Does a decent hard drive manufacturer actually exist?

[AndrewJ]

Originally Posted by Paul M

IBM Deathstars are the only ones I would activley avoid.

Agreed.

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]

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.

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]

I use Maxtor and Samsungs. The Samsung ones seem particularly good so far, quiet and reliable.

[McGraw]

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.

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.

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]

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.