Which hard drive brand?

[Cyberus]

Just wondering what people's personal experiences with brands are.

More specifically, I want to treat myself to a fat 300 gb one with my first paycheck...

I would be very grateful to hear of your experiences.

Ta

[kingkleks]

I have pretty good results with Western Digital JB series (8MB cache). I put together some PC's with the 80  and 120 GB ones and so far no problems. Seagate though offers a 5 year warranty. I would suggest you check www.storagereview.com they have some good info there. Also I heard that one should stay away from the round IDE cables. Just use the flat ribbon ones.

[tonyvdb]

Are you going to use it in your Amiga or PC?

I would go with Maxtor for IDE/SATA or if you really want a good drive go for SCSI and get the Segate Cheetah or Baracuda drives. :-D

[Piru]

@Cyberus

I prefer Seagate Barracuda series myself. I've got total 1,120 TB of Barracudas and not a single problem. For 300GB it would be ST3300831A and ST3300622A. ST3300622A is newer so it has slightly better specs, but ST3300831A is fine aswell. These drives are whisper quiet and have 5 year warranty.

However, if you look into some other manufacturer drives, avoid Maxtor and IBM/Hitachi at any cost.

[leofoe]

However, if you look into some other manufacturer drives, avoid Maxtor and IBM/Hitachi at any cost.

I've had some bad experiences with Maxtor ATA harddisks. Had to replace them twice. I now use SATA Hitachi Deskstars 160GB each in a matrix RAID set. Running without any problem for 12 months now.

[Piru]

A friend had Hitachi Deathstar drive die on him. He got it RMAd, and last week the identical RMAd drive died aswell. Could be a bad batch or something, but somehow this episode resembles the IBM Deathstar indicent.

The thing is, these things should be in the past with the new hitachi Deskstars... but it doesn't look like it. YMMV.

[Linchpin]

avoid Maxtor and IBM/Hitachi at any cost.

I disagree.

I have had a 120gb Hitachi drive in my XP box for well over 2 years now. Never had a moments trouble with it, and its constantly being accessed as the PC acts as a file / print server for the rest of the network.

Infact, only 1 drive has ever died on me, and that was a Western Digital. My old 3.5gb Maxtor from 1998 is still working.

Luck of the draw i say.

 :juggler:

[jkirk]

i agree i have owned many brands of hard drives and the only ones i lost was two western digitals. currently i am running two maxtors and four western digitals and had no problems with them.

[Ilwrath]

Personally, I usually choose Seagate and Western Digital.

A lot is personal preference, though.  It's kind of like asking which car make you should buy.  It quickly deteriorates into horror stories about off models from each maker.

In recent days, for systems I've built for myself and others, I've used the following...

2x Maxtor DiamondMAX - 1 failed
2x IBM Deskstar - 2 failed
3x Seagate Barracuda - 0 failed
~10x Western Digital (Mostly Caviar, though occasional other models) - 1 failed (a Caviar)

take that for what it's worth.

[DamageX]

I would worry less about the brand and more about the particular model of drive. If there is a defect affecting a particular model then those drives will probably start dropping like flies shortly after they're introduced.

For instance, some years ago I had a few WD Caviar 21600 drives all die (and I wasn't the only one). All the other WD drives (from the early&mid 90's) are still running fine here though.

[Framiga]

Holy words DamageX :-)

If your lucky, all brands/model fits your needs.

There are no absolute rules, if you ask me! Maxtor did worked fine for years for me, for others not.

[jkirk]

yep if you are not "in the know" about the most reliable drive models then buying a new hard drive is pot luck.

[motrucker]

The problem is, that many hard drives just will not run with Amiga hardware. OR at least not all of it. I have an IBM SCSI drive in my A2000 that works fine on the GVP SCSI card, but will work at all on the 2091.
I have an Hitachi 2.5" in my A1200 that works great, and one IBM 2.5" that runs well (all ide here) BUT I also have three IBM 2.5" ide drives that refuse to run in the A1200 no matter what is done!
There are quirks like this throughout any make of drive.
It would be a great idea for Amiga users to list exactly which make & nodel drive that they are running - through which computer and interface!  Way back when, such a list was started, but apparently died.

[Chain]

2.5 on bare ide a1200:

toshiba 6G, 10G  :-D
ibm travelstar 10G  :-D
all works wery well (travelstar is slightly noisy than toshiba)

i havel also good experience with 2.5 540mb IBM/aplle rebranded drive from powerbook (runs great in cd32 + sx-1)

one old 2.5 170mb IBM drive is too slow to boot in a1200 and after reset its always stop and spinup again, so booting isnt possible wit that damn old {bleep}
-------------
two 1G IBM scsi drives (50pin) on A3000T scsi internal (plus cdrom) and it was also very good investment (knock knock)

[tonyvdb]

In my Video Toaster Flyer I have 4 Segate Cheetah 9.1 gig drives, 2 Segate Cheetah 36 gig drives all for video and one 9.6 gig Baracudah for audio. All have worked great for years I have only lost one drive ever and it was still under warentee so I just swaped it out. I still have 4 spare cheatah 9.1 gig drives in case I loose one