# Which manufacturers drives have failed on you?



## Deleted member 24505 (Nov 2, 2011)

This is just so we can see which drives fail the most. You can select multiple options if you have had more than one make of drive fail on you.


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## Red_Machine (Nov 2, 2011)

None of my drives have ever failed.  And I own the IBM Deskstar that earned the series the nickname "Deathtar", still soldiering on after a decade of use.


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## Deleted member 24505 (Nov 2, 2011)

Aren't they made by hitachi? Not certain though.


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## temp02 (Nov 2, 2011)

I too never had a drive which died completely. The worse I had was my brothers Western 80GB desktop HDD which after parking its reading heads never un-parked them, they became stuck for some odd reason, so, while the computer was stuck at BIOS waiting for the HDD response, we smacked the HDD sideways to the floors carpet a couple of times, hard, until we heard the heads seeking again. This was years ago, but it never did the same thing again, and I don't expect it too, or else it gets another beating xD


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## Maban (Nov 2, 2011)

Only drive I've had die on me was my last Vertex 2.

You should add a None to that list.


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## NastyHabits (Nov 2, 2011)

I have never had a drive fail on any PC I've ever owned.  That goes back to the dawn of PC time.  At work, however, I've seen many a drive fail.  Most of them Seagate or WD, but then they are the biggest sellers, so I'd expect that.  Also, more failures in business PC because of inferior components, too small power supplies, minimal or non-existant cooling to say nothing about being placed on the floor (dusty place) and left on for years.


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## entropy13 (Nov 2, 2011)

No failures. And the laptop has a Hitachi.


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## Deleted member 24505 (Nov 2, 2011)

Dunno how to edit the poll to add none, so if none just don't click anything in the poll i guess.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 2, 2011)

Personally, I've had Seagate, Samsung, and WD fail on me.  Though though my business I've seen them all failed, so I selected them all.


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## Red_Machine (Nov 2, 2011)

tigger said:


> Aren't they made by hitachi? Not certain though.



Not at that time.  IBM sold it's harddrive business off after the Deathstar scandal.


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## de.das.dude (Nov 2, 2011)

i have a hitachi 80gb bought in 2007. it doesnt have a single bad sector and all its smart charecteristics are fine. it still gives ~75MB/s read write.

but the seagate barracuda failed completely after 3 years.


also this poll is meaning less, as WD and segate being the most popular ones, they have more quantities being sold, and hence a greater amount of failures will automatically come out of them.


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## DarkOCean (Nov 2, 2011)

One seagate failed on me but it was kind of my fault and i never had any samsung ,wd ,or hitachi to know how those are.


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## horik (Nov 2, 2011)

Samsung Spinpoint F1 died on me after 2 years of use.


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## Frick (Nov 2, 2011)

i had a maxtor drive crashing once.


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## lilhasselhoffer (Nov 2, 2011)

I've had mostly Seagates in the past (6 1TB drives in the past three years).  Of the older drives, 4 of them have failed on me.  Those failures were 1 DOA, 2 slow death, and 1 death out of the blue within 4 months of use.  I really hate the barracuda line, as their earlier drives have proven themselves as better than 50-50 chance of failure within the first year....

I have Samsung and WD 500 GB harddrives (one of each), that still soldier on after 5+ years of intensive (read: OS thrashings) usage.  Both of these drives are absolute tanks. 

I've purchased 5 Hitachi 2 TB disks, of which 4 have been running for over a year in RAID.  None of these suckers show even the mildest indications of failure.  

I have an additional WD 2 TB drive that has been running for a year and a half.  It isn't exactly breaking any speed records, but it always responds when I need it to. 


For my money, Seagate can eat me.  Their replacement service is relatively quick, almost as though their 1 TB drives were known to be bad....  I digress.  Hitachi got the name Deathstar for a reason, but they've definitely moved past it (in my experience).  Samsung makes a decent drive, or at least they used to.  I've generally stuck with Hitachi and WD when their pricing was reasonable.


