Cable Forum

Cable Forum (https://www.cableforum.uk/board/index.php)
-   General IT Discussion (https://www.cableforum.uk/board/forumdisplay.php?f=19)
-   -   Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist? (https://www.cableforum.uk/board/showthread.php?t=33899)

McGraw 22-08-2005 16:21
Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
All the major manufacturers get slagged off by someone on the net.

Personally I've had no probs with IBM/Hitachi or Western Digital.

My 20Gb 6 year old WD died last week. Not bad really.

Halcyon 22-08-2005 16:26
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
Although some Seagates can be a little noisy, I have had no problems with them and reccomend them.
As for Fujitsu, I've only had problems with them.

ntl customer 22-08-2005 16:29
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
Seagates are my preferred choice of drive. Reasonably quiet compared to my old old Fujitsu drive, which made a din.

You get 5 years warranty with Seagates as well IIRC.

Dave Stones 22-08-2005 16:29
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
never noticed to be honest. i have a hitachi/ibm travelstart 7k60 in my laptop, a maxtor maxlineII in one computer, a maxtor diamondmax in my external drive... i think people just get a bit bitchy when theirs breaks down...

...and then there are the fanboys ;)

McGraw 22-08-2005 16:31
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
That's what I think too.

Paul 22-08-2005 16:39
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
Maxtor.

LemonyBrainAid 22-08-2005 16:41
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
I'm buying a 300GB Western Digital from dabs soon - All I've heard is good reviews from people using Western digital :)

jtwn 22-08-2005 16:45
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
I think people rant about a particular manufacturer if they've had a couple fail in a short period or something...I just believe drives have the possibility of failing in the short term or long term, whether one manufacturer or not...basically, down to luck :D

Paul 22-08-2005 16:49
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
IBM Deathstars are the only ones I would activley avoid.

ScaredWebWarrior 22-08-2005 16:53
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Halcyon
As for Fujitsu, I've only had problems with them.
I've tried a variety over the years, and have found some minor problems with Seagate, but the worst was the infamous Fujitsu HD failure of their MPG series drives: http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/fujitsu-...k-recovery.htm
There was some major fall-out over this http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/09...itsu_hdds_all/ and I would like to think that Fujitsu have made sure that won't happen to them again.
Having said that, all they offered was a replacement drive, no chance of getting the data recovered - even though it would have been simple for them to do. And trying to get it done commercially was obviously not economical for home users.

Some other info on other drives: http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-disk-failures.htm

My most recent problem was with a Seagate drive - partition info getting corrupted etc. I don't know if this was due to the drive or not, but it's not going back into any of my computers!

Now got a WD drive in it's place - a little noisier on seek, but only time will tell if it's a good drive.

Meanwhile, no matter how good your drive, make sure you back up the stuff you think you can't live without, cos recovery can be costly. In my case with the Seagate it cost about 60 quid for some software that managed to unravel the disk's logical structure. I got everything back (as far as I can tell) but would rather not have to go through all of that again.

jtwn 22-08-2005 16:58
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul M
IBM Deathstars are the only ones I would activley avoid.
Oh yeah, damn! Was going to mention those as the exception...bad bad, drives if there was one I could think of, a few companies just rebrand those drives...excelstor being one. I had two.

Halcyon 22-08-2005 17:00
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by ScaredWebWarrior
Meanwhile, no matter how good your drive, make sure you back up the stuff you think you can't live without, cos recovery can be costly.

Sound advice there. All drives will die at some point so doing some regular, (eg. weekly or monthly) backups of important data is critical.

nffc 22-08-2005 23:08
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul M
Maxtor.
Better be- I have just bought a Maxtor 250 GB SATA 16 MB cache jobbo. Now how to partition it...

That said the drive I intend to replace is a Maxtor EIDE one. Had no probs with that.
__________________

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul M
IBM Deathstars are the only ones I would activley avoid.
I have one of those too- and again, no problems.
__________________

Quote:
Originally Posted by LemonyBrainAid
I'm buying a 300GB Western Digital from dabs soon - All I've heard is good reviews from people using Western digital :)
Now they are the one I'd tend to avoid, we have a lot more of them actually fail- y'know, the types that ring in, diag a HD fault, look on the intranet, surprise surprise it's a WD. Keep well backed up in case...

zing_deleted 22-08-2005 23:12
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
You only ever hear horror stories.Theres not many people post on the web about how good a product is but plenty of people want to moan. Look on ebuyer for there customer reviews .Does not mean you have to buy from there but have a look

budwieser 22-08-2005 23:43
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by ScaredWebWarrior
I've tried a variety over the years, and have found some minor problems with Seagate, but the worst was the infamous Fujitsu HD failure of their MPG series drives: http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/fujitsu-...k-recovery.htm
There was some major fall-out over this http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/09...itsu_hdds_all/ and I would like to think that Fujitsu have made sure that won't happen to them again.
Having said that, all they offered was a replacement drive, no chance of getting the data recovered - even though it would have been simple for them to do. And trying to get it done commercially was obviously not economical for home users.

