Reliable HDDs these days?

ive got a few quite large capacity externals, the newest are samsungs and seem great. also the older ones are seagate and WD, never had an issue with any of em tbh, even tho i download and seed off em quite a bit.

Another vote for WD HDDs, Seagate are reasonable as well.

SSHDs are the way forward and in that domain it is also WD for me.

I have a pile of hard drives, around 30 in total that have died for some reason.

All makes/speeds/sizes. Including SSD's and enterprise class drives.

Assume the drive will fail as some point, so make sure you backup.

I use Acronis Drive Monitor to keep an eye on drives, it can email reports then it detects a problem and has warned me about drives before they failed.

Here is Backblaze's Q3 report on drives. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-rates-q3-2016/

A debatable question indeed - a few years back I bought a mag with Hard Drive special supplement which states that HDD's are likely to have at least one fault when they leave the factory. My first large capacity drive was a 300 Gb Seagate - based on the fact that a lot of PVR machines had chosen Seagate for reliability - came with a 5 year warranty - didn't make it to 3 years and under warranty I would have expected a brand new one - no - you pay to return it to the Netherlands at your expense then they send one out at their expense that is a 'reconditioned' drive! My favourite HDD was Samsung but they were sold to .... Seagate! Currently deploying WD Black Drives and don't seem noisy at all - Ebuyer supplied. The other thing with Seagate is they didn't used to be GNU/Linux friendly. Sorry to hear of your Buffalo woes - I've had a Buffalo 2 TB (external) for 2-3 years now - was running out of space and got another one - this has USB 3 support - the software is naff though which I deleted on formatting!

I have a pile of hard drives, around 30 in total that have died for some reason.

 

All makes/speeds/sizes. Including SSD's and enterprise class drives.

 

Assume the drive will fail as some point, so make sure you backup.

 

I use Acronis Drive Monitor to keep an eye on drives, it can email reports then it detects a problem and has warned me about drives before they failed.

 

Here is Backblaze's Q3 report on drives. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-rates-q3-2016/

WD having the higher percentage of failures doesn't surprise me...

and I have always liked Toshiba drives, they are quiet too.... (sometimes a little slower though, but reliable)

WD's you have to spend a little more in order to get a decent drive. Their Black drives for workstations or Red drives for NAS or servers. Their Blue drives are OK at 2.5inch for Laptops but not great in 3.5inch for desktops. That said, I upgraded a Sky+ box with a 2TB blue a few months ago (old drive died), and with the large cache it's generally improved my Sky box.

Whilst Samsung have been having issues in other areas (Batteries with Note 7, and washing machines... oh, and a corporate board that is having a few issues) their HDDs are still fairly quiet and reliable. Seagate are fairly decent still, but I personally don't trust Hitachi (Deathstars) or Toshiba anymore.

WD's you have to spend a little more in order to get a decent drive. Their Black drives for workstations or Red drives for NAS or servers. Their Blue drives are OK at 2.5inch for Laptops but not great in 3.5inch for desktops. That said, I upgraded a Sky+ box with a 2TB blue a few months ago (old drive died), and with the large cache it's generally improved my Sky box.

 

Whilst Samsung have been having issues in other areas (Batteries with Note 7, and washing machines... oh, and a corporate board that is having a few issues) their HDDs are still fairly quiet and reliable. Seagate are fairly decent still, but I personally don't trust Hitachi (Deathstars) or Toshiba anymore.

I'd be surprised if you can get hold of Samsung drives as they are now owned by Seagrave. A former mod on Zorin forum pointed out that no issue with WD if they have good airflow which means where you fit it in tower. Toshiba must be good because they are what Mac Workbooks have in them. I know this because I had to attempt data recovery from one using live GNU/Linux disc but it needed another Mac in the end using Thunder re Overy tools. I don't believe the hard drive was actually failing on the Mac as I noticed that the FE establishment where it was being used had put a newer non-compatible version of Mac OS X on it! The last three HDDs I've bought are WD Black ones and certainly nowhere near as noisy as the Hitachi 'deathstar'!

I'd be surprised if you can get hold of Samsung drives as they are now owned by Seagrave.

There's still some floating around in the channels if you know where to look. Seperately, Seagate are still advertising certain drives under the Samsung branding - check out http://samsunghdd.seagate.com/gb/en/ - they still do internal drives too. Separtely, someone else quoted Maxtor earlier in the thread, but they got bought out years ago too - also by Seagate.

Toshiba must be good because they are what Mac Workbooks have in them.

Just because Apple decide to use certain hardware from certain manufacturers doesn't mean that that hardware is good/great. I'd actually argue that Apple being primarily a hardware company for their profits intentionally builds in obsolesce in order to drive upgrades. Their phones being a prime example, with no option for an average user to replace a battery. They also try and differentiate themselves on their customer service offering, which is why they then try and justify their 'premium pricing' structures. I personally have had higher failure rates with Toshiba products (not just HDDs, primarily laptop hinges/cases etc. some failing so badly that they then break other components such as the screen)

Toshiba as a company have been in trouble for a while, the news broke over the past 18 months of major accounting issues and problems in their nuclear power division. If they don't have good enough quality control procedures in nuclear power, it doesn't bode well for the rest of their product line.

There's still some floating around in the channels if you know where to look. Seperately, Seagate are still advertising certain drives under the Samsung branding - check out http://samsunghdd.seagate.com/gb/en/ - they still do internal drives too. Separtely, someone else quoted Maxtor earlier in the thread, but they got bought out years ago too - also by Seagate.

 

 

Just because Apple decide to use certain hardware from certain manufacturers doesn't mean that that hardware is good/great. I'd actually argue that Apple being primarily a hardware company for their profits intentionally builds in obsolesce in order to drive upgrades. Their phones being a prime example, with no option for an average user to replace a battery. They also try and differentiate themselves on their customer service offering, which is why they then try and justify their 'premium pricing' structures. I personally have had higher failure rates with Toshiba products (not just HDDs, primarily laptop hinges/cases etc. some failing so badly that they then break other components such as the screen)

 

Toshiba as a company have been in trouble for a while, the news broke over the past 18 months of major accounting issues and problems in their nuclear power division. If they don't have good enough quality control procedures in nuclear power, it doesn't bode well for the rest of their product line.

Good point - I remember seeing that Acer once beat them into 4th place one quarter - but I don't like Acer kit either! I was also being a bit tongue in cheek with Tosh's in Apple too. There biggest fail was their 6100 Satellite Pro series with defective Motherboard so they were 'forced' to offer extended warranties - "Worst laptop, ever!"

Its worth bearing in mind that an SSHD for storage or backup is a bad investment.

They are only really of benefit as your OS drive or if you are using one for games. Otherwise its an extra cost for no actual benefit at all.