HD recommendations.

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JohnDoe641

JohnDoe641

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I've had terrible luck with WD, the three drives that I've bought from them all failed almost immediately or like my current C drive which is about to die after less than three years.

I have two super old Maxtor 320 gig drives that I use as extra space and they've been running for six years with no trouble. I keep reading that WD is reliable but how reliable can they be if every drive I've bought from WD dies within less than three years?

I looked at Seagate but there's a lot of reviews saying that there's a 50/50 chance the drives are bad on purchase and even the ones that work usually die within a year. This whole thing is stupid, years ago I knew who made really dependable drives but now I have no clue at all.

Helps. :(
 
D

DeathBooger

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I have a Samsung that's 7 years old. It's funny because everything else I've ever had made by Samsung was a turd. Monitors, TVs, and phones all crap out, but this hard drive keeps on going.
 
Skillz

Skillz

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What WD drives do you have? Not all of them are created equal.

Seagate bought out Samsung's hard drive division. I've owned a total of 5 Seagate hard drives in the past and not a single one has lasted more than half a year. Needless to say I will never own a Seagate drive again.

Hitachi used to have very reliable hard drives, but since WD bought them out I've been skeptical. I own two 3TB WD Green drives that I use for storage. I've had one for over a year now with no issues and the second one I bought about half a year ago, again with no issues. I don't use them as primary drives though. They're both in my HTPC and the primary drive is a 1TB hitachi drive I bought a few years ago. I use the WD Green drives to store media (movies, shows, mucis, etc..) for my HTPC. So they get read a lot, but I hardly ever have to write to them.

Have you considered going SSD for primary drives? Intel, Samsung, and Crucial are the top reliable drives for SSDs.
 
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JohnDoe641

JohnDoe641

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Right now m my drive (the drive that's dying) is a Caviar Black model wdbaaz0020hnc-nrsn. While it was working properly it was always super fast, maybe it's because my computer is on 24/7 and when I'm not using the comp it's being used to render images in Luxrender or Vue.

I've thought about getting a SSD for my OS, it seems like it would help when I'm opening software but 90% of what I do is saved on other drives in the system so the speed boosts wouldn't carry over to my standard drives afaik.

What I'm looking for is server level reliability but desktop compatibility without having to go into a RAID setup. I know I've been burned by WD every time I buy one of their drives but it looks like they have three drive models that match what I'm looking for. WD Purple, Red and the Enterprise Ed drives. hmmmmm
 
Skillz

Skillz

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JohnDoe641 said:
Right now m my drive (the drive that's dying) is a Caviar Black model wdbaaz0020hnc-nrsn. While it was working properly it was always super fast, maybe it's because my computer is on 24/7 and when I'm not using the comp it's being used to render images in Luxrender or Vue.

I've thought about getting a SSD for my OS, it seems like it would help when I'm opening software but 90% of what I do is saved on other drives in the system so the speed boosts wouldn't carry over to my standard drives afaik.

What I'm looking for is server level reliability but desktop compatibility without having to go into a RAID setup. I know I've been burned by WD every time I buy one of their drives but it looks like they have three drive models that match what I'm looking for. WD Purple, Red and the Enterprise Ed drives. hmmmmm
Click to expand...

WD Black drives are a waste of money. I wouldn't bother with them. While WD did buy out Hitachi's HDD division, their hard drives are as fast as if not faster than WD's Black drives.

I was recommending an SSD for their reliability over a hard disk drive. Not so much for a performance stand point.

Being mechanical, hard drives aren't supposed to last forever anyway. If you're that worried about failing hard drives then invest in a reliable backup solution.


DeathBooger said:
My PC has been on 24/7 for 7 years.
Click to expand...

You own a Samsung hard drive. Seagate bought Samsung's HDD division in late 2011 early 2012. ;)
 
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JohnDoe641

JohnDoe641

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If I don't get a SSD for my OS, is there a certain Hitachi drive or another brand that you'd recommend for extreme up-time usage that's also fast for video/audio/3d work yet reliable? If I do get a SSD, I'll still be getting another additional drive to store my saved work on, there's only so much info those old 320gig drives can hold.
 
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Hadmar

Hadmar

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Jan 29, 2001
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There are consumer grade HDDs specified for 24/7. I know that Seagate makes them, I assume the others* do, too.

I might get a SSD for my next PC for performance reasons, but certainly not for reliability. Sure, there are no mechanical parts that can break, but their flash memory is simply terrible and they include all kinds of tricks to work around that.


* Other, really. Realistically speaking there's only Seagate and Western Digital left for consumer grade HDDs.
 
Hunter

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KaL976 said:
I think you've just been unlucky.
I've bought nothing but WD drives since 2003/4 and not one has died.
PC on 24/7.
Click to expand...

This, except that mine isn't on 24/7. I do have a NAS which is and is running WD drives and it's been on 24/7 for the 18 months.

If you need up time why not look at server grade drives? I'm looking to replace my WD Green Drives with Red ones in my NAS.
 
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