Good hardware reviews?

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Corliss
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John Corliss

Well, my Seagate hard drive is just about gone. I will be low level
formatting it and sending it back tomorrow, then hooking up my backup as
the master. Can anybody recommend a site where there are good consumer
reviews for hard drives? At this point though, I'm beginning to think
that there are no more good hard drive companies.

TIA
 
John said:
Well, my Seagate hard drive is just about gone. I will be low level
formatting it and sending it back tomorrow, then hooking up my backup as
the master. Can anybody recommend a site where there are good consumer
reviews for hard drives? At this point though, I'm beginning to think
that there are no more good hard drive companies.

TIA
Click to expand...

Here is a good review of hard drives:

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20050927/index.html

Here are good editorial reviews along with user reviews:

http://reviews.cnet.com/4566-3186_7-0.html?tag=dir.hd&sort=edRating7+desc
 
Well, my Seagate hard drive is just about gone. I will be low level
formatting it and sending it back tomorrow, then hooking up my backup as
the master. Can anybody recommend a site where there are good consumer
reviews for hard drives? At this point though, I'm beginning to think
that there are no more good hard drive companies.

TIA
Click to expand...


The problem with that is youll get tons of different posts all bashing
every brand, In fact the current trend right now --- usually one brand
gets bashed a bit more than others every once in a while --- is to
prase the heck out of Seagate because they have a 5 year warranty and
bash Maxtor as horrible. There are lots of WD bashers as well. Seagate
is the one thats praised.

The one thing about seagate after there was a string of horrendous
reviews at Amazon and I mean horrible , for the 400 and 500 gig huge
external drives during the time people swores seagates were wonderful
, I see now theres a buzz going around about certain batches of
seagates. They mention this series of seagate being bad -- a new
series and the older ones being good.

Generally speaking the 160 gig ones seem fine and the 200 gig ones Ive
only seen horrible reviews on the huge ones but posts talking about
seem to point out certain new series , I dont know if that covers the
smaller ones too.

Frankly I would look at your setup , system if you really are having
so many problems. Ive never had a HD fail due to physical reason
literally. I do have them periodically HD problems cause of some
conflict somewhere that really wasnt the HDs fault. For instance
Direct CD and NERO used to have conflicts and that would mess up my
windows installation. Lots of periodic things like that which forced
me to reinstall WIn. The big one was a bad stick of memory that seemed
to screw tons of things up , it corrupted my WINDOWs installation
evenatually causing my WD HD to crash and get corrupted several times
and even seemed to cause what I thought was a bad pixel on my LCD.

Of course you just might be the unlucky guy who did get a horrible
Seagate and Maxtor which people have gotten. If thats true the odds
youll get another one is pretty small. You might want to try the other
brands Hitachi and WD. Hitachi formerly IBM was also wildly praised ,
you were virtually attacked if you suggested IBMs werent the best HDs
period , but then they had a bad batch of them and they were bashed
everywhere. I havent heard any bad things about them since then but
some people because of the past still dont like them.

I would say the main thing is look at your system for poor
ventilation. I use cooling for HDs on all my drives now. One site
seemed to suggest with 7200 rpms and higher its a good idea.
Ive also heard about some MBs in which it was claimed some HDs didnt
get along with like Maxtors and some 754 socket boards Ive seen at
some sites. Dont know if thats true or not. If you suspect this maybe
a bios upgrade or even a controller card may help. You might want to
test your memory too just in case you have a subtle mem error which I
had that corrupted my WINDOWS installation and a neighbor had the same
problem from a bad stick.
 
Well, my Seagate hard drive is just about gone. I will be low level
formatting it and sending it back tomorrow, then hooking up my backup as
the master. Can anybody recommend a site where there are good consumer
reviews for hard drives? At this point though, I'm beginning to think
that there are no more good hard drive companies.

TIA
Click to expand...


I'd read some random (let's call them rumors, as there was
not enough evidence to draw any solid conclusion) that when
Seagate went to 133GB/platter in the 7200.8 models, they had
a higher than normal failure rate for awhile.

