gonna have to replace my samples/project drive . . . AGAIN. Not even a year-old Seagate 500 . . . arghhh

What brands are the most reliable ? What models are the most robust ?

I use a 64gb SSD for programs / WIN7 / Office so I should be fine there
can't afford a big, fat SSD for the samples - let's talk under $200

I have been extremely happy with hitachi drives. Insofar as an individual can use a statistically representative sample, my experience with seagate and wd has not been as good as it has been with hitachi. The G-Drive line is hitachi's portable line AFAIK.

This is a little more than what you have in mind, but, I'd consider something like this run in raid-1 (drive mirroring). Then, if one of it's internal drives dies, you order a replacement and keep on trucking while you're waiting for it to arrive. Keep in mind, that although it's a 1TB drive, mirrored it's only 500GB

http://www.amazon.com/G-Technology-External-Firewire-Interfa ces-0G01652/dp/B003FQBJZQ/ref=pd_cp_pc_0

The single version

http://www.amazon.com/G-Technology-Portable-External-Interfa ces-0G01650/dp/B003DTK1HC/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&q id=1337127706&sr=1-3

I'd say issue your warranty and get a replacement drive. Then hope for the best... To be honest, it's a lottery.

I've had a WD drive failing with SMART errors after 11 months. Got it replaced without issue by the shop I bought it at. They were kind enough to give me a 160GB model since 120GB was not in stock, and they also transferred all the data over. Real shops might do that, web shops not so often.
11 months later that replacement drive reported SMART errors as well. It's replacement (then replaced still under warranty) is still running fine. For data only, a year later I put in another drive for the OS. Keeping fingers crossed, that was like 5 years ago.

Glyph.

Read their warranty then try to find another company that do data recovery ($$$) under warranty.

I have had one for 5 years and just bought another 1tb for $179.

It does seem to be a bit of a lottery and the recommended brands seem to change every few years. It's as if they're thinking, okay, now that we're recommended and highly respected we can afford to slack off a bit. Or maybe it's that because everybody recommends a certain brand they start running behind due to demand and when they step up production things start to go wrong. Seagate is one of those brands that at one time was said to be very good but I've had two Seagates die on me in the past few years. I've gone back to using WDs lately. I think what others have said makes a lot of sense: get your drive from a place that will replace it if it goes bad under warranty... and make sure to back things up. And don't necessarily go for the cheapest bargain model either... usually each brand has two or three tiers of models.

All of that said, for audio/video Glyph IS highly recommended and they have a really good warranty policy. Maybe a little more expensive but worth it.

they ALL fail about the same %
there is no magic answer.
every once in awhile a certain model will have a high fail rate for a short period but past that they are all the same.

i prefer seagate as they are quieter, on the other hand Seagate reduced their warranty to 1 yr on most drives WD is still 5 yr (whats funny is is the flood didnt hurt seagate so i cant imagine why they did it..)

Glyph? LOL not in a million yrs is it worth the money.. data recovery? if you dont have your data backed up shame on you..

FYI they use seagate or did last time i sold them.

Scott
ADK

I haven't found that to be true at all. The most recent M001 drives, in particular, seemed to have annoying noise quirks for a large number of users.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ST2000DM001+noise

I have one of those (temporarily) plus three hitachi drives in my current desktop and I can't hear the hitachis at all. I remember being shocked when I bought them, I wasn't even sure that they were on. All four drives are 7200 RPM.

This is pretty consistent with my experience with seagate drives.

The WD green series are really quiet, but they're not performance demons.

I've usually just purchased whatever met my performance requirements and was on sale at the time. Maybe I've just been lucky and purchased hitachi when they were quiet and reliable, wd when they were quiet and less reliable, and seagate when they were noisy and flaky.

Trouble is, that's been a lot of drives over the last fifteen years or so. I don't know that any seagate drive I've owned has ever been quiet. They haven't all been flakey, but they've had way more than their fair share for me.

I've used a 1TB Glyph for a couple of years. I was very impressed by the solid build, no wall wart and the data connection options. It's been 100% dependable and used it for streaming samples.

Downside: Higher Price and Noise. I don't know if they all make this much noise from the moment you turn it on or if it's just my unit -- otherwise it works excellent and is built like a tank. I plan to only use it for backups going forward. It would be fine if I used a separate computer room from my studio, but currently it sits next to me and is distracting even when I'm not tracking with microphones.

YMMV it may just be my unit.

just bought a Hitachi deskstar 1TB sata III drive

wish me luck at recovering data from the old backup's backup that this replaces . . .

i have a theory - some people tend to get drive after drive because they fail - some people keep drives until they die consecutively - maybe you need to rethink your drive's environment if you have had more than one die in the same bay - it may be too hot for them in your area or something.. there are extra drive bay coolers if this sounds right to you.. is your case a good reliable case or an aluminum nightmare concocted by a blind nazi?

In 2010, the numbers reflected my experience.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hdd-reliability-storelab  ,2681-2.html

While the results may reflect it, I doubt they reflect any type of real-world, all the time type of numbers. Who knows what other factors came into play. A different model of drive comes out that has flaws and brings the overall numbers down, for instance. How long were those drives owned in that study?

For instance, I currently own three external Seagate drives plus one additional external Seagate drive at work, along with both of my internal drives being Seagate. Never had an issue(two bad sectors appeared recently on the oldest one, but the drive has been used a LOT) that was worth complaining about.

Not that everyone will have that experience, but just to show you that it's not likely that you'll find definitive numbers on this, and everyone will have a different experience. You may have had bad luck with Seagates. I've had great luck with them.

In the end, if Seagate drives were as bad across the board as the study you linked to above, would they still be one of, if not the leading seller of drives? Probably not, right? So I would say that in most cases, hard drives are going to be pretty similar for reliability, and they ALL will die at some point.

Brent

The numbers actually do reflect real world performance, that's what they are. The age of the drives when defects occur is reported in the study.

Seagates fail terribly, in my experience more often than other brands.


I would suggest WD, Samsung, or just get an SSD if you can.

I've been using WWestern Digital since 1998 (internal back then and and not for music)
I currently have a 1TB WD and it's been there for 3 years. I'm using it for back up and large sample libraries. It works like a charm but loading up bigger files takes a bit of time. But that always the case I guess.