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## BazookaJoe (Nov 2, 2011)

Maxtor,

Fujitsu,

Western Digital, Western Digital, Western Digital, Western Digital.....

In WD's defense, ALL of their drives lasted out the warranty period just fine, but ALL of them also failed within weeks of the warranty expiring - I have never purchased another western digital since.

I now exclusively use Seagate, with astonishing success - I have only ever had 2 failures - with that 7200.11 firmware bug, but both dives where re-flashed, and repaired and are still running just fine to this very day.

Since 1998  I have used over 200 Seagate drives with NO failure and don't plan on ever using any other make of mechanical drive.


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## Flibolito (Nov 2, 2011)

I have had a WD 640GB Black go down. I think it was mishandled during shipping. WD replaced it in a hurry and were great about it. I bought a second one and had a nice RAID 0 array.


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## de.das.dude (Nov 2, 2011)

oh shit look at seagate!


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## Sasqui (Nov 2, 2011)

Two Seagate drives (in RAID 1!) and one WD that arrived DOA.

I have a SCSI drive from work that failed in spectacular style, grind marks near the center of the top platter and magnetic dust everywhere.  Great conversation peice.  Cover is gone, so I don't know the make.


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## Fourstaff (Nov 2, 2011)

2 very old Seagate failed on me, but they "died of age", so I am not going to count. The last one is Samsung, my brother dropped it 

The rest are good.


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## AsRock (Nov 2, 2011)

Only Fujitsu have actually failed on me and never had a Samsung or Hitachi HDD. WD drives never stopped working and strangely never had a bad block with them were as with Seagates i always tend to get bad blocks but neither have broken down to the point of not working at all.

However the closest i have had to a breakdown of a WD or seagate was a WD 850MB HDD were the PCB actually came loose.


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## Scheich (Nov 2, 2011)

2 small Samsungs failed after only 2 years, 1 Seagate after 4,5 years, which i think doesnt count


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Nov 2, 2011)

Does sending samsungs back for errors count? Otherwise none.


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## Eric_Cartman (Nov 5, 2011)

I wish there was a way to multiple vote for Western Digital.

My Caviar Green drive has died 3 times on my in just over a year and a half.

Twice it started clicking loudly a few days before it died.

So I could get my data off it.

The third time it just died right in the middle of me using the computer.

The computer just locked up and when I rebooted the drive was gone and I couldn't get any computer to detect it.

Also my roommate's Caviar Black died twice on him.

When he finally replaced it with a RE4 drive that drive died two weeks after he bought it.

And before anyone says something else must be going on with out drives he has a Samsung 250GB that he keeps in his machine that is always in use downloading torrents and it has run strong without any issue for years.

So it isn't any outside force killing the drives.

Western Digital just makes crap drives.


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## Jetster (Nov 5, 2011)

I agree WD is crap. Ive seen at least 10 go bad before 2 years. Ive never seen a Sansung go bad yet


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## AsRock (Nov 5, 2011)

Jetster said:


> I agree WD is crap. Ive seen at least 10 go bad before 2 years. Ive never seen a Sansung go bad yet



What a load of BS, every time this comes up the failures of both of these companys are always about the same, i always seem to get bad blocks with Seagate and never had one on a WD drive.

As for samsung i've heard some of there issue's too,  not sure how their sales compare to WD and Seagate though.

Some users get along with one or the other, be nice to hear some one explain that away..


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## Jetster (Nov 5, 2011)

One reason I can think of as far as WD is they sell a lot of drives. Maybe why I see so many bad ones. I have seen Seagates with bad blocks but they kept on going. The failure rate of the companies may be similar. But just not my experance


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## micropage7 (Nov 5, 2011)

i got it fail just years ago WD 80gb and samsung
WD fail in a month and samsung in couple of months
but i guess theres so many reason why it fail, from build quality, shock, how long it has run, electric etc
i experienced seagate r.i.p too but since it over 5 years i guess its still normal


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## FreedomEclipse (Nov 5, 2011)

Ive had 2 Maxtors, 1 samsung, and 2 seagates fail on me.


