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[dbug]

Built thousands of PCs when i had my IT business - used Maxtor & Seagate (dependant on best price deal at time) - never had a duff one.

Used to find most repairs bought in for hd failure were either Fujitsu or Samsung.

WD good brand but can be difficult to get to co-exist with another make.

IBM good but pricey.


Still got an old original 286 pc lying about (Win 3.1 ).  Hard drive is a massive 40Mb - made by DEC - must be 17-18 years old - no bad sectors and quiet operation! They used to build them good in those days!!!!!!!!!!

[cem_devecioglu]

Built many servers and PCs including 10K -15K RPM raid systems and high avail. clusters during Bank and private jobs

# 1  Samsung (Never seen one fail) (moderately fast)
# 2  Seagate  (Seen some SCSI and IDE models fail) (not too fast except Cheetah)
# 3 Western Digital (fast but seen many models fail)

Fujitsu (not bad but seen many SCSI fail in the past )
Maxtor (will never touch again)
IBM some were good but seen some fail..

but truth is: the service life of those disks depend on the conditions you keep them..

if very dusty and hot and there are many low frequency shakes around the disk will not survive long..

as a precaution you can check the disks G level before buying..

And always a faster RPM means low latency..

And a higher cache is much better..

[cem_devecioglu]

WD have generally been good to me, and quiet.  Been really really harsh on SATA2 drives, and find them to be very reliable by and large.  Dropping lappy's doesn't go over well though.

Certainly doesnt help.

Who makes the 10K RPM Raptors, is that Western Digital?

Any one got one?

yep..but they dont seem to be that fast. some high cache 7200 Samsungs are faster..

[TheBoy]

Consumer level drives (pretty much all SATA) are not as reliable as enterprise level drives (pretty much all SAS).  Unsure of the differences mechanically, though they do tend to lag behind in capacity to consumer drives.

Generally, most drives are reliable, but can fail at any time, so backups critical.

The most unreliable ones we come across at work - bearing in mind we tend to stick to HP, Sun Microsystems, Netapps, EMC and Dell - are without doubt the Sun branded ones (they are rebadged). Bloody things always failing.


I have just got the Samsung Spinpoint F1 1Tb 32Mb cache one, delivered for £81, for my Media Center, and have to say I'm impressed with speed and quietness of it.

I should add that a 200G Maxtor in my PC (the one that started smoking) is banging about, non stop recalibrating, non stop retrying, but refuses to die, and still has not lost a byte of data.  I refuse to replace it, want to see how long it will last

Those that have seen my Tech2 laptop will know that drive in that has been failing for years, but again won't die

[cem_devecioglu]

There were MTBF times (some are 1 million hrs) on SCSI and SAS drives.. Havent seen these specs on IDE or SATA  :-/

[Mr Skrunts]

Built thousands of PCs when i had my IT business - used Maxtor & Seagate (dependant on best price deal at time) - never had a duff one.

Used to find most repairs bought in for hd failure were either Fujitsu or Samsung.

WD good brand but can be difficult to get to co-exist with another make.

IBM good but pricey.


Still got an old original 286 pc lying about (Win 3.1 ).  Hard drive is a massive 40Mb - made by DEC - must be 17-18 years old - no bad sectors and quiet operation! They used to build them good in those days!!!!!!!!!!

LOL

I chucked out my very 1st PC about 6 yers ago, an Amstrad 1640 with twin 5.25 floppys and BW Screen.

I still have a PC in the old Denco Case (had the big smilie lights for HD/Power etc)  Intel 2,3 MMX, 256 Ram.  Fujisu EL 2.5 and 5.1 GB hard drives. Rage 3d 8MB VGA card and a Pair of 12MB Voodoo 2 Cards in SLI.  Along with a Panasysnc 21" Pro Screen.

Still feel reluctant to prt with it and the other PC's collected over the years. :-/

[Marks DTM Calib]

What interests me about this thread is that, we are all recommending latest drives based on experience on the reliability of old types from certain manufacturers which will be totaly different technologies!

