Problems with brand of HDD .... ?

There's a particular brand of hard drive that I've been having nothing but grief with. I install them, then a couple of months later, they crap out. Customers are losing their data, I'm losing money from reinstalling, plus shipping the drives back for RMA. Not to mention customers that I've lost because of it.
I send the drives back, they replace them, then a couple of months later, wham. This last one was a caviar 250GB. It wasn't in the system two weeks from being replaced the first time!
I've never had this kind of issue with any other brand of HDD. At this point, we are no longer buying them, supporting them, and telling our customers that we prefer not to install them, and that if we do, we are not responsible for data loss, and it's not covered under our guarantee.
I'm just wondering what is everyones choice of HDD out there, and which one seems to give the least grief? We have switched over to another brand, and I'm just wondering what everyone else uses.

Thanks
Scott
http://www.AAApcMechanic.com

 

I prefer Maxtor or Hitachi, myself!! Never had any trouble with them!!

However I also have a couple of OLD hand me down Western Digitals and they haven't given me any trouble either, so it sound like WD has produced a bad run of product!! Typically they are supposed to be one of the more reliable brands!! Unfortunately...it cost too much to recall them so they will just let the RMA's run until they have depleted all the bad ones!!

Roger

 

Sounds like a batch of bad ones. I've got 8 WD hard drives (4 in my computer, 2 in my g/fs computer, 1 in the Xbox, and 1 just laying around) and all 8 work great. Sounds like just some bad luck. Seagate, Maxtor, and Hitachi are all good ones as well. Good Luck.

 

yea, I use WDs too, never had a problem .. unless you consider destroying the file system tinkering with them .. nothing a high level format didn't fix

 

I've got one that is read by the BIOS, but will not format. I've got one that the BIOS won't even pickup. And then there's the coffee grinder that sounds like some screws came loose inside.
All are brand new, have been sent back several times to mfg, and have tried in different systems.
I don't care how tempting those rebates are, guess from now on, it's Hitachi or Seagate. I'll try the Maxtor too.

Scott
http://www.AAApcMechanic.com

 

I'm a big fan of Seagate. After my Western Digital died, I've had only minor problems with a Seagate that's 2GB's, and runs 4500 RPM, and none with my 40GB, at 5400.

 

Your not the first,I'v seen quite a few builders stop using western digital harddrives,I thought it was because WD had stopped sending them free ones but it must be true.I think its something to do with the bearing they use,I think my raptor has the same bearing and goes 2800rpm faster,so It will be interesting to see how long it lasts, whispers "5 months so far no problems".What a fast harddrive though,the most amazing thing is installing a 300mb game demo of the harddrive,when its similtaneously reading and writing the completion bar fills up like the fuse on mission impossible.LOL

EDIT I like seagate too,but to be honest,I have never had a harddrive just crap out without something else frying it,what cases are you installing them in,are they getting enough ventilation?

 

I have three WD's all work great & have 4 maxtor SATA's, I prefer the Maxtor's.
The WD's seem to make more noise.
If I were to buy another today I'd be buying the Maxtor DiamondMax 10's with 16mb cache buffer.
Look here several reviews:
http://www.comcast.net/qry/websearch?cmd=qry&safe=on&query=Diamondmax+10&x=35&y=13

 

Dam it,i thought there no way a 250gig bus could come close my little 36 gig sprinter,on some tests raid 0 made it 5 secs faster than a raptor,one review also had the price at $1.00 per gig for the maxtor and $3.00 for the raptor,so a raid setup is cheaper than a single raptor in Mb terms.

I'll take 2.lol

 

My vote is squarely behing Seagate. Have bought 8 or so in the last 3/4 years and they have not been problematic at all (touch wood).

They are very quiet and their CS guys are extremely helpful.

My only proviso as regards steering away from HDD would be the IBM aka Hitachi. The Deskstar version (nicknamed Deathstar for obvious reasons) is on my AVOID list. Unfortunately, Hitachi (since they bought IBM's HDD business) are now also on that list too. Probably unfair but hey to each his own.

Good Luck