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## Mussels (Nov 5, 2011)

only WD have failed on me, without user error (i dropped the drives etc) being involved.


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## D4S4 (Nov 5, 2011)

only a single maxtor in the past 8 years. why isn't it in the poll?


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## Deleted member 24505 (Nov 5, 2011)

Only fail i have had really was a samsung, click, click, click. Returned it for a replacement.


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## FreedomEclipse (Nov 5, 2011)

D4S4 said:


> only a single maxtor in the past 8 years. why isn't it in the poll?



Because Maxtor was aquired by Seagate. The only afaik the only common 'maxtor' related products out on the market now are their External drives, but even they arent as widely stocked as before.

Unfortunately Samsung suffers the same fate as Maxtor. Seagate has aquired samsungs HDD side of the business


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## bbmarley (Nov 5, 2011)

had a first gen ocz ssd turn to brick on me randomly 

never had a problem with samsung hds used a bunch over the years


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## adulaamin (Nov 5, 2011)

I've had 2 hard drives fail on me. The first one was a 1tb 7200.11 from seagate which lasted arnd 2 years. The second was a 1tb WD1001FALS which lasted arnd 1 1/2 years. It ran really hot I was surprised it lasted that long.


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## Batou1986 (Nov 5, 2011)

All, WD>Segate>Samsung>Others.


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## D4S4 (Nov 5, 2011)

hm... now i remember. damn i'm outdated 

btw i believe that his poll doesn't make much sense since seagate's and wd's are the most common, hence most failed discs...

http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/30dayshare.html


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## Static~Charge (Nov 6, 2011)

Red_Machine said:


> None of my drives have ever failed.  And I own the IBM Deskstar that earned the series the nickname "Deathtar", still soldiering on after a decade of use.





tigger said:


> Aren't they made by hitachi? Not certain though.



They are now. Years ago, they were made by IBM. The early drives were great, then their reliability went into the toilet (inspiring the "Deathstar" nickname). Hitachi bought IBM's hard drive division in 2003 and renamed it Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST).


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## Static~Charge (Nov 6, 2011)

In my home experience, I've had a couple WD drives fail over the past 10 years (no other brands, because I didn't own any).

In my work experience, I've had drives from every brand on the list fail. Most of my work machines use Seagate and WD, so I see these the most; they're running neck-and-neck for the top (bottom?) place. Had a couple Samsung and a couple Fujitsu drives fail in the past four years, and no Hitachis.


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## stefanels (Nov 6, 2011)

I never experienced a drive failure from "96 so far...


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## radrok (Nov 6, 2011)

If there was no one I would have voted that because luckily I've never had any hard drive failure


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## hoax32 (Nov 7, 2011)

WD Scorpion Blue Crashed on me in my older Acer D255....sudden death
I have an old IBM ThinkPad T20 with a 12GB Hitachi - It locks up sometimes (hdd led freezes - no CTRL + ALT + DEL) Its still usable, but heavy use will make it lock up sometimes.
Although the HDD is over 10 years old - its not all dead yet! 

But Hitachi drives are kinda slow...


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## specks (Nov 7, 2011)

What? I never had any WD or any other drive fail on me but a cousin of mine once had a samsung drive crash for some unknown reason.


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## Jstn7477 (Nov 7, 2011)

A few Maxtors (most had bad sectors, very few died completely)
A few Western Digitals (complete death usually. I bought a batch over the summer that weren't packed well and half were dying out of the box).
Other people's Seagates (I'm looking at you, Mac owners). The ones I pulled out of prebuilt PCs usually had minimal sector issues and never died.
Fujitsu and Quantum Fireball drives are too slow to die.
My Samsung F1 drives are good 2 years later.
I have an IBM Dumbstar 80GB 10yo drive that occasionally makes power cycling noises now. Those and Hitachi drives were slow, especially the laptop versions. One of my 160GB laptop drives died with a PSU.

