now that is more like it! not that silly link on Toms hardware to some russian company..

i get tired of having to qualify my comments but here it is again..
we sell about 400 HDDs a month yes a month.
we warranty those HDDs ourselves (we dont tell joe blow to go talk to wd/seagate)

so thats about 4800 a yr.. think i may have a clue?

Audio: mostly seagate as they are quieter (if they were louder (newer M00 series) i would have heard it by now from my guys)

Video: mostly WD

so we have a pretty even amount of each and both fail about 1.5-2%

SSDs i wont comment on other than NO OCZ, as well as its been an interesting ride thus far.

again as i said aside from every one in awhile a certain model having a firmware issue no one company is worse than the other..

anyone remember the IBM "deathstar"?

Scott
ADK

someone already mentioned it but its worth repeating..

if you are seeing drive after drive go bad then something is seriously wrong with your environment/system/power suppply.

the most common killer of HDDs (or any component) is BAD power.
a weak/failing power supply or crap power coming into the house (undervolted) which is very common.

Scott
ADK

Define "real world". Does every test that has been done support your claim? You can find 'studies' to support most any claim that can be made.

My point is that this is one case, with a small sample of drives compared to the overall market. I've seen studies which have been horrible for Western Digital. Read the reviews at various computer parts websites and you'll see they are just as varied.

To say that this study results in any type of fact would be very much overstating it.

Of course, I'm not saying that Seagate is the best or that another brand sucks. I'm simply pointing out how inaccurate individual tests can be, and if you take the WHOLE of the tests around the web, you'll find the numbers are quite even from one brand to another, not extreme as that test tried to show.

I have personally had excellent results with my Seagate drives. I know that I don't represent anyone other than one person, but it's at least worth something that myself and others have had great success with these drives.

Brent

perhaps there is something goofy with my power supply, Scott

I use an APC Line-R 1200 for the line in

What brands/wattage of PS do you recommend these days ?

thanks,
Eric

I've had three, doesn't compare to your hundreds, they've all had the squeak, two went back.

As I said in my original post, insofar as any individual can have a statistically significant sample.

I can't help but wonder if you just got a bad bunch from a bad run or something? You didn't mention if they were all bought at the same time or not, but it just seems strange that they would be squeaking.

Mine have all been very quiet, and honestly, I've never had any squeaking problems with ANY brand of hard drive(everything from Lacie to virtually nameless) that I can remember. My drives now are quieter than ever though and they are all Seagate as mentioned above(it should be mentioned that the internal drives are both suspended by rubber bungees and not actually mounted directly to the frame of my case).

Brent

No, they weren't. In fact, only one was internal. The other two were externals, both purchased, in fact, from different stores with one clearly older than the other.

Look, like I said, I just buy what's on sale, in general, I certainly believe that manufacturers will have ups and downs. With my quasi-random selection process I've just experienced much better results with hitachi drives. This has been true in my own machines and the machines that I help to manage at work.

Perhaps bad batches go on sale more often with seagate?

The OP asked about experience, and I'm reporting mine. For me, hitachi drives have been about as numerous as the segates but have, in general, been quieter, and have had fewer problems.

I've only had one out and out failure in recent years, probably because I replace my drives at the first sign of illness, that failure was a seagate LP. The drive is still, in fact running, but the issues with it caused an OS crash.

I have two 160GB drives that whine and cry like a wet cat and a 750GB that not only whines but gets way too hot. None of them are dead, but, I don't trust them.



So if your drives are all seagate, how can you claim that they are quieter than the current crop of other drives? I have recent versions of all three of the manufacturers in question either in my machines or out bare.

I don't know. I can only really report my experience and that of other people I know. I would never assume that my experience will be universal though. I've seen people completely hate Western Digital, and others swear by them. I have no idea why it happens this way. Just strokes of good and bad luck I guess, with a medium that by nature has a 100% failure rate. It's strange how different the experience of two people can be with various brands though.

Absolutely, definitely not saying you are WRONG. I really only got involved to show that no experience is universal. I will say that I believe the failure rates even out among all the brands in most tests I've seen. Who knows, my next Seagate may crap out on me after 3 months.

Very strange. Not sure what is happening, but my Seagate Barracude drives, along with the four externals(two are solid body, two are the GoFlex series of different sizes) are all very quiet with just a bit of spinup noise on the externals that you don't notice without listening for it(the internals are whisper quiet though).

So again, for whatever reason, some people have better luck with different brands than others. If I knew why, I would create my own brand and make millions, lol.

Brent

A little OT, but I just wanted to say thanks to you, Scott. You have provided a lot of very useful and free info over the years. I really appreciate it!

To be clear, I never claimed that it was. I claimed several things, namely:

1) In my experience, hitachi drives have been more reliable than seagate under my usage parameters, specifically, I replace drives quickly when they start making too much noise or behave erratically.

2) That a study done in 2010 reflected my experience.

3) That my experience does not reflect JSchild's claim of quieter seagate drives. I have multiple noisy whiny drives only a few years old and several noisy drives that are brand new. I have no noisy hitachis over the same period. I have roughly the same quantities of each brand. That is MY experience.

4) That I qualified my claim in my first post by stating "insofar as any individual can have a statistically significant number of drives"

Finally, I recommended that the OP use a mirrored drive to better protect his data.

There's a big tip off in the end of the article; out of the 200 drives... ya. Wow, not so great for statistical analysis in my opinion. The article even says the study is controversial and not scientific.

All drives die, eventually. Some have better luck than others. Remember the IBM "Deathstars" 75GXP drives from 2001? I have one STILL WORKING in one of my machines. I also had one totally die. I think I retired the other 3 I had, if I recall. I've had failures and successes on all the brands over the last 20+ years. Not to mention, for every horror story, someone will pop on this thread with a counter of they've had nothing but good luck.

It's luck of the draw. Assume the drive will eventually fail and always do backups if you care about the data. Some models of drives are better than others, without a doubt. But I have little proof that one brand is better than another. Only certain models at certain times, and that's only "better" not "perfect." Give me a study that shows tens or hundreds of thousands of drives, then I might believe it. People who've only had 10-20 drives in their life, I have a hard time taking that as hard evidence that "Brand X" is bad.

BTW - My experience stems from 8+ years of tech support for storage area networks for one of the largest tech companies in the world and 7+ years as a storage administrator with a multi petabyte footprint. I've dealt with a few drive issues over the years.

Devon
Last edited by DevonB on Thu May 17, 2012 9:49 am; edited 1 time in total

I didn't see that, did they discuss sampling? Despite common misconceptions, the numbers are not as important as how the sampling is done. However, at the risk of sounding like a dead horse, all I said was that the numbers reflect my experience.

My experience is what it is.

No, I wish they gave full sampling numbers. I also take into consideration this is a data recovery company. People paying for data recovery isn't exactly a good representation of the population at large either.



Agreed. Will not argue that.

Devon

I'm no expert. but read years ago, to keep the a windows OS drive
at under 50% capacity, defragmented, and configured to move either
small or large files with maximum efficiency, based on ones usage.

knocks on wood-grain formica .....