On Sun, 2008-02-24 at 10:05 -0800, Harold Hallikainen wrote:
> > I had several friends who had nothing but trouble with Maxtor in the
> > years around 2000. I've never had a Western Digital drive fail, and I've
> > personally used over 20 over the years. Maybe it's all luck.
> 
> I've never had ANY hard drive fail in the 20 years or so I've been using
> them. I think it's because I do frequent backups.

I'm not sure how backing up your data affects hard drive longevity...

FWIW, in my personal computing I've seen three hard drives fail in my
years. The first was a 340MB conner (remember them?). One was an IBM
13.6GB Deskstar, they were nicknamed "Deathstars" by the industry...

The last was my brother's IBM laptop drive.

As a result, I've never purchased another IBM/Hitachi hard drive.

In my professional work we had a large number of Fujitsu drives fail
(don't remember the size, not huge, I think 10GB?). Around 50% of the
drives failed after only a few years. Granted they weren't treated the
best, but the Seagates purchased at the same time and in the same
room/machines all still work to this day.

As for which ones I do purchase, I personally consider consumer hard
drive a commodity type of purchase, there isn't much on the quality side
to differentiate them anymore. I mostly buy based on noise figures these
days. Drive with liquid bearings are VERY quiet, and that's what my
first criteria is (what percentage of drives use liquid bearings
anyways?).

My last 4 purchases were all Maxtors.

TTYL
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