Beyond that, it seems most of the brands (including Seagate)
are having similar rates. It does not appear that one can
simply conclude that brand "X" is only making crap while
brand "Y" is making all *better* drives, that particular
models and especially newest technology is going to be more
of an issue than which brand. With that in mind I suggest
buying at best price-point possible, "maybe" avoiding
Seagate 7200.8 drives, and getting sufficient #s of them (or
alternate backup strategies) that it matters less whether a
particular drive runs long-term or not.

However, http://www.storagereview.com does have a
reliability database, but unfortunately this is post-dated
information and with models being most failure prone while
immature, the data is more accurate in retrospect than for
current models.
 
The problem with that is youll get tons of different posts all bashing
every brand, In fact the current trend right now --- usually one brand
gets bashed a bit more than others every once in a while --- is to
prase the heck out of Seagate because they have a 5 year warranty and
bash Maxtor as horrible. There are lots of WD bashers as well. Seagate
is the one thats praised.

The one thing about seagate after there was a string of horrendous
reviews at Amazon and I mean horrible , for the 400 and 500 gig huge
external drives during the time people swores seagates were wonderful
, I see now theres a buzz going around about certain batches of
seagates. They mention this series of seagate being bad -- a new
series and the older ones being good.

Generally speaking the 160 gig ones seem fine and the 200 gig ones Ive
only seen horrible reviews on the huge ones but posts talking about
seem to point out certain new series , I dont know if that covers the
smaller ones too.

Frankly I would look at your setup , system if you really are having
so many problems. Ive never had a HD fail due to physical reason
literally. I do have them periodically HD problems cause of some
conflict somewhere that really wasnt the HDs fault. For instance
Direct CD and NERO used to have conflicts and that would mess up my
windows installation. Lots of periodic things like that which forced
me to reinstall WIn. The big one was a bad stick of memory that seemed
to screw tons of things up , it corrupted my WINDOWs installation
evenatually causing my WD HD to crash and get corrupted several times
and even seemed to cause what I thought was a bad pixel on my LCD.

Of course you just might be the unlucky guy who did get a horrible
Seagate and Maxtor which people have gotten. If thats true the odds
youll get another one is pretty small. You might want to try the other
brands Hitachi and WD. Hitachi formerly IBM was also wildly praised ,
you were virtually attacked if you suggested IBMs werent the best HDs
period , but then they had a bad batch of them and they were bashed
everywhere. I havent heard any bad things about them since then but
some people because of the past still dont like them.

I would say the main thing is look at your system for poor
ventilation. I use cooling for HDs on all my drives now. One site
seemed to suggest with 7200 rpms and higher its a good idea.
Ive also heard about some MBs in which it was claimed some HDs didnt
get along with like Maxtors and some 754 socket boards Ive seen at
some sites. Dont know if thats true or not. If you suspect this maybe
a bios upgrade or even a controller card may help. You might want to
test your memory too just in case you have a subtle mem error which I
had that corrupted my WINDOWS installation and a neighbor had the same
problem from a bad stick.
Click to expand...

Since both failures have been the read head arm pivot locking up
(click... click.... click... click.... and the BIOS not seeing the
drive), I tend to think that they're just not making hard drives to last
anymore. And this would not surprise me, since greed usually leads to
increases in planned obsolescence that finally reach a point where
people say enough. Apparently that point hasn't been reached yet.

I agree with your overview of hard drive assessments on the internet,
but if Hitachi bought out Deathstar, then woe to them.
 
kony said:
I'd read some random (let's call them rumors, as there was
not enough evidence to draw any solid conclusion) that when
Seagate went to 133GB/platter in the 7200.8 models, they had
a higher than normal failure rate for awhile.

Beyond that, it seems most of the brands (including Seagate)
are having similar rates. It does not appear that one can
simply conclude that brand "X" is only making crap while
brand "Y" is making all *better* drives, that particular
models and especially newest technology is going to be more
of an issue than which brand. With that in mind I suggest
buying at best price-point possible, "maybe" avoiding
Seagate 7200.8 drives, and getting sufficient #s of them (or
alternate backup strategies) that it matters less whether a
particular drive runs long-term or not.

