Man, what with these drives. internal 160 gb,new drive dies after just 2 days(made in Thailand).A real pain in the you know where.Most drives I use are Seagate,but i've had good success with the WD's.local IT wizard says they replace alot of them.Opened new boxes that were DOA before installing..Crazy.....
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New Western Digital Dies After Just 2 Days
- Thread starter oldiesstation
- Start date
I've rarely have any issues with WD drives. I've seen Maxtors crap oout just when you don't want them to, like during an overnight while in automation mode. I just love spending an overnight trying to get a station back on or back up to full capacity thanks to those crummy Maxtors.
Yes, I have had bad Maxtor drives - one was due to a bad drive bay fan and one failed after 4.5 years of 24/7 duty. All in all I don't think that's all that bad.
Yes, I have had bad Maxtor drives - one was due to a bad drive bay fan and one failed after 4.5 years of 24/7 duty. All in all I don't think that's all that bad.
Seagate, Maxtor, and WD
Maxtor used to make excellent drives. Then, Maxtor was purchased by Seagate a couple of years ago, and the low-end crap that was in the Seagate line now wears the Maxtor label. The Seagate drives are now higher quality almost across the board.
Western Digital doesn't have a low-end line, so you really have to pay attention to model numbers. Their drives range from very good to crap.
One tip-off may be warranty. The drives with 5-year warranties are the ones that you want to spend money on and put in critical situations.
Maxtor used to make excellent drives. Then, Maxtor was purchased by Seagate a couple of years ago, and the low-end crap that was in the Seagate line now wears the Maxtor label. The Seagate drives are now higher quality almost across the board.
Western Digital doesn't have a low-end line, so you really have to pay attention to model numbers. Their drives range from very good to crap.
One tip-off may be warranty. The drives with 5-year warranties are the ones that you want to spend money on and put in critical situations.
Bill DeFelice said:
What I meant to say was Yes, I have had bad Western Digital drives - one was due to a bad drive bay fan and one failed after 4.5 years of 24/7 duty. All in all I don't think that's all that bad. The Maxtors never made it past the warranty period as they crapped out in a short amount of time.
The fun part was calling support.OH BOY, make sure you have a double crown and coke in one hand..For very broken english push one on your touch tone,for spanish push 2 on your touch tone, to reach someone who could really care less push 3 on your touch tone.More fun than an Obama speech, free beer for all,free chicken wings on friday,free cars from oprah for every american,etc,etc...
Yes, Maxtor used to make very good drives. I used them exclusively for many years - until around 2004 I think when they got taken over by Seagate.
Seagate, in my view, is JUNK. I would not touch it. I don't care whether they have a quality range or not. They've tarnished their reputation as far as I am concerned.
WD seems to make reasonable drives. So far I have not had one die or exhibit any weird behaviour. [No one is allowed to laugh, say "I told you so" or point fingers if, by tomorrow, there is a new thread here from me in relation to a WD drive that has just died on my server!]
I'm not sure what IBM, Hitachi or Fujitsu are like these days. I haven't had the opportunity to test any of these brands for a LONG time!
Seagate, in my view, is JUNK. I would not touch it. I don't care whether they have a quality range or not. They've tarnished their reputation as far as I am concerned.
WD seems to make reasonable drives. So far I have not had one die or exhibit any weird behaviour. [No one is allowed to laugh, say "I told you so" or point fingers if, by tomorrow, there is a new thread here from me in relation to a WD drive that has just died on my server!]
I'm not sure what IBM, Hitachi or Fujitsu are like these days. I haven't had the opportunity to test any of these brands for a LONG time!
My 2 cents: The only drives I've had to fail over the years I've been maintaining computers were Western Digitals (six total). Only one of the six failed within the warranty though and their support as exemplary. Since they are the only moving parts in computers (except the fans) they are also the most likely to fail. I would have preferred Maxtor but they are now a part of Seagate and though I've never had any bad experience with Seagates I have always shied away from them given the choice. You will be hard pressed to find any that are manufactured anywhere other than the Orient.
