As the topic says, which is the most reliable brand of HDDs? My current Samsung one is making weird noises and it hasn't been all that long after I bought it so I'm slight worried it might crash and burn on me.

SataII drives btw. Also does the size of the hdd affect reliability?

Seagate IMO

No

They will all fail randomly or may live forever.

Personally I would buy seagate and then western digital and then hitachi and then samsung.

Just less failures with seagate and decent performance. But you may get a bad batch, hard to say :)

My experience with seagate has been pretty shoddy but if you get them with warranty it's no hassle

As in store warranty? I'd rather get something that stays alive then having to deal with manufacturer. Don't they usually take several weeks/months to get your hdd back to you?

never had a wd hdd fail on me.. only last year I decided to try a seagate for my old mans new build, it died after a week... never touching seagate again.. I have a 100% record with WD so far...

Pretty much the same story as martz. My 3 WDs haven't failed in years.

Mine took 1-2 months to come back.

Seagate for me, I stuck with them for ages and then heard good things about WD, so I bought a couple, both have died whereas I've never had a seagate die, the drives have outlasted their capacity usefulness.

Don't they usually take several weeks/months to get your hdd back to you?

Why not purchase them from someone who does more than 12 months warranty?

Both Seagate and WD were relatively quick with my warranty replacements, about a week for both.

only last year I decided to try a seagate for my old mans new build, it died after a week... never touching seagate again.

That happens to WD and Samsung too, you were just unlucky.

I've had more WD's die on me than Seagate and even after losing a 1tb (through my own inaction, I knew HDD was susceptible to a firmware fault and I didn't update it when I could have) I still rate Seagate above WD for reliability.

That said, I do rate my 2x 300gb Velociraptors :)

WD > *.*

So far I've killed:
WD
Seagate
IBM
Maxtor

The last WD drive I bought developed bad sectors, just retired 2 Seagate drives because they're too slow but still work perfectly and no bad sectors and the drive I'm currently on is a Seagate and I think it's one of the ones with that dodgy firmware issue (but I flashed the firmware so hopefully it'll live forever). The maxtor drive was so long ago it's not even worth a mention and the IBM deathstar just did what came naturally to them, it died.

Funny thing is I still have an IBM deskstar drive with a faulty board, push some paper between the power connector and the case and it works perfectly, no bad sectors or anything. Rock on you little bastard.

I've got 2 WD drives in my NAS box they're only a few months old but nothing bad to report so far from them.

When I was in IT retail (ok so that was 3.5 years ago) we used to have a 3 in 100 failure rate for both WD and Seagate.

Have only had one seagate develop bad sectors on me but that was after 4 years or so of constant use. Got my mate a seagate hdd brand new and it was stuffed within a week though. I guess with any brand though you're sure to get one hdd die on you for no reason eventually.

gratuitously provocative had an awful run with external drives. years ago she bought some cheapo 160gb internal drive and a 20 dollar caddy and that lasted three years. when that died, she bought a maxtor external drive, dead within three months. so she bought a wd elements external drive. dead within three months. then she bought a seagate freeagent external drive and that was dead within four months.

every time it happened, she hasn't been able to just write off that data so they can warranty the drive, it's had important s*** on it, like uni assignments that are due next week. balls. worst string of bad luck with drives evar.

point of the story being, every company makes some drives that will fail straight out of the box and some that will end up like the energizer bunny, like my wd 16mb cache 80gb drive that's been running almost 24/7 since early 2003.

They will all fail randomly or may live forever.

They will all fail randomly or may live forever.

+1

If you dont want to have to restore from backup when your drive dies, run RAID 1 - preferably with drives from 2 different manufacturers.

Remember that RAID is not a backup mechanism, it is to save the time lost from restoring from backup when one of the two drives die. There are plenty of other situations you still need a backup for.

