Which is the most reliable (or unreliable) hard drive brand? [closed]

Solution 1:

The plural of anecdote is not data, which is seemingly all this question is asking. But to add useful content to the topic, I suggest two papers presented at a Usenix conference in 2007.

Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population

Disk failures in the real world: What does an MTTF of 1,000,000 hours mean to you

Solution 2:

In my opinion it's not possible to answer this unless we are talking about a specific point in time or a specific make and model.

Which makes and models of drives are good or bad changes constantly. All manufacturers have produced some real rubbish models and all major manufacturers have produced some very good ones as well, so a general answer has little or no validity. You really need to ask about specific drives, as that is the only time the answers have real relevance. Before buying new drives I always ask my supplier about the return rate of what is currently available. I don't buy drives with a return rate higher than 1 in 500 within the first year. I also avoid models that have been out for less than at least 6 months.

One thing I would advise you to do is steer well clear of any drive that doesn't have a decent warranty, with 5 years becoming the norm. Manufacturers can't afford to give long warranties on drives with a high return rate.

Solution 3:

Speaking of actual data -- there is a user-entered reliability database at Storage Review, which is widely regarded as the best hard drive review site out there.

http://www.storagereview.com/map/lm.cgi/survey_login

I signed up (note that browsing the reliability data requires entering reliability for at least one of your own hard drives, first) and it has this much data so far:

24,857 readers have entered results for their experiences with a total of 52,876 drives.

Solution 4:

I will let you know in 10 years which hard drive maker is the best today.

Seriously. New hard drives are so much different from ones from 5 years ago that we don't know which ones are good or bad. There simply hasn't passed enough time.

Historically the stability of hard drives has gone up and down a lot. From one generation to the next IBM went from really good to crap (and later back again). And it has happened both ways for all HD manufacturers. I have a 3GB IBM drive from something like the mid 90's that has worked perfectly 24/7 since then.

Or are you just interested in what brand will hold up for 3 months?