The best advice in critical locations is to use a mirrored RAID system which gives two drives with the same data so that if one fails you can get by on the other one. My other advice is to back up constantly. Anytime you make changes redo the backup so that it is current. The more essential the data, the more important to have a backup. Those USB drives are so cheap now that having several is not an issue.
Also for major disasters have an off site backup plan, especially for financial and other essential stuff. Tape is good but again those plug in drives are so cheap and dependable so consider them as well. I make archives on CD's or DVD's at regular intervals as they are more stable for long term storage than magnetic media. There are now reliable off site data facilities and they are probably best of all the options for security and convenience. You don't have to remember to do anything as they run in the background and make copies automatically of anything that changes.
The best advice in critical locations is to use a mirrored RAID system which gives two drives with the same data so that if one fails you can get by on the other one. My other advice is to back up constantly. Anytime you make changes redo the backup so that it is current. The more essential the data, the more important to have a backup. Those USB drives are so cheap now that having several is not an issue.
Also for major disasters have an off site backup plan, especially for financial and other essential stuff. Tape is good but again those plug in drives are so cheap and dependable so consider them as well. I make archives on CD's or DVD's at regular intervals as they are more stable for long term storage than magnetic media. There are now reliable off site data facilities and they are probably best of all the options for security and convenience. You don't have to remember to do anything as they run in the background and make copies automatically of anything that changes.
I've used several WD drives, and the one that died was because it got a static shock when I installed it. I don't hold any grudges against them.
PTBoardOp94 said:
What I see here is that it's kind of a crap shoot. I had good luck with Maxtor and bad with Western. Just remember as has been my experience, the parts in a computer that move (drives and fans) fail the most often. As I previously stated the best protection is backups and multiple drive strategies. I have had maybe a couple of hundred drives in my care and only six have failed all of which were Western Digital.
By the way I've never owned nor used a static wrist strap but just touching a ground before you pick up anything with IC's in it is wise. If you're in the box, just touch the case before grabbing memory or any boards.
Re: Infant Mortality
Over the years, I have had failures from drives by IBM (DeathStar), Seagate and Quantum. In my experience, the saying "not if but when" referring to hard drive failure has proven to be true.
These days, drives are getting so inexpensive that it really makes sense to use them in a redundant RAID as a matter of course. I recently bought two 500GB SATA drives for less than $100 apiece, set up in RAID 1 as my Mac's 'Time Machine' automated backup.
Until the day comes that hard drives are failure-proof, redundancy is good, cheap insurance.
Kind Regards,
David
LA_Guy said:
Over the years, I have had failures from drives by IBM (DeathStar), Seagate and Quantum. In my experience, the saying "not if but when" referring to hard drive failure has proven to be true.
These days, drives are getting so inexpensive that it really makes sense to use them in a redundant RAID as a matter of course. I recently bought two 500GB SATA drives for less than $100 apiece, set up in RAID 1 as my Mac's 'Time Machine' automated backup.
Until the day comes that hard drives are failure-proof, redundancy is good, cheap insurance.
Kind Regards,
David
WD was once the most reliable hard drive on the market, but their quality has went way down over the past 2-3 years or so. Seagate's drives, which I used to stay away from due to their poor reliability years ago in the days of 486s & Pentium 1s, have now became the best in quality. I have had less than a 5% 1 year failure rate for the Seagate Barracudas, and I use about 15-20 per month. They run faster and quieter than the WDs as well. IMHO, Seagate has came an awful long way in quality.
B
BlingCrosby
Guest
The biggest issue I see w/ HDs of any mfg is Heat distress. If the environment the server is running is hot, and not well ventilated, this is a problem for all components, not just the HD. Keeping a space between servers in the rack (If yours are rack mounted, is very important so airflow can get around the case, and help cool. Also if you have a computer room where the servers are, dust is another big killer. Ideally you'd like to have all your boxes in a temp/humidity controlled room with some type of hepa filters. Obviously not practical for every situation, but cooling is utmost important, even if you have to rig a fan to blow over your servers... Heat Kills!
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