I used to perfer WD but their drives are so pricey (before the crisis even) and I have an 8 month old Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid 500GB (laptop) and a Barracuda Green 2TB (1 week pre-crisis) that work flawlessly.


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## Goodman (Nov 7, 2011)

Not talking about used drives that i bought or been given but only the ones that i bought new

I may have some luck but i only got 3 drives that dies on me in the past 10-12 years 

2x WD
1x Seagate


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## v12dock (Nov 7, 2011)

Like 6 or 7 Seagate's I will never buy one again


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## Neuromancer (Nov 7, 2011)

tigger said:


> This is just so we can see which drives fail the most/are the most reliable. You can select multiple options if you have had more than one make of drive fail on you.



honestly this post does not really determine reliability. After all how many fujitsu or samsung drives are out ther? I voted the other three. because it has happened. your poll does not take into consideration anything but failures, not popularity or number of failures.

Anyone that claims this poll as a measure of anything other than statistical manipulation will be laughed at.

EDIT: where is the option, I never had a drive fail? or SSD realted for that matter, I have 3 dead SSDs sitting on my shelf right now. Why isnt quantum mentioned. I have 3.5" and 5.25" quantum fireball drives that still work.

I vote to remove the poll as it is asinine to have it. wehre is that option?


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## yogurt_21 (Nov 7, 2011)

lol this is funny, it's like when the lottery says "most people buy single play tickets, most winners have bought single play tickets... we think that there might be some correlation there."

For this thread the facts are most people buy seagate or western digital, most people reporting drive failures are those who bought seagate or western digital drives. Now I'm no statistician but i think there may be a correlation there.


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## Chicken Patty (Nov 7, 2011)

The most accurate way to do this I would say is knowing how many have bought what drives and then finding a percentage of those that have failed.  Because WD And SG have died the most, but because they sell so much more, they can still have much less chance of failing.

I still thank the OP and it's an interesting thread nonetheless.  The more feedback people post the better it'll be.


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## Deleted member 24505 (Nov 8, 2011)

Neuromancer said:


> honestly this post does not really determine reliability. After all how many fujitsu or samsung drives are out ther? I voted the other three. because it has happened. your poll does not take into consideration anything but failures, not popularity or number of failures.
> 
> Anyone that claims this poll as a measure of anything other than statistical manipulation will be laughed at.
> 
> ...



I vote to remove you for being asinine 

I guess you thought i meant literally find the most reliable, well dah mate, you think i don't realize a poll like this wont do that.

I picked the most common drives for the poll, i did not think to put ssd's in the poll, feel free to make a asinine ssd poll of your very own though.

Now get out of my thread if you are gonna crap in it.


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## ViperXTR (Nov 8, 2011)

some very old fujitsu, samsung and seagate drives, they operated at more than 6-8 years before totally failing. Current Seagate and Maxtor drive is still in business tho, (running since ~2004/2005)


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Nov 8, 2011)

tigger said:


> I vote to remove you for being asinine
> 
> I guess you thought i meant literally find the most reliable, well dah mate, you think i don't realize a poll like this wont do that.
> 
> ...



So this isn't to identify brand reliability? Good, cause it can't. The first post doesn't reflect that though, and that of course begs the question just what is the purpose of this thread?


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## MilkyWay (Nov 8, 2011)

All brands can fail, i dont really see one more reliable than the other.

Only drive i had "fail" was a Samsung that was DOA but i got it replaced and i got my money back. I used to buy Maxtors years ago and those drives where fine, i even considered getting a Maxtor storage drive when they where just rebranded Seagates back when they bought them.


