Is Western Digital the only good hard drive manufacturer these days?

[Rajahal]

I know of 5 different hard drive manufacturers: Hitachi, Fujitsu, Seagate, Samsung, and Western Digital (WD).

 

Here's my take on the situation.  Hitachi and Fujitsu are both crap, and have been for years.  I repair computers and perform data recovery as a side job, and 99% of the failed hard drives I work on are either Hitachi or Fujitsu, and at least 50% of those are from computers that are less than a year old (though I'll admit most of these drives are 2.5" laptop drives, not 3.5" desktop drives; I have very little experience with desktop drives from Hitachi and Fujitsu).  So based on both reputation and my personal experience, I avoid Hitachi and Fujitsu.

 

That leaves Seagate, Samsung, and WD.  If you asked me a few months ago I would have told you that all of these three manufacturers are roughly equivalent in terms of quality.  Now, my view has changed.  All of the Seagate drives I currently have (all 500 GB or less) work well and have for years.  However, we all know about Seagate's recent firmware issues (largely contained to their 1 TB and 1.5 TB drives).  Considering 1.5 TB hard drives are currently in the price/capacity sweet spot, this is a big mark against the company.  Add on top of that consumer reports such as this one about poor customer service, and Seagate has earned its place on my 'avoid' list.

 

Down to Samsung and WD.  I've read tons of good reviews about Samsung drives been fast, quiet, and low power.  Based on these, I bought a Samsung EcoGreen 1 TB drive several months ago.  Right out of the box it did not work.  I tried to use Samsung's hard drive tools (ETS or ECS or something like that), but they had a fatal error and wouldn't install.  On a whim, I tried installing a jumper on the drive and it did work.  So I decided that this jumper is absolutely crucial to the drive's functioning, and yet it is not included with the OEM drive (whereas jumpers are often included with OEM drives from other manufacturers).  This is poor form in the extreme.  A month or two later I ended up buying 2 1.5 TB Samsung EcoGreen drives that were on sale, this time expecting to provide my own jumper (luckily I have a lot of spares).  I kept one for myself (it currently runs as the parity drive in my unRAID server) and sold the other to a friend.  My drive worked fine (after installing the jumper), but his did not.  For some reason his computer would not see it properly, even with the jumper installed, and therefore he could not use it.  I referred him to the Samsung tool, which again told him his drive was fine.  I tried it on my computer and it worked fine.  This particular mystery is still unsolved, and my friend is too busy/lazy to put much effort into it, so that drive just sits there unused.  I offered to buy it from him (since I know it will work in my unRAID server) if he never can get it working.  So even though I can usually get Samsung drives to work, the hassle they cause is generally not worth saving a few bucks.  Again, added to my 'avoid' list.

 

So I now avoid:

• Hitachi
  
• Fujitsu
  
• Seagate
  
• Samsung
  

 

That leaves only WD.  I'm not saying they are perfect, I have had two WD drives fail on me, but they were not brand new drives.  They were two RAID class drives that I bought USED from some shady character online.  This is not something I normally do, but they were cheap and WD's good name helped to influence me into taking the risk.  I regret it now since one of the drives failed within 6 months, and unRAID refuses to recognize the other one, though it still works in my desktop for some reason, so now I just use it as a 'thrash and trash' torrent drive.  Despite this one bad experience (which I consider to be more related to buying used drives than buying WD drives) the vast majority of my dealings with WD have been positive.  I have 2 1TB WD Green drives currently in my unRAID server, and they function very well.  I also have a few smaller WD drives, I believe one 500 GB and one 640 GB, both in my unRAID server.  I have not yet had to use WD's RMA process, so I can't comment on that, but I've read that they are at least average if not better in the customer service department.

 

One of the drives in my unRAID server (I'm not sure which one yet) is giving me SMART errors, so I'm in the market for a new hard drive.  I certainly won't buy anything smaller than 1 TB anymore, and I would prefer to get a 1.5 TB or possibly even 2 TB drive if its price-friendly.  A 1 TB WD Green drive just went on sale for $75 at Newegg today, so I may jump on that.

 

I'm curious to know your thoughts.  Do you agree or disagree?  Are there some hard drive manufacturers that I'm overlooking?  Were Seagate's problems only temporary and they have once again become reliable?  Am I being too hard on Hitachi and Fujitsu based on their shoddy performance in the laptop drive arena?

[BryantD]

Between my son & myself we now have 16 of the Seagate ST31500341AS drives and 2 of the ST31000340AS drives (1 I upgraded the firmware on). I also have 3 Samsumg HD753LJ (1 was replaced under warranty). We both have over 10T of data on these and have never had an issue. You cannot beat the price/performance of the  ST31500341AS IMHO.

[lionelhutz]

I honestly think WD, Seagate and Samsung are likely all about equal in terms of reliablility. I've read bad stories about WD drives failing and how the WD RMA process is a pain in the ass. I've read about the Seagate's being crap every drive dying from one person and then read about them working great from another and about the easy RMA service from a third. I don't read much about Samsung but then they aren't nearly as popular.

 

Peter

 

 

[ClunkClunk]

I also work in the industry repairing computers (though I do little to no data recovery). What I've found from my experience is that failures seem to be more likely to happen in the same model, versus any specific brand failing more than others. For example, I'll see a lot of failures of 320GB from manufacturer XYZ failing, but XYZ's 640GB and 1TB drives rarely come in. Even though they're the same manufacturer, something is different in the line causing failures of one model, but not of another

 

I also have to offset my own personal experiences based on the drives that are put in to the machines customers purchase. The chances of me seeing a lot of 1.5TB drives from any manufacturer are low, simply because few of our customers own machines with drives that size in them yet.

 

I try to buy new drives not based on brand, but I try to buy ones that have as few platters as possible, as noise and heat are lower, and I think fewer moving parts means fewer failures. I also try to avoid buying more than two of the same model/brand at the same time, just in case I get a bad model, and they all fail nearly simultaneously (though I haven't followed that rule too carefully in the past - hence why I have five 640GB WD drives in my unRAID).