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veryniceguy2002 · Apr 10, 2003, 08:46 AM

Back in the '80s and '90s it was commonly known the Quantum hard drive are fast and reliable, and IBM hard drive have similar reputation.

Nowadays Quantum had been bought over by Maxtor, and IBM sold their hard drive division to Hitachi, and many other hard drive manufacturers had crashed since the "good old days". I would like to know which hard drive manufacturer has the fastest and (most importantly) are most reliable currently??

Zoom · Apr 10, 2003, 12:32 PM

I think hard drives are becoming a commodity, at least the common IDE drives from companies like Maxtor. The quality is probably lower for these drives than it was, but then they're cheap and easy to replace. The trick is backing up the data.

What's your planned use for this? Are you simply looking for a secondary drive or do you need a RAID disk? Give us some idea what your needs are and we can better answer the question.

milhouse · 09:22 AM

I've always liked IBM (now IBM/Hitachi) and Seagate.

bradoesch · Apr 10, 2003, 10:21 PM

I used to be a Maxtor perrson-- and still am, but I really like my Western Digital Special Edition drive. They're all pretty unreliable though.

BrettOZ · Apr 11, 2003, 12:30 AM

I have posted on here about drives before, but I am staying away from IBM (have had 2 go bad in less than 6 months). Just bought a Seagate Barracuda V and I love it! So quiet and 120 GB with 8MB Cache.

Although I also have Maxtors and think they are very reliable too.

veryniceguy2002 · Apr 11, 2003, 03:31 AM

Originally posted by Zoom:
I think hard drives are becoming a commodity, at least the common IDE drives from companies like Maxtor. The quality is probably lower for these drives than it was, but then they're cheap and easy to replace. The trick is backing up the data.

What's your planned use for this? Are you simply looking for a secondary drive or do you need a RAID disk? Give us some idea what your needs are and we can better answer the question.

Just to upgrade to a bigger capacity for a B&W G3 PowerMac for general everyday use, although I'm thinking to use it for DV as well in the not-too-distinct future, so 7200-rpm drive would be a must.

I am a lazy person in terms of backup

and yes, I do know it's cruical to regularly backup important data. I want to have a reliable hard drive because I want to avoid the drama of restoring backups and stuff like that... it's quite tramtic and I can recall a few years ago my work hard drive server crashed and it took several days to for the IT department to restore stuff from backup... it's a very bad experience and I'm trying to minimise the chance by getting a good hard drive.

a2daj · Apr 11, 2003, 02:20 PM

I would also recommend staying away from IBM drives. There were some models a couple of years ago which were known to be bad. There were several complaints of those models failing within months. I had an OEM model fail on my within 6 months. I've used mainly Maxtor drives and haven't had any issues with them, although I've heard others complain about them. My most recent drive is a Western Digital model. I had steered clear of them for awhile because the ones I had bought before were rather noisy and over time (within about a week of purchase) they developed really loud knocks when parking the heads. No data integrity issues but it wasn't reassuring.

zigzag · Apr 14, 2003, 06:30 PM

The problems IBM had a couple of years ago seem to have been limited to a particular series that is long out of production. The owner of WiebeTech (I think his name is James Wiebe) said in a recent interview that he prefers IBM drives, and that's mostly what they put in their enclosures. However, IBM appears to be handing its consumer hard drive business over to Hitachi - margins are thin, so it's not very profitable.

I've always had Maxtor drives - not a preference, just how it worked out. Never had a problem.

storagereview.com has some reliability surveys (as well as performance reviews) but I don't think they mean much - my impression is that all of the current makes are more or less equivalent.

itai195 · Apr 14, 2003, 07:18 PM

You can ask 50 people this question and get conflicting answers from everyone. Personally I've never had a problem with an IBM or Seagate drive, but I'm sure others have. Whichever drive you get, be sure to back up regularly...

tooki · Apr 14, 2003, 07:23 PM

The IBM storage division sale isn't in progress -- it's done. It's now Hitachi Global Storage.

I like IBM drives (I'll continue to refer to them as IBM, since all the ones on the market are still IBM branded) -- I just bought a Travelstar 40GNX for my PowerBook -- and I have Maxtors in my G3 tower. That said, I would not hesitate to install another Maxtor, an IBM, or a Seagate. Given the choice between the 3, I'd probably choose the Seagate now, as they are extremely reliable, fast, and -- most distinguishing from the others -- absolutely silent. (I chose Maxtor because they happened to be on sale at the moment.) Note that I don't recommend Western Digital. They had severe problems with the Caviar line a couple of years back, and it'll take a couple of years of reliable service from their more recent models for me to consider recommending them again.

tooki

G4ME · Apr 14, 2003, 07:45 PM

Originally posted by BrettOZ:
I have posted on here about drives before, but I am staying away from IBM (have had 2 go bad in less than 6 months). Just bought a Seagate Barracuda V and I love it! So quiet and 120 GB with 8MB Cache.

Although I also have Maxtors and think they are very reliable too.

word i have that exact same drive and its older borther the 80 gig 7200 with only 2mb but damn its rock solid and dead silent, i never noticed them accessing.

Also for their life time (1 year one the 80, and about 2 months for the 120 havn't had a single problem! if i had the cash and anther IDE chain i would get another one in a heart beat

OreoCookie · Apr 16, 2003, 02:08 PM

I have IBM drives and no problems so far. My new 80 gig HD (@7,200) is a lot quieter than the IBM 8 gigger it has replaced.

The old drive didn't fail, it just wasn't big enough anymore

I still use it.

CatOne · Apr 16, 2003, 05:21 PM

Originally posted by zigzag:

storagereview.com has some reliability surveys (as well as performance reviews) but I don't think they mean much - my impression is that all of the current makes are more or less equivalent.

Performance reviews are not equivalent -- the 8 MB cache drives are SIGNIFICANTLY faster than the 2 MB cache drives.

I'd highly recommend the 7200 RPM WD 8 MB cache drives. They are VERY fast. I have a 120 gigger myself in my PC... it boots from power on to login in 14 seconds.