Some other info on other drives: http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-disk-failures.htm

My most recent problem was with a Seagate drive - partition info getting corrupted etc. I don't know if this was due to the drive or not, but it's not going back into any of my computers!

Now got a WD drive in it's place - a little noisier on seek, but only time will tell if it's a good drive.

Meanwhile, no matter how good your drive, make sure you back up the stuff you think you can't live without, cos recovery can be costly. In my case with the Seagate it cost about 60 quid for some software that managed to unravel the disk's logical structure. I got everything back (as far as I can tell) but would rather not have to go through all of that again.
In my case with the Seagate it cost about 60 quid for some software that managed to unravel the disk's logical structure. "

What software was that then mate?
"

AndrewJ 23-08-2005 00:01
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul M
IBM Deathstars are the only ones I would activley avoid.
Agreed.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul
M Maxtor.
Agreed again both mine are Maxtor and although my Sata sounds a little noisy ( kinda like those old HD's ) the IDE one is silent.

ZrByte 23-08-2005 00:11
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul M
IBM Deathstars are the only ones I would activley avoid.
As do a lot of people but I have had 4 in the last 5 years and while 2 of them have broken, they have only done so in the last year. Wich isnt bad especially when you considder they are in use 24/7. Personally cant fault them, I have seen far more western digital and maxtor drives go horribly wrong (especially in thier new lines) yet everyone thinks they are the mutts nutts.
TBH I dont have a favorite, Im using a travelstar in my laptop, a travelstar in an external caddy in my PC, a maxtor to boot off on both my PC's, 2 deskstars as data drives in my main PC and a seagate as a datadrive in the same PC.

dr wadd 23-08-2005 00:27
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by ScaredWebWarrior
I've tried a variety over the years, and have found some minor problems with Seagate, but the worst was the infamous Fujitsu HD failure of their MPG series drives: http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/fujitsu-...k-recovery.htm
There was some major fall-out over this http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/09...itsu_hdds_all/ and I would like to think that Fujitsu have made sure that won't happen to them again.
I too was caught by this debacle, I don`t care what steps they have taken, I won`t buy another Fujitsu product again. Not because the drive failed, but because of their abysmal attitude and attempts to cover up the problem.

Strzelecki 23-08-2005 00:43
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
I use Maxtor and Samsungs. The Samsung ones seem particularly good so far, quiet and reliable.

McGraw 23-08-2005 09:45
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
I still have a working 2.5Gb Quantum Fireball from about 1996.

It has had it's pins bent and burnt due to a mobo fire, been dropped and stored in an attic for about 3 years. In fact, one of the pins has snapped off.

Couldn't believe it when it still worked when I tried it for a laugh.

I won't be storing anything on it though!

Thinking about it, I had an IBM go on me after about a year. It's replacment IBM/Hitachi has been going strong for 2 plus years.

I hope Western Digital are okay, I'm kind of relying on them at the moment!

All my critical suff gets put on DVD regularly though.

ScaredWebWarrior 23-08-2005 09:52
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by budwieser
What software was that then mate?
A program called GetDataBack: http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

I downloaded the program, and tried it to see what it would recover. When it showed me the files I wanted (i.e. it recovered everything I could think of PLUS a few deleted files as well!) I decided it was worth paying.

If there are only one or two files you want, then the free download potentially gives you access for free, but any more than that and you'll want the registered version.

Of course, this ONLY works if the file system is damaged - if the drive won't spin up or is physically damaged, then I can't imagine it'll do much good. I do have a drive which is giving read errors that I'm going to try, but the projected recovery time was in the region of 18 hours, so haven't tried that yet, as I'm not too confident of success in that case.

timewarrior2001 23-08-2005 11:05
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
Western Digital have a fantastic returns dept. Took 3 days for me to receive a replacement drive from Germany.

Maxtor drives seem OK, using one at the moment.
I also have a 2 Gb Quantum fireball drive thats in tip top condition
I have a 6gb Quantum Bigfoot drive
and a couple of Compaq branded SCSI drives all 2Gb

ian@huth 23-08-2005 11:27
Re: Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?
 
The oldest drive I have that is still working is a massive 40 Mb drive that was made by a company in Scotland. Forget the company name but it is a 40 Mb drive not 40 Gb. It is an an old system somewhere in the loft from the late 70's running c/cpm. It is partitioned into 4 x 10 Mb partitions which I never ever filled even one of them. Partitioning and formatting drives in those days was a very different kettle of fish to how it is today

Other than that the two oldest drives that work perfectly are both IBM 528 Mb drives that are about 11 years old.

Many drives fail because of poor handling which affects drives from every manufacturer. You can be as careful as you like when handling drives but will never know how they have been handled before they get to you. Many courier drivers don't bother reading the fragile , handle with care, keep dry and this way up messages pasted on packages they carry. They give you the package in a way that suggests that they are taking great care of it but they have probably kicked it around, dropped it and thrown it about in their van many times before it got to your door.


All times are GMT. The time now is 07:13.

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2026, vBulletin Solutions Inc.
All Posts and Content are © Cable Forum