On 2 June 2014 00:58, John J. McDonough wrote: > On Sat, 2014-05-31 at 17:36 +0100, Luis Moreira wrote: > > Hi Guys, > > Would like to revisit this thread as I need to get a new hard drive for > my > > desktop. > > I take an entirely different read on this thread than others. It looks > as if one manufacturer or another cycles to the top in reliability over > time. The problem is that it takes years to find out who is on top, and > by then, someone else has the crown. > I had not drawn the conclusion that the order of reliability cycled. If there was any indication that this was so in the material seen so far I've overlooked it and would be pleased to have it pointed out. The impression that I formed was: Hitachi drives are substantially more reliable than WD or SG. They are not easily available in NZ and cost about twice as much per GB High spec Seagate drives are relatively reliable but cost a substantial amount more than their mass market offerings. Randomly chosen from mass market offerings, WD drives will be significantly more reliable than SG drives and cost essentially the same in NZ. Selected SG and WD drives are less reliable in very high data rate environments due to their agressive ramp down after use power management approach which means they are frequently go/stop cycle in high use environments. The reliability of these drives in more typical environments was not specifically investigated in the survey but can be expected to be better than in very high data rate environments. I had personally concluded some years ago that for the mass-market drives that I buy, WD had fewer failures than Seagate. As ever, YMMV. Russell. --=20 http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .