Most reliable IDE Drives?

[thurston]

Re: Most reliable IDE Drives?

[ QUOTE ]
I have always used WD, and have never had a failure. I have seen many Maxtors fail, both at work and home (yes, I do this crap for a living [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img])

I would say the IBM IDE drives are the "best" though. Fast, and very reliable.

[/ QUOTE ]

IBM hasn't made IDE drives in a few years. They were the best, but they sold the division off to Hitachi Data Systems, and the are now just OK.

[Shotgun]

Re: Most reliable IDE Drives?

Let's see, I've had the following brands fail over the years (in this order):
Maxtor,
Western Digital,
Seagate,
IBM,
and Fujitsu.

Did I leave anybody out? The worst was the IBM, with all the others there was enough warning and/or good backups that it wasn't anything other than a minor pain. Now I'm mostly using fluid bearing Seagates because they are so quiet, but I still have two or three WDs in service.

Keith

[ApeDosMil]

Re: Most reliable IDE Drives?

Ibm drives are pretty bad, I guess you haven't heard their name that they were given. The DeskStar was named "Deathstar" due to the fact that a lot of them failed.

[St.James]

Re: Most reliable IDE Drives?

I've never had problems with any Maxtor I've used.

[Soap]

Re: Most reliable IDE Drives?

Got to newegg.com.
Side menu, select hardware, Harddrives.
Browse and read the reviews there of the intended size and brand of the HD your considering.
Newegg is great for this sort of thing.

Myself, Western Digital has served me wll over the years and newegg is real good at returning defective product.
Yes, I have several certifications and work in the field.

[khabibissell]

Re: Most reliable IDE Drives?

I never had an IBM IDE drive fail on me, though I had only run across them in the workplace. Of course, I haven't really dealt with an IDE based server in the production environment in a few years.

Just tryin' to help. Good luck!

[YetAnotherOne]

Re: Most reliable IDE Drives?

Many thanks for the responses!

Re: usage - These will both be housed in well-ventilated metal external enclosures with internal fans and used as data storage for my personal PC. I tend to leave everything on 24/7 so they'll log a lot of hours but will mostly sit idle.

Re: backup - I recently moved almost all of my data to a 400 GB Hitachi Deskstar but it overheated *badly* during the formatting process and is making those nerve-wracking death rattles though it's still chugging along so it will go on the shelf as backup #1 as soon as the new drives are in place. The critical data is already backed up to DVD-R and I'll perform a fresh backup of everything as soon as the new drives are in place. Significant changes are infrequent enough that manual incremental backups to DVD-R won't be too big an inconvenience.

Re: RAID - RAID-5 would be ideal, it's where I'd really like to go, but it's cost-prohibitive for personal use.

I asked your opinions because I've had a couple of dead Western Digital drives and one dead Maxtor in the last 3-4 years. Those failures were probably due to overheating in a tower case that I no longer use so I was curious as to everyone's experiences.

Many thanks once again for the replies!

[DarkMare]

Re: Most reliable IDE Drives?

I'd recommend either Western Digital or Seagate and avoid Hitachi, IBM (ever heard of the IBM DeathStars?) and Maxtor.

[rjohnstone]

Re: Most reliable IDE Drives?

Heat will kill any drive... it doesn't matter who makes it.
It thins out the lubricant in the spindles and arm which causes the heads to crash.
The Hitachi crap is just rehashed IBM crap. Pure junk IMO.

[DarkMare]

Re: Most reliable IDE Drives?

[ QUOTE ]
The Hitachi crap is just rehashed IBM crap. Pure junk IMO.

[/ QUOTE ]Actually, for the most part, I think it's the other way around. The infamous IBM DeskStars (DeathStars) were OEM Hitachis.

[YetAnotherOne]

Re: Most reliable IDE Drives?

So you're saying that 4-5 years was a pretty decent life expectancy @ 55-60 C? [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] I actually think I lost the controllers on two of 'em with a mechanical failure on the third.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The Hitachi crap is just rehashed IBM crap. Pure junk IMO.

[/ QUOTE ]Actually, for the most part, I think it's the other way around. The infamous IBM DeskStars (DeathStars) were OEM Hitachis.

[/ QUOTE ]

The Deathstars are now Hitachi branded.

[Inearthed]

Re: Most reliable IDE Drives?

The only drives we use at my work are Seagate Barracudas. The new SATA ones are awesome. Western Digital is a good runner up.

Maxtor are cheap but slow and noisey and do not fair well under high temperature situations. Usually if we get a computer in with a dead hard drive it is either an IBM or a Maxtor.

[Bert]

Re: Most reliable IDE Drives?

IBM drives were very reliable up until the DeathStar fiasco. They sold the unit off to Hitachi shortly after. I've had pretty good luck with IBM drives in general. Maxtor drives are the worst.

[JRTME]

Re: Most reliable IDE Drives?

[ QUOTE ]
I've never had problems with any Maxtor I've used.

[/ QUOTE ]

Since I have over 300 Maxtor drives in my lab. I doubt any of you have even close to that amount. Maxtors work fine. So do western digital but the the larger WD externals can give you ploblem. I don't know who is worse IT guys or lawyers. [img]/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif[/img]

[Inearthed]

Re: Most reliable IDE Drives?

[ QUOTE ]
Since I have over 300 Maxtor drives in my lab. I doubt any of you have even close to that amount. Maxtors work fine. So do western digital but the the larger WD externals can give you ploblem. I don't know who is worse IT guys or lawyers. [img]/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Pardon me for sharing my experience and opinion, next time I'll check with you [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]