Need recommendation for good reliable hdd

[ae86trueno]

Hi all,

Any recommendation for good reliable hard disk?
I prefer reliable hard disk compared to fast/performance.
In the past 4-5 years I've experienced about 9 or 10 hard disk that gone bad..
I used to buy Seagate but my Seagate hdd seem just gone kaput in 2-3 years time (some even hardly used, just connecting to backup my data then keep in storage.. even those gone bad)
I do alot photography and photo editing.. need something reliable for backup without worrying the hdd gone kaput.

 

[Laurijan]

Samsung F3 from what I have heard is top notch - I personally dont trust: Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi and stuff like Exelstor

 

[slyfox2151]

+1 samsung F3s

 

[codyjansen]

Western Digital

 

[blkhogan]

Ive always trusted WD. Never really had a problem in recent years. F3s are another good choice.

 

[RejZoR]

WD Caviar Black series. Quite reliable and they have 5 years warranty. If reliability is important i suggest you also run CrystalDiskInfo as a resident program so it will constantly monitor your HDD condition. It's not ideal but it might save your data before the drive goes completely dead, meaning you can transfer data somewhere else before it's too late.

SSD's, even though they advertise 2 million hours MTBF they seem to have tendency to just die without any reason anytime from zero to these 2 million hours... I wouldn't just yet trust them as a storage of very important data. At least not without a proper backup. HDD's do die as well, no denying of that but they also tend to show symptoms before they go dead like weird noises, really bad performance etc. I don't remember any classic HDD to just go from working to a completely dead state directly. So there is a thought.

 

[Solaris17]

samsungs.

 

[Melvis]

+1 on the WD Black's, i have two 1TB Blacks and they have been brilliant. Seagate's lately i have just had them die, or get errors etc, haven't been pleased with Seagate's at all in the past few yrs.

 

[claylomax]

Hitachi.

 

[Andy_007]

Western Digital all the way. Ive had 2 640GB Blue Edition drives that went over 20k hours with not one fault or error. I currently have a 1TB Blue and 2TB Green both no issues. The first seagate 1.5TB drive ive brought new started having errors after 1 month started making odd noises after 6 months. I'll never buy segate again

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Western digital is probably your best bet, but I think reliability as a whole has gone down since samsung hit the market and forced prices down. Last drives I had total confidence in were the older 640 WD blue/blacks. I just recently ditched both my 2 tb and 1 tb samsung due to errors.

 

[Swamp Monster]

Western Digital RE4. They are enterprise HDD's with MTBF 1200000 hours. I've been using RE2 for about 3 years with no problems so far.

 

[Mussels]

samsung F3 and F4 have been the best for me so far. havent had any failures.


in total contradiction to LAN_deRf_HA, the WORST drives i've had were WD 640GB blacks. i had three fail on me within 24 hours of ownership, and havent touched WD since.

 

[Jan Kyster]

For some +20 years I've always said get a Seagate, but since appr. a year ago it's been Samsung F3 and recently swapped to WD Caviar Black 6GB/s.

Seagate - have RMA'ed at least 10 drives and completely lost faith :shadedshu
Samsung F3 - quiet and very fast. Cheap too!
Western Digital Black 6GB/s - quiet and very, very fast

 

[Solaris17]

i personally love seagates but samsungs as of late have really great bang for buck and tend to be cheaper then the seagates.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Western Digital Black 6GB/s - quiet and very, very fast

I've owned 2 of the new sata 6 blacks, they are not quiet. Very very far from quiet. Almost as bad as a raptor. Plenty of newegg reviews echoing that sentiment. There probably wasn't a lot of options for maintaining their famed access time while matching samsung's sequential, so noise sacrifice. My guess is it may be less noticeable if your case is further away or you have a lot of ambient sound.

samsung F3 and F4 have been the best for me so far. havent had any failures.


in total contradiction to LAN_deRf_HA, the WORST drives i've had were WD 640GB blacks. i had three fail on me within 24 hours of ownership, and havent touched WD since.

To be blunt that doesn't hold a lot of weight. Short term drive failures are a metric I ignore unless truly epidemic. Shipping impacts, batch problems. Focus on reliability should always be on the long term. I've never had a WD die long term, I've had samsungs go to hell though.

Ultimately the current HDD market doesn't really have a perfect go to drive. It's in a bad place, and SSDs have a whole other set of issues. So far the best I've managed is to put all my drives into quiet mode. Haven't noticed a speed impact outside of my fraps bmp screenshot folder.

 

[Jan Kyster]

I've owned 2 of the new sata 6 blacks, they are not quiet. Very very far from quiet. Almost as bad as a raptor...

My WD Caviar Black WD1002FAEX is defect then?!

Great!

Up till now I've handled four of these drives and they all were, what I consider noiseless. Otherwise we wouldn't have used them.

Even with ears to case, I can not hear the drive. Maybe sometimes very faint when under heavy load, but at least as quiet as Seagates...

 

[Completely Bonkers]

Any recommendation for good reliable hard disk?
...
In the past 4-5 years I've experienced about 9 or 10 hard disk that gone bad..

Out of how many? What is your loss rate? And HOW are you using them? Are they in external enclosures and getting moved around a lot?

I've never seen fail rates that high (unless that is 9 or 10 out of a couple of hundred+), so something, somewhere, is wrong.

It's either physical, e.g. knocked/damaged, or electrical, e.g. you have rotten PSU stability, or user, e.g. you power off your PC from the socket and don't "shut down" from windows.

 

[ae86trueno]

Thank you guys for the fast responses and all the suggestion. At where I live, a lot of the shops have Seagate and WD. I used to trust Seagate but been having alot of issues..

@Completely Bonkers: Excellent point I think.. you might be right with the external. I just realised most of these hdd gone with the external casing / docking, 3 of them is inside PC when they died (my PC running almost 24/7). I got total maybe about 15 HDDs.. so yeah that ratio is very very high .

I don't remember having a lot of issues, when I only have HDD inside my PC.

Btw few minutes ago I just found out the 11th time I lost HDD.. this time is WD 500GB green. I docked the drive in HDD docking and Windows said I need to initialize the disk...

I got several HDD.. i think at the moment about 6 HDD that still working (have not check all of them)... I wont be able to fit them all into my PC. thats the reason why i use external casing / docking...

 

[BarbaricSoul]

I've been real happy with my 7200.12

 

[Mussels]

i use E-sata enclosures myself for 9 external drives (with port multipliers, two enclosures for 9 drives), and except for those 3 WD 640's i've never had a drive fail inside them.


externals on a desk wont increase failure rates, externals that get transported a lot, might.

 

[mrhuggles]

what is a good program to put a hdd into quiet mode?

 

[Wile E]

I've been having th ebest luck with Samsung over the past couple of years. I have 5 of them in my server, and one in an enclosure, and no failures at all. Have had 2 WD's and 1 Seagate go in that time.

 

[ae86trueno]

I used to use external casing as well, those with the adapter and usb connector right?
I do move them a lot (normally from my cabinet to my desk). Especially with docking, just by changing HDD I already move them isn't it? I do however take care to make sure they don't get shaken or knock. When I move them I never make any sudden move.

Mussels, sorry I don't quite get it. how to use multiplier? so you able to connect to all 9 of them at same time? or 2 at one time and changing any of them when you need from the other HDD?

 

[techtard]

Any brand will do. The only reason that you hear about bad drives is because people love to complain. You never hear from the millions of uses that have perfectly functional, and long lasting drives.
You only hear from the few people (relatively speaking) who got burned by a bad drive. And they NEVER forget, and feel compelled to badmouth a manufacturer forever, even if they resolved the problem.