Thanks for the help everyone, it seems like it's a toss up between western digital and Seagate.

still got my 40gb maxtor kicking along for 5 years now... i really need to upgrade my pc..

if you're gonna be transporting it from diferent pc's a lot. get one that has its own power source .

This may come as a surprise, but Hitachi hard drives have the best reliability. Hitachi took over IBM's hard drive manufacturing some time back. I found it funny with the whole 'DeathStar' thing.

Remember that RAID is not a backup mechanism, it is to save the time lost from restoring from backup when one of the two drives die. There are plenty of other situations you still need a backup for.

What's the best backup solution for a normal home user who just wants to store photos? re-writeable DVD? An external hard drive that only gets plugged in to transfer data but otherwise sits in a cupboard?

This may come as a surprise, but Hitachi hard drives have the best reliability. Hitachi took over IBM's hard drive manufacturing some time back. I found it funny with the whole 'DeathStar' thing.

Got any evidence for this?

Data storage in a home environment is becoming so prevalent these days it won't be long before NAS (currently ridiculously over priced) units with RAID 1 capability become common place (and thus as hopefully lowering costs).

The funny part is, (loosely translated) switching a HDD off and on again was what recently killed the seagates. If they were left on indefinately, they very well would have never failed from that particular issue.

All that aside, a NAS (or some sort of equivalent) with RAID 1 support will be the best form of data storage for a home user who really wants to make sure they don't lose their data.

whoop: probably a little nas or external usb storage unit that does raid1, *plugged into a ups+powerfilter*. replace the default drives with server grade drives (higher mtbf) or get a supply-your-own-drives unit and use those

I currently use a WD world book and a cheapy belkin ups but there might be better and/or cheaper options available than the worldbook.

All that aside, a NAS (or some sort of equivalent) with RAID 1 support will be the best form of data storage for a home user who really wants to make sure they don't lose their data.

Well I have a netgear ReadyNAS but since everyone is saying a NAS is not a backup I was wondering if there was something that would be even more robust for stuff I really don't want to lose but won't lose any money if I do lose it so it's not worth paying for someone else to store it.

replace the default drives with server grade drives (higher mtbf) or get a supply-your-own-drives unit and use those

hmm, I wonder how long these WD green power drives will last then :(

Just make multiple back-ups of whatever you have is so important. Sooner or later your drive will die or someone will wipe whatever it is you had saved.

Save to disc, HDD and memory stick if you really wanna keep s***.

who told you nas isn't a backup? it definitely is - if you have a readynas and it's setup for redundancy you're already set. just get a ups for it if you can, cos power outages or flickers are one of the worst drive killers.


and I'm using those wd green drives in my other home nas too :) nothing wrong with them, I just meant if you wanted to increase your chances of reliability you have the option of buying 'server' grade

What's the best backup solution for a normal home user who just wants to store photos?

The absolute "best" backup solution is somewhere off-site. For a home user, that basically means somewhere on the internet.

A NAS is just as susceptible to being stolen/burnt in a fire/killed by lightning as your regular PC.

My philosophy to data is that if it doesn't exist in two places it doesn't exist.

As Jim said NAS is definitely a backup. I run a 16Tb NAS at work that is backed up every night to another NAS and then I copy those backups to external HDDs for offsite storage. At home I keep all my important files (those I can't lose) on 3 PCs and about once a month I copy them onto an external drive that is stored offsite.

Optical storage media (DVD/CD etc) are not a backup, ever. The degradation of the media over time (even in optimal storage conditions) cannot guarantee the the data.

Re the HDD brand debate:

+1 for luck of the draw.

I've had a greater number of Sata HDDs fail from Seagate than any other manufacturer (and I use a lot of drives) however their SCSI and SAS drives all perform well. Hitachi SAS and SCSI drives have also been very reliable. I would say that I've found the Samsungs to provide the most reliable and best performing sata drives. (I do believe that Samsung has the fastest performing 7200rpm Sata drives).