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## Chicken Patty (Nov 8, 2011)

MilkyWay said:


> All brands can fail, i dont really see one more reliable than the other.
> 
> Only drive i had "fail" was a Samsung that was DOA but i got it replaced and i got my money back. I used to buy Maxtors years ago and those drives where fine, i even considered getting a Maxtor storage drive when they where just rebranded Seagates back when they bought them.



I currently own Hitachi, WD, Seagate, and a Toshiba I believe.  None has failed and they are all over a year old, some 4+ years.  One WD died but it was because it feel down my stairs...


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## MilkyWay (Nov 8, 2011)

Chicken Patty said:


> I currently own Hitachi, WD, Seagate, and a Toshiba I believe.  None has failed and they are all over a year old, some 4+ years.  One WD died but it was because it feel down my stairs...



Excactly.


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## Deleted member 24505 (Nov 8, 2011)

LAN_deRf_HA said:


> So this isn't to identify brand reliability? Good, cause it can't. The first post doesn't reflect that though, and that of course begs the question just what is the purpose of this thread?




Which drives have failed on you? there is a purpose as far as i can see, to see which drives have failed on people. 

Ok i get it cant show reliability, i didn't think about that when i worded the original post, but i'm not dumb enough to think it can show reliability.

Now get off my case you intelligence natzi's


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## Melvis (Nov 10, 2011)

Out of all the HDD's that have gone through my hands, its mainly Seagates that i have had to replace. 

When it comes to my own personal HDD's again Seagate died and within 6weeks of use including my friends brand new 1TB drive.

All of my WD drives including the ones that my dad uses, my Brother uses and the ones i have sold are still working. And half the drives i have a second hand, so that speaks for its self.

I will still buy Seagates but only if i have to, otherwise im sticking with WD.

My very first WD drive started to die as it was running VERY hot ( 70c ) most of its life untill i put two HDD fans under it. It started to mess up and give me errors so i put it to the side, after 3 yrs of use i think. 2yrs later i pulled it back out and installed XP back on it, still running good today lol. Cant kill it.


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## Drinu276 (Nov 15, 2011)

Dane-Elec drive, 1.5TB, horrible transfer rate, died after 2 weeks


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## BlackOmega (Nov 15, 2011)

I've never had a drive totally fail. The only one that's close is an OE Dell Maxtor from my old Dell (2001). It's not totally dead, but it fails most HDD benchmarks and tests. 

 Other than that, I haven't had any die on me. *knocks on wood*.  

 I've had, or still have, Seagates, WD's, and Samsung.


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## Drone (Nov 15, 2011)

wd and seagate


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## Widjaja (Nov 29, 2011)

Ultimately this poll will be based on whats most available and possibly what HDD brand manufacturers of pre-built machines are usingat a certain time.

Personally I have not had a HDD fail on me besides other people negligence or my own.

With customers, when I first started working as a computer tech, Hitachi 2.5" Travelstars were often replaced.
Now I rarely see travelstars and it's pretty even between Seagate and WD.


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## Jetster (Nov 29, 2011)

I have a Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS 1TB That im getting warnings in windows 7 now. Smart data shows Failed relocated sector count. 


Can you reset the smart data. Maybe Ill see if I can return it its only a year old

Edit:  Just got an RMA for it. Will see how it goes but the RMA process was fairly straight forward. Error code from the Seagate tools


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## DIBL (Nov 29, 2011)

Jetster said:


> I agree WD is crap. Ive seen at least 10 go bad before 2 years. Ive never seen a Sansung go bad yet



Funny, I hear that said, but all my evidence (OK not THAT huge a list) goes the other way.  The other day I pulled an old WD-153BA out of the drawer and installed Bodhi Linux on it, just because I needed an IDE drive to experiment on.

I also have a pair of WD-740s that ran Win XP daily as a mirrored RAID from spring of 2004 until late 2010 when I chickened out and decommissioned them.  But they still boot whatever OS I put on them for test purposes -- I see no signs of problems.

