Seagate Barracuda

[BongWizard]

yes... the 7200.11 series are very good drives... they'll give you among the fastest transfers rates (i think only the Caviar Black beats them, although the SE16s are close... oh yeah, and the VR will rape any other HDD out) and the absolute fastest seek times (cept of course for the VR)... i haven't checked out the 7200.12 series yet, but from what i've heard they should be quite impressive

and from my experience, i've never had a Seagate drive fail on me... WD yes, Maxtor yes, Hitachi yes, Samsung yes, but never a Seagate... plus the 5 year warranty is a big plus

 

[ricanflow]

SE16 drives (aka caviar blue) beat the seagate 7200.11 drives already. The fastest non-raptor drives are the spinpoint F1's.

 

[kmote]

Discussing HDD reliability is pointless unless we are talking exclusively about DOAs because by the time the drive is old enough to be called reliable, that information is already far too old to be useful.
For example I have two Maxtors next to me now one from mid '99 and the other from Jan '00 - they both still work (they make a whining sound though) but downstairs I have a failed Seagate 80GB IDE, a failing seagate 80GB IDE and a hitachi 40GB which I think might have failed. I also had a <900MB WD IDE drive which I threw away but it was still working at the time.
Problem is that this information is pointless because it is too old, it's just not relevent anymore and everybody has their own stories about manufacturers who have repeatedly failed them. IMO people should forget about reliability when buying drives, definitely forget about 5 year warrenties, take responsibility for doing their own backups and choose the drive based on it's other merits because you just can't tell.

Also as an aside, I have a couple of 74GB seagate cheetah 15k.5 in one of my PCs downstairs which might disagree with your assessment of the fastest drives.

 

[theorigamist]

kmote, what other merits are you saying people should choose from? The average user--even the average gamer--is not going to notice the performance difference between a Seagate Barracuda and a WD Caviar. Basically, once you've got 7200rpm and at least 8MB cache, most modern drives will feel pretty much the same. (The 10Krpm or above drives will have a noticeable difference, but not one that most people need, and certainly not a difference that is worth the extra cost to most users.) I agree that people should be responsible about backing up their information, and I would say that this makes the warranty the perfect way to differentiate products. Since reliability is such a hard thing to judge, a long warranty gives a comparable peace of mind. If my Seagate drive dies in the next 5 years, I won't lose any data because I have it all backed up, and I'll get a brand new drive.

 

[jordo_99]

I've had two 250gb (3 and 2 years), 500gb (1 year) and one of the "dreaded" 1.5tb drives (since black friday). All work flawlessly and run cool, quite and quick.

Take a look around the net for info on the 1.5tb drives and you will see they are nothing but crap too

The 1.5tb are notorious for freezing but it depends on which firmware you get. Although you should absolutely NOT need to do this, you can update/upgrade the firmware through Seagate tech support for free to a stable, error free, firmware.

I actually have one of the "trouble" firmware versions, but it hasn't had a hiccup since I got it. I'm actually going to buy another 1.5tb drive very soon so that I can have a backup setup (not actual RAID1).

That's just my experiences, so don't just go fully off that, I'm just trying to throw out there that not everyone is getting crap 1.5tb drives and at least there is hope if you do get one. It's extra trouble to fix the firmware, but I'd much rather do that then get an RMA.

 

[Fat.Clown]

plus the 5 year warranty is a big plus

in case you missed it, OEM none-enterprise drives now only come with 3 year warranty.

anything shipped after Jan. 3 only have 3 years, any old stock that resellers have will still carry 5 year warranty.

 

[hikaricloud]

I've been using a 200gb Seagate for 4+ years, and it's still running. I personally like Seagate, and I've had more problems with WD. But it's just my opinion.

 

[kmote]

kmote, what other merits are you saying people should choose from? The average user--even the average gamer--is not going to notice the performance difference between a Seagate Barracuda and a WD Caviar. Basically, once you've got 7200rpm and at least 8MB cache, most modern drives will feel pretty much the same. (The 10Krpm or above drives will have a noticeable difference, but not one that most people need, and certainly not a difference that is worth the extra cost to most users.) I agree that people should be responsible about backing up their information, and I would say that this makes the warranty the perfect way to differentiate products. Since reliability is such a hard thing to judge, a long warranty gives a comparable peace of mind. If my Seagate drive dies in the next 5 years, I won't lose any data because I have it all backed up, and I'll get a brand new drive.

Yes I am saying judge it based on performance... noise... power consumption... price... honestly you could go with a drive because the colour matches. Whatever your criteria that's fine but when you buy a new drive you cannot possibly know that it is going to be reliable, and warranty should not be your benchmark anyway. I don't know about you but I wouldn't dream of returning a 4-5 year old drive and I don't know anyone who would.
Honestly, it's your backups that should provide you with peace of mind, not the warranty on your drive because at the end of the day the HDD is just another PC componant, it might break after a year but it doesn't matter because all you do is spend £30 and get a nice new one, your data on the other hand...