However, http://www.storagereview.com does have a
reliability database, but unfortunately this is post-dated
information and with models being most failure prone while
immature, the data is more accurate in retrospect than for
current models.
Click to expand...

Thanks Kony, I'm going to check it out.

--
Regards from John Corliss
My current killfile: aafuss, Chrissy Cruiser, Slowhand Hussein and others.
No adware, cdware, commercial software, crippleware, demoware, nagware,
PROmotionware, shareware, spyware, time-limited software, trialware,
viruses or warez please.
 
FML said:
Here is a good review of hard drives:

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20050927/index.html

Here are good editorial reviews along with user reviews:

http://reviews.cnet.com/4566-3186_7-0.html?tag=dir.hd&sort=edRating7+desc
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the first link is mostly a performance review (unless I
missed something) and what I'm looking for is a reliability poll. As for
the second link, it's more of a particular drive model by drive model
review. Again, I'm really looking for a hard drive company reliability
poll. However, from what I'm seeing on the internet, all of the
companies suck, and the new hard drives blow.

Hmmm. Suck and blow. And not oxymoronic either.

Thanks for replying!
 
Since both failures have been the read head arm pivot locking up
(click... click.... click... click....
Click to expand...

No that sound is not the arm piviot locking up, the click
sound is when it makes a full travel trying to find track 0.
If there were a head pivot problem, that could cause it, or
other bearing wear, but if it locked up it would not make
the perpetual clicking nois.

and the BIOS not seeing the
drive), I tend to think that they're just not making hard drives to last
anymore. And this would not surprise me, since greed usually leads to
increases in planned obsolescence that finally reach a point where
people say enough. Apparently that point hasn't been reached yet.

I agree with your overview of hard drive assessments on the internet,
but if Hitachi bought out Deathstar, then woe to them.
Click to expand...

When going to higher density it appears that random
tolerance become more significant. It would not be a lower
qualitiy drive (in a certain context, unless one uses
another interpretation that quality is the overall state of
whether it works or not), simply that mechanical tolerance
has not been refined to the same extent as magnetic density.
 
kony said:
I'd read some random (let's call them rumors, as there was
not enough evidence to draw any solid conclusion) that when
Seagate went to 133GB/platter in the 7200.8 models, they had
a higher than normal failure rate for awhile.

Beyond that, it seems most of the brands (including Seagate)
are having similar rates. It does not appear that one can
simply conclude that brand "X" is only making crap while
brand "Y" is making all *better* drives, that particular
models and especially newest technology is going to be more
of an issue than which brand. With that in mind I suggest
buying at best price-point possible, "maybe" avoiding
Seagate 7200.8 drives, and getting sufficient #s of them (or
alternate backup strategies) that it matters less whether a
particular drive runs long-term or not.

However, http://www.storagereview.com does have a
reliability database, but unfortunately this is post-dated
information and with models being most failure prone while
immature, the data is more accurate in retrospect than for
current models.
Click to expand...

Thanks Kony, I'm going to check it out.
 
John said:
Thanks Kony, I'm going to check it out.
Click to expand...



With the exceptions of IBM "DeathStars" and several Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9
S-ATA hard drives, I've had good luck with all of the major brands since
2000.

In the case of the latter, a full 50% of the drives died (6/12) within one
month of installation. Since they came from different sources, I can't
fathom this being a statistical anomaly.

Your choice of Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Plus PATA 8MB was sound, IMO. Keep
any hard drive cool with a front intake fan and make frequent backups.
Seagate hard drives are usually cooler running than most.
 
S.Heenan said:
With the exceptions of IBM "DeathStars" and several Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9
S-ATA hard drives, I've had good luck with all of the major brands since
2000.
Click to expand...

You've been reading my mail! I'm currently running a Deathstar (as I
type this) and have been warned by the head of tech support at ABS to
not rely on it. I also ran a Maxtor Diamondmax Plus ATA 100/60 GB that
only lasted three of the five years for which it was warrentied.
In the case of the latter, a full 50% of the drives died (6/12) within one
month of installation. Since they came from different sources, I can't
fathom this being a statistical anomaly.