The pair of WD-1002FAEX drives that are running a BTRFS filesystem 24/7 on my Linux machine are about to turn 1 year old, and they've never burped either.

And then there are about 3 of the WD-1500 Raptors in my family, running Win XP or Linux.  They go back a few years too.  So, I buy WD drives, and can only scratch my head at the reports of problems.


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## Jetster (Nov 29, 2011)

DIBL said:


> Funny, I hear that said, but all my evidence (OK not THAT huge a list) goes the other way.  The other day I pulled an old WD-153BA out of the drawer and installed Bodhi Linux on it, just because I needed an IDE drive to experiment on.
> 
> I also have a pair of WD-740s that ran Win XP daily as a mirrored RAID from spring of 2004 until late 2010 when I chickened out and decommissioned them.  But they still boot whatever OS I put on them for test purposes -- I see no signs of problems.
> 
> ...



To be honest I may have exaggerated a little. Plus the system I work on all have WD drives so its the majority of my work. I was just pissed that again I was looking at another WD drive not working.  Also there not my drives so who knows what torture they had to endure. So in looking back at my original statement of 10 failed WD drives in two years it probably was more like 5 out of 40 or 50 drives I saw in that time.


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## IlluminAce (Dec 5, 2011)

Hard drives are truly incredible pieces of equipment. Inside those unassuming boxes are a collection of platters thinner than CDs, piled high; one on top of each other, each packing incredible densities of bits. 

By the grace of their ever-ready stepper motor, they all spin anywhere between a speedy 5,400 and a stunning 15,000 times each second. Arms caress these delicate plates, supporting read/write heads which hover precariously - less than a hair's breadth - above the shiny surfaces. All this housed in a protective, dust-free atmosphere. 

One single speck of dust inside this delicate machine, and the magnetically charged platters will shortly be scratched into disrepair. Just one careless shock to the drive whilst the platters are in motion, and the turning force on the read/write arms will send them scraping into the surfaces of the platters, ruining the heads and destroying the data. Hard drives are such incredibly delicate things, that it's almost a wonder that they work at all 



temp02 said:


> I too never had a drive which died completely. The worse I had was my brothers Western 80GB desktop HDD which after parking its reading heads never un-parked them, they became stuck for some odd reason, so, while the computer was stuck at BIOS waiting for the HDD response, we smacked the HDD sideways to the floors carpet a couple of times, hard, until we heard the heads seeking again. This was years ago, but it never did the same thing again, and I don't expect it too, or else it gets another beating xD



Yet, on occasion, the best cures defy conventional wisdom... I do like tales like this


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## kyussgr (Dec 6, 2011)

tigger said:


> This is just so we can see which drives fail the most. You can select multiple options if you have had more than one make of drive fail on you.



This poll will only indicate which hard drives people buy / use the most....
I am a PC builder since the time of Pentium MMX and I've had all kinds of drives dying on me.
If you want the most reliable go for the one with the longer warranty. This usually means that the manufacturer believes in the product. 
But trust me ALL drives fail over time. The secret is to have an image of the operating system so that you can restore your OS onto a new drive within minutes, backup your critical data, or store your critical data in a raid 1, 5, 10 array (expensive but hassle free option)....


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## techspec6 (Dec 7, 2011)

If I sell you 10 WD drives and 1 Seagate and one of the WD drives dies, that doesn't mean that seagate is better.

Here is a piechart that makes my point even more clear.

http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/30dayshare.html

It doesn't matter who you like, dislike or have had a bad experience with.  The only way this poll is useful is if you take into account the number of drives sold.

-Jason


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## travva (Dec 7, 2011)

The only drives I ever had fail were old Maxtor drives. One started giving me a click of death, and causing my system to hard lock when it made a certain kind of "TOCK" sound, though in retrospect that may have been my psu but either way, maxtor sucked. i have one seagate drive now and it seems fine.


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