Well, I’m in a bit of a quandary. After several years extolling the virtues of Seagate, I have one dead 1TB drive, and one nearly-dead 1TB drive. Thankfully, these were my backups, so the original files are still safe. Both are Seagate USB2 disks, bought about 6 months apart. Until this, I’ve never had a problem with Seagate, in fact most of my older HDs are Seagate and have out-lived Maxtor or WD ones.

So I guess does anyone have any recommendations for brands that last a bit longer? These haven’t been used heavily, so their failure isn’t really acceptable at all. That said, whilst they’re probably both still just about within warranty, the data is potentially worth a lot more to me than two new, more reliable disks.

TBH, if you ask this question of five geeks, you’ll get five different answers. I think the bottom line is that all manufacturers have good and bad batches.

Personally, I’d say that Seagate have been on a steady decline for some time now. I’m quite fond of whatever IBM disks call themselves this week, HGST or something, and the last few disks I’ve bought have all been Deskstars. But, some people call them “Deathstars” in reference to earlier issues, and I think they’re now in bed with Western Digital so who knows what they’re actually producing these days.

these were my backups … the data is potentially worth a lot more to me than two new, more reliable disks

Wut choo talkin bout, Willis?

As an aside,

These days I work to the maxim that disks will fail, it’s just a case of when. Disks are high-performance, microscopic-tolerance, mechanical components where the slightest malfunction can be catastrophic.

Professionally I work primarily in the server field and, by a country mile, the single biggest hardware failure is hard disks. But now I’m seeing 2.5″ form factor SAS disks spinning at 15,000rpm(*) in hot-swap enclosures, it really shouldn’t surprise anyone when these damn things fail, it’s crazy technology.

(* – for comparison, that’s more than double the rotational speed of a typical desktop drive and three times what you’d expect in a regular 2.5″ laptop disk)

These days I work to the maxim that disks will fail,

I guess I always have too, but two in the space of 6 months is a bit much, when they’re hardly used!

Wut choo talkin bout, Willis?

Erm, yeah! Ooops… Of course I meant that as I’ve lost faith in Seagate, I don’t want to store my data on a warranty replacement from them either. 😉

What they all said – all brands of disks have failures – plan for failure and get something with RAID mirroring if your data is valuable.

I don’t want to store my data on a warranty replacement from them either.

The replacements should fetch a fair price on eBay then. Be sure to put “BRAND NEW RARE” in the title, along with too much punctuation.

plan for failure and get something with RAID mirroring if your data is valuable.

I considered this (and did mean to set it up internally when I got the PC), but most people pointed out that RAID is not backup – controllers also die more regularly that I’d imagined. (or at least those aimed at the ‘pro’-sumer)

Seagate/Maxtor went through a really dodgy QC patch a few years ago, pretty much when they joined forces and I’ve avoided since. I tend to stick with WD and Samsung nowadays, although HSGT seem to be getting over the click click click deatstar stigma.

I considered this (and did mean to set it up internally when I got the PC), but most people pointed out that RAID is not backup – controllers also die more regularly that I’d imagined. (or at least those aimed at the ‘pro’-sumer)

Raid 0 isn’t backup. I’ve not know m/any raid controllers to die but I have tansfered raid arrays from contoller to controller intact with no problems ICH7 to 9 and back again.

Cougar + 1.5

TBH, if you ask this question of five geeks, you’ll get five six and a half different answers

2 drives from the same manufacturer failing in six months might just be bad luck ( assuming that you aren’t juggling with them or doing anything else that might cause them harm).

Raid is not backup because if you delete a file by mistake it’s more hassle to get it back than from a porpoer back up source, rather than due to the failure mitigation characteristics. I’ve never seen it happen but it’s theorretically possible a controller might throw a wobbly and corrupt all attached disks, so some thing on another path entirely is always a better option for backup.

FWIW Samsung Spinpoints appear to be flavour of the month in 3.5″ SATA format, though that’s mainly for performance… one of those in an Icy Box enclosure is probably a little cheaper than another complete external drive.
I’d be worried about the enclosures more than the actual disk myself, sounds like they aren’t disippating heat well enough or something.

There’s an intersting article from a German HDD recovery firm on Tomshardware, seems like Hitachi gave the best showing for having the least inherant design problems.

Also, do you need high spin speeds? My reasonably quick Synology NAS uses a more reliable cooler running quiter 5400rpm drive with no performance hit (the NAS hardware being the bottleneck).

We had problems with Seagate external hardrive and changed to Iomega and they have been faultless. I opened up an Iomega to find out they Seagate hardrives inside so can only conclude that Seagate like many other manufacturers suffer from faulty batches.
I wouldn’t touch Fujistu again as all the 80% computers at work that had them failed within weeks of each other the rest replaced as precaution

Seagates Bad Period aside, I’m not convinced it manufacturer makes much difference. Given the way chance operates, two drives failing in short succession should not be a surprise. Multiple drives or RAID is the way to go. I struggled with this until I got a second hand Drobo off the ‘Bay for £280. Not looked back.