What brand of HD to buy?

[pperez]

Looking for the most reliable hard drive to add to my pc mainly to store photos. I was looking at lacie. But i am just not sure as to what is the best out there right now. Any suggestions?

[jfrancho]

What interface? I have Seagate SATA drives.

[pperez]

So sorry i forgot the interface. My pc uses SATA but i am more looking at an external drive if that's better since it will be more protected. I would like to be able to keep it off for the most part. But i am open to suggestions about internal or external. I just want the best brand with the best track record. Thanks.

[jfrancho]

JDart has a device similar to what you are looking for, maybe he'll see this.

[JDArt]

This device will hold four standard IDE (not SATA) drives and make them appear as one to your OS via jumper settings. Put four 500 GB drives in here, and you have a 2 TB enclosure. USB connectivity is not the fastest, but you're looking for a backup drive.

I have two of these, and they work.

[ntotrr]

For me, it's a toss-up. I've had all brands fail over the years. The prices are very low and I suspect the quality has dropped somewhat with the prices. Lacie doesn't manufacture their drives, they buy them from the like of Seagate or some other manufacturer. Seagate now owns Maxtor and they offer a five year warranty on internal drives, one year on external drives. The best bet, IMO, is to buy an internal drive and buy na enclosure seperately. This way, you have an external drive with five-year warranty.

[JDArt]

I have two major requirements of hard drives: warranty and quietness (decibel level). Price is also a factor. Usually Seagate gets my vote, but I've used some WD drives recently that are good as well.

[atomic]

I have never had a hard disc failure in over 20 years of using a hard drive. I clean up my OS and defrag my hard drive weekly. If I were in the market for a hard drive the only thing that would really matter to me is speed. A 10K drive reads and writes fastere than a 7200, a 5400, or 4500. Since the reason you are buying it is to store large files of photos I would think speed would be a top priority. As far as which one will last that depends on you the user. Do you back up regularly? If so then don't worry about reliability. None of the hard drive manufacturers that exist today could be competitive if there were quality control problem. All the hard drive manufacturers sell to the military and to big businesses. They have much higher quality concerns than you do.

[JDArt]

Originally Posted by atomic

I have never had a hard disc failure in over 20 years of using a hard drive.

I used to say stuff like that--because it was true.

Now I know it was just luck.

[jfrancho]

Time is money. Restoring data takes time. Just because you purchase insurance doesn't mean that you drive recklessly. Reliability is a huge consideration, especially since I don't want to be f@#$ing around doing a restore to get customer files after working 8 hours at my day job. Disk cleanups and defrags have absolutely nothing to do with mechanical failure. Buy quality hardware, keep the dust out, the vents clear, and the temp down and tend to your backups.

[JDArt]

Probably the best thing you can do to keep your HD from going back is keep it cool. Otherwise, pray.

[Jwilmot]

Western digital would be the maker I would recommend after almost 8 years of PC repair and custom building.
Seagate is ok as long as you stay away from the Barracudas.

As far as speed goes having a 10k raptor in an external enclosure would not benefit you as much as the cost difference due to the slow connection speed of the USB. If it where an internal; drive I would agree. I use a Raptor for my primary drive for that reason.

I have looked at JDarts enclosure and I am planning on getting one soon.

Bottom line is I recommend getting a good quality enclosure and then buying WD hard drives to fill it based on what you can afford. Seek time and buffer size are two key factors as well. Large Buffer size and low seek time is the way to go.

[JDArt]

Originally Posted by Jwilmot

Bottom line is I recommend getting a good quality enclosure and then buying WD hard drives to fill it based on what you can afford.

WD, Seagate, and Samsung are making 400 and 600 gig drives for at or just over $100. Samsung is a brand rarely mentioned but very, very nice: ultra quiet and cool running.

[brian.austin]

Originally Posted by JDArt

I used to say stuff like that--because it was true.

Now I know it was just luck.

Amen to that. I just had three drives in a pre-fail status (going down but still operational) in my 4Tb NAS system at the office. All Maxtor SATAs. Personally, I'm beginning to suspect a power supply issue but HP says it's not an issue. We'll see.

But, I do this for a living in a lot of different places. Statistically, I'm more likely to see a bad disk than most PC techs or home users. At minimum, all of my servers are using mirrored drives for OS and I have a few large arrays with over 12 drives in them...and they NEVER shut down.

[brian.austin]

Originally Posted by Jwilmot

Seagate is ok as long as you stay away from the Barracudas.

Oddly enough, the Barracudas have always been the most reliable for me AFTER first generation models. Those were hot plates (you couldn't touch them in some cases). Any of the high speed drives require dedicated cooling, though. I have an older server that has second and third gen Barracudas that has been operational for four years straight with downtime measured in hours, not days.

[jfrancho]

In my days maintaining over 150 lab PC's, all failures were WD. The brands were pretty evenly distributed between WD, Maxtor, and Seagate, and on other I can't remember. These were "typical" store bought boxes used to replicate average home usage - left on 24x7, poor ventilation, PCI cards, memory, and peripherals constantly changed/upgraded, etc. - so they didn't get the best treatment. In three years, I believe the HDD death toll was about 10. Very occasionally, we had an actual business desktop lose a drive, but it few and far between. Business laptops are another story, and on the opposite end, are servers. I did have the opportunity to change out a hot swappable SCSI drive from a RAID5 box. That was pretty cool. Anyway, we always liked it that the failed drives were WD, since their warranty claim process was simple at the time.