Read this before you buy a new hard drive.

[gyraf]

To me, the remaining question from the life-expectancy-data shown here is:

How can these three companies still charge approximately the same price/mb? Isn't expected lifespan a competitive and thus price-influencing parameter at all?

Or have they just managed to smokescreen the whole area?

Jakob E.

 

[moamps]

I can confirm that Seagate's Barracuda 750GB and 1.5TB are very bad. Four of 10 fail after two-three years of normal usage.
But 400GB are good . 45 disks in three Promise raid audio and file servers installed about 12 years ago work without any problem till today. The early version of WD green isn't better either, IMO. Two 2TB discs of 8 down after 2 years.  Later versions are ok.
So, it's normal that I have lot of hard discs full of backups lying around. 8)

 

[Ethan]

For what it's worth, every Apple computer/laptop that I've opened up in the past 10-years or so had hitachi drives.
It seems like Seagate and WD are the two dominant retail/consumer hard drive brands here in the US.
Hitachi may be more of an OEM supplier. It's possible OEMs demand a-stock quality drives, and brands like Seagate and WD know they can dump the b-stock on Best Buy shelves.

 

[emrr]

My parents talked me out of buying  a computer in the early '80's  with my allowance money, insisting it was better spent on a stereo system. 

 

[ln76d]

For what it's worth, every Apple computer/laptop that I've opened up in the past 10-years or so had hitachi drives.
It seems like Seagate and WD are the two dominant retail/consumer hard drive brands here in the US.
Hitachi may be more of an OEM supplier. It's possible OEMs demand a-stock quality drives, and brands like Seagate and WD know they can dump the b-stock on Best Buy shelves.

I had two exactly same Toshiba laptops, where were installed Hitachi HDD which you can find also in apple.
After 5-6 years (don't remember exact date of purchase) in both computers disk died. Second disk damaged after week.
Coincidence?

 

[abbey road d enfer]

I thought drives were all pretty much the same these days.

Well, it looks like NAS-specific HD's are purposedly different...

 

[gltech]

Well, it looks like NAS-specific HD's are purposedly different...

Definitely.. desktop drives are designed for fast access (i. e. WD "Black"). NAS (i. e. WD "Red") are not. FWIW, I've had great experience with both. I wonder if the WD stats in the original post partially reflect some of the "lower-end" WDs (which I think are "green," "purple" and "blue" or something like that, all of which I've never owned). I honestly can't remember any WD black or red EVER failing me and I have a lot of them.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

To me, the remaining question from the life-expectancy-data shown here is:

How can these three companies still charge approximately the same price/mb? Isn't expected lifespan a competitive and thus price-influencing parameter at all?

Or have they just managed to smokescreen the whole area?

Jakob E.

Different optimizations. You can't expect a fast-access drive (7,200 or even 10,000 rpm) to be as rliable as a 5,400 rpm at the same price. But since HD aftermarket is driven by cost, most manufacturers try to reach a similar price point.

 

[leadbreath]

I agree with first post, In my own experience the Seagates were always failing had to pay huge £ to retrieve audio files for a project from one Seagate HDD that died during recording session!!

Now I always use WD and have a WD RAID system that backs up on the fly.

Interesting to see that Hitachis have a lowest failure rate,will look into that.

 

[Murdock]

Can only vouch for Hitachi.
Totaly forgot that I had two Hitachis in my PC, that's how long I have them 
Never had any problems, still going strong. I think they are about 5 years old.