Your choice of Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Plus PATA 8MB was sound, IMO. Keep
any hard drive cool with a front intake fan and make frequent backups.
Seagate hard drives are usually cooler running than most.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that support and suggestion. I think I will look into
installing a front fan. Currently I have a fan in the back, another in
my power supply and one on CPU.

As for the Seagate, Newegg just received my RMA'd one. We'll see if they
send me send me somebody else's "repaired" junk, repair my old one or
send me a really-for-real new replacement. All I know is that I'm very
tired of dealing with hard drive problems. They sure don't make 'em like
they used to.

Yesterday with the intention of backing up my files, I installed a new
DVD double layer burner (Memorex model 32023292) that came with Nero 6.
Nero hosed my hard drive when I foolishly installed Incd 4. It took a
System Restore and reinstallation of Nero (minus Incd4) to get my system
running again. However, the reinstalled Nero tells me that both my DVD
ROM and my new burner are "locked by unknown application (code 15)"
and..... well, this is alt.comp.hardware, not alt.comp.software so I
won't go into it.

Seems like I can't win.
 
You've been reading my mail! I'm currently running a Deathstar (as I
type this) and have been warned by the head of tech support at ABS to
not rely on it. I also ran a Maxtor Diamondmax Plus ATA 100/60 GB that
only lasted three of the five years for which it was warrentied.
Click to expand...


You might be jinxed... while Maxtor Plus 9 wasn't the one
you have, your Maxtor was one of the more common to die
early. I had at least two of them fail, IIRC they were
Maxtors' first-gen of 7K2 drive and they soon thereafter
switched to selling Maxtor-relabeled Quantum designs for
awhile before going back to Maxtor tech. Then again, maybe
Quantum just had a boatload of drives that were needing
sold.
 
kony said:
You might be jinxed... while Maxtor Plus 9 wasn't the one
you have, your Maxtor was one of the more common to die
early. I had at least two of them fail, IIRC they were
Maxtors' first-gen of 7K2 drive and they soon thereafter
switched to selling Maxtor-relabeled Quantum designs for
awhile before going back to Maxtor tech. Then again, maybe
Quantum just had a boatload of drives that were needing
sold.
Click to expand...

Sad thing is, I had a chance to wipe it before it went entirely. Had I
been able to do that, I would have asked for an exchange. On the other
hand, another one of the same model wouldn't have been a good thing either.

On this most current front, I've succeeded in getting Nero to work on my
system. I found and deleted the .vxd for Incd4, which should have
disappeared during System Restore I believe but didn't. First I
uninstalled "Nero Photoshow Elite". Then I found a startup entry for a
Roxio executable which I used System Configuration to remove, and
finally, I used an old copy of Microsoft's "Regcleaner" to remove the
debris from my registry. Suddenly, Nero started working perfectly.

The burner seems to be doing a good job and I've successfully backed up
much of what I wanted. There's still some to go, but I anticipate (knock
on wood) no further difficulties.

How do you feel about the current Maxtor drives that are now selling?
 
I love my Maxtor HD that I got a little more than a year ago. I've had
no problems at all with it. It's a 160GB SATA
 
How do you feel about the current Maxtor drives that are now selling?
Click to expand...


Haven't had any fail recently though more of those I've
bought were Seagate, WD and Samsung. Last one I bought was
maxtor but it's still practically new. I don't generally
buy based on brand but rather based on
promotions/price-points. Even so, I have over a dozen
Maxtors here that are under 3 years old and they're doing
fine so far (knock on wood).
 
I love my Maxtor HD that I got a little more than a year ago. I've had
no problems at all with it. It's a 160GB SATA
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, one year isn't long enough to tell if it's going to fail
on you. My Maxtor failed after only three years of use.
 
kony said:
Haven't had any fail recently though more of those I've
bought were Seagate, WD and Samsung. Last one I bought was
maxtor but it's still practically new. I don't generally
buy based on brand but rather based on
promotions/price-points. Even so, I have over a dozen
Maxtors here that are under 3 years old and they're doing
fine so far (knock on wood).
Click to expand...

Thanks Kony. FYI, I did find this site:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Buyers_Guide/HardDrives.jsp

which says the following:
-----------------------------------------------------------
"Reliability & Warranty

On the whole, the reliability of hard drives is better than ever before.
Technologies such as S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting
Technology--developed by IBM), can detect mechanical problems and warn you.

Nevertheless, every drive will eventually fail. Actually, hard drives
follow what is called the "bathtub curve" of failure. They have a
relatively high rate of failure early on, a very low rate of failure for
several years, then a gradual decrease in reliability as they approach
the end of their life.

Most manufacturers list Service Life and Warranty specifications for
their drives. Service life is the length of time the manufacturer says
the drive should run before the chance of failure begins increasing.
This is usually 5 years.

Generally a drive's warranty is only 3 years, though. However, there are
some drives with 5 year warranties. These drives are typically much more
expensive, and have probably been manufactured to more exacting
standards. But, will you want the same drive in five years? Maybe not.

Rather than making backups yourself, you may want to consider purchasing
two hard drives and setting up a RAID (redundant array of independent
disks) array. With a RAID array everything saved to one hard drive is
also saved to the other. In addition, reads are faster because both
drives can be read at once. "
-------------------------------------------------------------

To which I say, bullcrap. Drives are NOT more reliable than "before" and
YES, I will want the same drive if I'm using the same computer. And a
mere five year life expectancy is not acceptable.

It's time for a more reliable and efficient method of data storage to
come about.
 
To which I say, bullcrap. Drives are NOT more reliable than "before" and
YES, I will want the same drive if I'm using the same computer. And a
mere five year life expectancy is not acceptable.

It's time for a more reliable and efficient method of data storage to
come about.
Click to expand...

What else do you own that is:

A) Mechanical

B) Higher precision than a hard drive

C) Both A & B and has a lifespan over 5 years

I don't like that HDDs aren't long-lived, but have learned
to accept it. At least the capacity has gone up but the
price down. Last Maxtor I bought was 120GB, $20 after
rebates. More commonly you can get 160GB for $40-50 AR.
They can hold several [5 year old drives'] worth of data and
are at least twice as fast.

If you need highest reliability over the long term, you'll
have to suffer the higher cost of flash memory or the more
cumbersome use of tape or optical discs. With the two
latter options you still have the issue of how well the
mechanical drive that reads them will last long-term... that
is, if you're talking about a lot longer than 5 years but
then even flash memory has it's limits, most were at least
10 years retention IIRC, but I don't know if that figure has
gone up any or not.
 
kony said:
To which I say, bullcrap. Drives are NOT more reliable than "before" and
YES, I will want the same drive if I'm using the same computer. And a
mere five year life expectancy is not acceptable.

It's time for a more reliable and efficient method of data storage to
come about.
Click to expand...


What else do you own that is:

A) Mechanical

B) Higher precision than a hard drive

C) Both A & B and has a lifespan over 5 years

I don't like that HDDs aren't long-lived, but have learned
to accept it. At least the capacity has gone up but the
price down. Last Maxtor I bought was 120GB, $20 after
rebates. More commonly you can get 160GB for $40-50 AR.
They can hold several [5 year old drives'] worth of data and
are at least twice as fast.

If you need highest reliability over the long term, you'll
have to suffer the higher cost of flash memory or the more
cumbersome use of tape or optical discs. With the two
latter options you still have the issue of how well the
mechanical drive that reads them will last long-term... that
is, if you're talking about a lot longer than 5 years but
then even flash memory has it's limits, most were at least
10 years retention IIRC, but I don't know if that figure has
gone up any or not.
Click to expand...

Guess I'm spoiled by the fact that in the past, hard drives were far
more reliable. My neice is still using my P90 with a 730 mb Western
Digital that I bought back in 1994.
 
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