Bottom line is that you can select a drive from what was a good manufacturer on thier last setups but, there latest incarnation might be a right crock of shite and its not until its been around a few years we will really know!

Ahhh, the joy of MTBF's on electro mechanical items!

[Mr Skrunts]

What interests me about this thread is that, we are all recommending latest drives based on experience on the reliability of old types from certain manufacturers which will be totaly different technologies!

Bottom line is that you can select a drive from what was a good manufacturer on thier last setups but, there latest incarnation might be a right crock of shite and its not until its been around a few years we will really know!

Ahhh, the joy of MTBF's on electro mechanical items!

True, but the thread was started specifically for Sata II 16MB or above cache drives.

Not really keeping up with technology during a couple of years of illnes I have totally lost track.

Being a domestic user I run with was I see advertised on the likes of Ebuyer, aria and other sites.

I have the Scsi UW2 cards that were available last time I dabbled with scsi speeds of upto 160 I thik at the time

I also have a couple of servers with the LVD drives in that are on the swapple plates.  I think there is a Compaq ML 370 (older type)(dual 733 intels)  and a Dell Power house, dual 933 xeons (if I could find a 2nd matched slot type cpu)

Whilst reading this thread I have heard the mention of SAS drives, and if being honest have not heard of them.

So as technoly improves I have yet to catch up with it.

[theolodian]

What interests me about this thread is that, we are all recommending latest drives based on experience on the reliability of old types from certain manufacturers which will be totaly different technologies!

Bottom line is that you can select a drive from what was a good manufacturer on thier last setups but, there latest incarnation might be a right crock of shite and its not until its been around a few years we will really know!

Ahhh, the joy of MTBF's on electro mechanical items!

True, but the thread was started specifically for Sata II 16MB or above cache drives.

Not really keeping up with technology during a couple of years of illnes I have totally lost track.

Being a domestic user I run with was I see advertised on the likes of Ebuyer, aria and other sites.

I have the Scsi UW2 cards that were available last time I dabbled with scsi speeds of upto 160 I thik at the time

I also have a couple of servers with the LVD drives in that are on the swapple plates.  I think there is a Compaq ML 370 (older type)(dual 733 intels)  and a Dell Power house, dual 933 xeons (if I could find a 2nd matched slot type cpu)

Whilst reading this thread I have heard the mention of SAS drives, and if being honest have not heard of them.

So as technoly improves I have yet to catch up with it.

SAS is serial attached SCSI.  PITA to find SCSI drives now, obsolete.  SAS share the same connector as SATA, so current backplanes and RAID cards can handle either/or.

[Mr Skrunts]

So is SAS better than SATA

[theolodian]

So is SAS better than SATA

Well, yeah, server style drive.  Have to have a SAS card to run it though, and overkill for a desktop.  I run servers on SATA drives, as long as the load isn't super high they last several years.  On desktops they are great.  If you're worried, get a cheap 2-channel SATA raid card and run mirrored drives on your desktop, still cheaper than one SAS drive and card.

[cem_devecioglu]

One important component is the controller for the drive(s) if SAS configuration is choosen..There are some models with built in batteries for the internal cache (for protecting the last minute cache data) ..Toms hardware guide and some other siites may have tests about those controller cards..

However I think for home purposes SAS disks with raid is really more power than necessary (unless you are running web sites in your home..)

But generally depending on a single disk is risky even in home so a mirrored (from motherboard BIOS) SATA configuration with 7200 RPM (2 disks) is mostly adequate..

sorry for the bad English in hurry to bring some friend to home..He repaired the broken water pipes in home we were about to swim

[willyboy]

Which are the best hard drives ... all Sata I-II

I run several different makes & they all run good ,Seagate,2xMaxtor, 2xWD,Hitachi I usually buy  using the system of the Warranty (5yrs if poss) and price ££ /gb

Seagate just about wins as always 5yr gtee  but  WDigital been a close second for me have 2 & they have been excellent