8 MB cache.  Which is a great 
idea, but now everyone is doing it.  The aging Western Digital special 
edition drives are no longer top performers, but they remain popular. 
However, the SATA Raptor series is one of the fastest drives you can 
buy, but they are quite expensive.  But nonetheless, many people got 
familiar with Western Digitals special edition drives and are now quite 
comfortable with them.  I use several of the 120 and 160 GB models and 
haven't had any problems.  But I know that some people have.  I don't 
know about the larger sizes and their reliability, but I do know that 
recently the warranty on even the special editions went down to 1 year. 
  You could purchase a longer warranty for something like $15, but after 
purchasing a drive, it's upsetting to have to pay more for a warranty. 
It's still only three years.  If they skimp on their warranty, it makes 
me wonder how much they skimp on the quality if they don't want to back 
it up.

Seagate drives have a reputation for being quiet.  If you like quiet, 
then Seagate is a good choice.  They also, last I checked, have the best 
warranty.  5 years even on the low end drives.  That's worth a lot. 
They stand behind their drives.  I know a lot of people respect the 
quality of Seagate drives.  But you always take your chances.  Several 
years ago, I had a 9.1 GB 10k rpm SCSI Seagate cheetah.  At the time, 
that was the top of the line.  I had to send that drive in twice to get 
it replaced.  The second time it was replaced I got one that makes a 
painfully high pitched whine.  I can't stand to be in the same room as 
it anymore.  But that goes to show that even the best drives have a 
distinct possibility for failure.  In fact, some of the lower speed and 
capacity drives may have better reliability because of wider tolerances. 
  Seagate IDE drives haven't been top performers for quite some time, 
but lots of people love the quiet, and the warranty/reliability.

Maxtor got a fairly bad reputation in the past for quality.  I had bad 
experiences myself with an 11 GB Maxtor IDE drive that went bad after 2 
weeks.  I took it back for a replacement, and the next one went bad in 2 
days.  I got a full refund after that and haven't bought a Maxtor 
intentionally since.  However, I believe Maxtor's reputation has 
improved.  They have quite good performance, as the MaxLine III 
currently holds the leaderboard position.  I also discovered that my 
TiVo had a Maxtor drive in it, and it hasn't had any problems.  It is a 
5400 rpm drive however, which as I stated might improve reliability.

IBM drives, now Hitachi did get a bad reputation with their Deathstar 
(Deskstar) series.  It's too bad, because they performed quite well when 
they worked.  But IBM hard drives are all but gone, and I'm not sure how 
much technology goes into the current Hitachi drives.  But once again, 
Hitachi drives perform quite well, holding the previous leaderboard 
position on storagereview with the 7k400, and before that with the 
7k250.  I don't have much experience with new Hitachi drives, so I can't 
say much about them.  They are quite popular in laptops, but they 
certainly aren't without problems.  My thinkpad is on its 3rd Hitachi 
hard drive.  Fortunately no data was lost either time.  The first 
problem was that I couldn't write to it.  I could read everything off to 
back it up though, which was quite convenient.  The second problem was 
extremely poor performance.

So there's my opinions.  Take them as you will because others will 
definitely feel differently.  I tried to be objective.  But again, read 
through storagereview if you want some other opinions.  It's been a 
while since I've looked much at hard drives, so my data could be out of 
date.

Good luck,
Joel


Ben Pitzer wrote:
> Aaron is right about WD drives 6-7 years ago.  Anything under 10GB 
> failed miserably after short times.  Somewhere around the 14GB mark, 
> they seemed to get something right, and I've now got two WD drives 
> working magnificently in my home machines (which of course guarantees me 
> a hard lockup from a broken spindle sometime before the weekend).
> 
> The 250GB drives these days...well, it's a bit of a gamble.  They 
> haven't been out for long enough to say which ones work best.  Plus, 
> it'll depend entirely on things like which production batch the drive 
> comes from.  Given my difficulties of late with drives, including a 7 
> year old 4.3GB Seagate drive locking up on me (/dev/hda in ironman, my 
> server at home), I can't be emphatic enough in my recommendation of 
> mirroring drives in some sort of software RAID setup.  Especially if 
> it's an even marginally mission critical box.
> 
> Quantum, WD, Seagate and Maxtor are the top brands, so far as I've seen. 
>  I haven't heard anything overly negative about any of them, but you may 
> want to poke around on the community forums at Tom's Hardware or some 
> other places of that ilk.
> 
> Good luck, and let us know what you hear.
> 
> Regards,
> Ben Pitzer
> 
> Aaron S. Joyner wrote:
> 
>> Joseph Mack wrote:
>>
>>> I'm looking for a 250GB EIDE 3.5" drive to last about 2yrs under light
>>> service (single user machine where I do a lot of staring at the screen).
>>>
>>> I used to get Samsung, but they're topping out at 200G now. Before
>>> that I used Quantum for years. I've been quite pleased with both 
>>> suppliers.
>>>
>>> Anyone who I should/should not buy from?
>>>
>>> Thanks Joe
>>>  
>>>
>> You might as well have asked, so - which do you prefer, vi or emacs?  
>> :)  I've discovered that a fair portion of people have strong beliefs 
>> about one vendor over another, but usually the sample size a single 
>> individual has to work with is quite small.  I had really bad luck 
>> with some Western Digital drives 6-7 years ago, and swore them off.  
>> When I got to Intrex, most of what they carried was Western Digital, 
>> and the reason for it was simple - low cost, and not a lot of 
>> headaches with RMAs.  On the semi rare time when they ordered Seagates 
>> (probably once every month or three, usually one of the larger drives, 
>> or when they first started carrying SATA), they would have a couple 
>> dozen come through each store, and they'd sell like hotcakes because 
>> all the people who like Seagate would pick one up.  It's a lot about 
>> personal preference, but generally I find when you average out the 
>> quality over a sufficiently large base of people, things even out 
>> pretty well.  There are exceptions, of course, like the IBM DeathStar 
>> drives (google if you're not familiar) - but those usually are not 
>> apparent until the drive has been out in production for at least a 
>> year or more, usually 2 to 3.
>>
>> So that's my two cents, buy what ever is on the cheap, and has at 
>> least a 2yr warranty if that's the arbitrary time frame you're aiming 
>> for.
>> Aaron S. Joyner