Reliable HDD?

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Hey people,

I normally do days of my own research but I thought I would just ask here first.

I want to buy a new HDD just for storage any probably fraps recording between 500GB - 2TB.

I generally just stick to the single platter 500GB since afaik they are the least likely to break.

Reliability is more important than speed, I generally read newegg comments to get an idea how likely a drive is to crash.

Have steered away from Seagate lately just because of the issues I have read about on average.

Suggestions?

Thanks
 
I've switched to samsung...so far so good.
Hitachi I love, but can't find them bigger than 1Tb.
 
I got a 2TB Seagate for storage a few weeks ago and it developed a load of bad sectors in the first week, fails 2 of the SMART tests. I've got numerous Samsungs, cheap and reliable...and easy to recover from if the need arises ;) Even though Seagate is the biggest HDD manufacturer in the world and puts the most $ into R&D etc, they're definitely not my favourite.
 
The company I work for bought 14 Seagate drives recently and every single one of them failed (bricked) while still under warranty. We knew about the firmware issue with these drives, so all the firmware was updated, and the drives still failed. Every single one of them. Sure, they were replaced under warranty, but the hassle was just not worth it. Neither is the data loss. In one of our RAID sets all the drives bricked on the same day...
 
I have had multiple Seagate failures over the last couple of years - it would be best to avoid them until they get things sorted out. So far Western Digital has been a reliable alternative. My HDDs do however see above average loading.

From what I have seen of various systems it does seem like the 500MB disks are more reliable in general. Having said that I had a 500MB fail a few days ago and another that is developing bad sectors (guess what brand).
 
I have a 250GB Drive (Main - Unsure of Brand - Not WD), a 500GB Drive (Western Digital), a 1 TB Drive (Western-Digital), and a 2TB Drive (Western Digital with 27GB Free :p)

All 3 WD Drives are the "WD Green" drives, and have yet to cause me any problems of any nature (Ok, I lie - My media drive is running out of free space! :D)

So I definately say Western Digital :)

Prices (From Prophecy :D)

Hope this helps :)
 
You know I have a friend who really supports Seagate, he'll always look at them before he even considers Samsung or WD's drives. But I have a 320GB WD that sat in the middle of a surround sound setup, the magnetism caused by those speakers were insane and it lifted the harddrive into the air... making it float! Guess what, that hdd is noisy but I still use the guy. Working fine.

I'm also considering upgrading, and was looking at Samsung. Or Western Digital. Around a 1TB drive or 500GB

Could someone explain to me how a 500GB is more stable then say 1TB?
 
axon1988 said:
it lifted the harddrive into the air... making it float!
Click to expand...
Pics / Vids as evidence? :)

axon1988 said:
Could someone explain to me how a 500GB is more stable then say 1TB?
Click to expand...
The only things I can think of are:

a.) Due to the size, you write more stuff onto it, stressing it more, and more often
b.) People just say this, since in the event of a failure, you loose less on a 500GB than a 1TB

Personally, my 2TB Media Drive is working perfectly, has minimal free space, and gets raped to pieces at every FRAG :D
 
axon1988 said:
Could someone explain to me how a 500GB is more stable then say 1TB?
Click to expand...

These days a 500GB HDD will only have 1 platter, and probably 2 (or even 1) head. Therefore there is less mass to move around at a few thousand RPM in the drive, and less heads to fail. This wasn't the case a few years back, when a 500GB drive could have 3 platters and 6 heads, therefore more risk of something going wrong.
As the amount of storage capacity per square inch goes up, drives start to become more likely to fail for obvious reasons. That's why you'll often find a trusty old WD 80Gb going for years and years and years with no problems, yet numerours high capacity drives failing in a much shorter time.
 
Reliability is a word more suited to servers nowdays:sick:

Maybe a Mirrored and Striped RAID system of a few Seagate drives? As long as you don't mess around with the config too much, you won't lose data :)
 
Yeah I'm serious the drive started floating and when I tried to push it down there was resistance.
The sound setup that caused this was that Logitech Z5500 setup, the speaker were all around the subwoofer with the subwoofer under the desk. It was scary! Wish I had taken some pics of it happening but I'm sure someone could try and recreate it somehow if they have those speakers.
We used an external sata port and power cable.

So I'd like some votes, who of you would rather go for say two 500GB then one 1TB?
 
axon1988 said:
So I'd like some votes, who of you would rather go for say two 500GB then one 1TB?
Click to expand...

Well if you have 2 drives instead of one, you're chances of failure are essentially doubled, but your risk of losing your data is half, if you see what I'm saying? You've now got 2 HDDs that can fail instead of one, but if you lose one you only lose half your data. New 1TB drives should be 1 platter drives too, with 2 heads. If you think the new 3TB HDDs have 3 platters, so that's 1TB per platter.

The best bet is to just backup your irreplaceable data (documents, photos, etc), preferrably offsite, and then just hope luck is on your side when it comes to your other data. If you lose 1TB of movie series it's hardly the end of the world.
 
My biggest concern is my designing yeah. If I lose it, there's no where else to find them. However I have been saving them on google docs. Which is a life saver, even though I am limited to only 2GB.
 
Reliable HDD = oxymoron.

IMO they are all much of a muchness these days, take what you can get a good deal on and a brand you are comfortable with, and from there on it it's up to your luck.

But don't push it, have a good backup policy in place, as everyone up there mentioned.
 
In my view they're all much of a muchness. User experiences vary greatly. Personally I've never had a Samsung drive. So far my largest drives (a half-dozen WD 2TBs) have performed flawlessly since new - got them the day they were released in SA.

Most failures happen within the warranty period, so getting the hardware replaced isn't much of an issue. That's the easy part. If you want to keep data, the most important thing by far is making regular and reliable backups. I rely utterly on Acronis Backup & Recovery (replacement of True Image) for system images. All data is backed up onto multiple devices, so I have at least 3-5 backups of critical data, and at least two backups of stuff like media.

Golden rule: your backup space should be at least double your production space. Three times is even better. If your data is important, the silliest thing you can do is skimp on backup space. HDDs are easy to replace; data isn't.
 
Oh no, not again.

A HDD is a HDD is a HDD.

All same reliability, all down to luck of the draw.

RAID or GTFO!
 
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