Note: These will be mainly EIDE hard drives. So vote based upon your experiences on the EIDE drives but also if you have experiences with SCSI drives post them aswell.

Hello,

I'm looking at harddrives. I've heard horror stories about IBM's failing, but my personal 40GB ibm is still going well (touch wood).

Basically, these hard drives are going to be used for servers and be used 24/7.

Could everyone vote please and also post your experiences.

Thanks very much,
Carl.

I choice maxtor.

Currently 2x 30gb in our shell server. No problems so far. Box has been up:

[root@goat james]# w
5:30pm up 63 days, 5:06, 3 users, load average: 0.40, 0.21, 0.13

Just wondering, why everyone is voting for WD?
I'm not sure how these drives are doing these days, but as I remember about 4 years ago I had about 15 of these WD broken drives in my garage. WD was failing pretty fast in the past.

Miha.

Hello,

The new western digital hard drives seem pretty good. I saw some results about returns and Seagate was one of the lowest. The HDDs we will be getting will be:

80GB Western Digital 7200RPM Special EIDE HDD with 8Mb cache

and more than likely some 120GB of the same aswell.

These are suppost to be very good. What does everyone else think?

80GB Western Digital 7200RPM Special EIDE HDD with 8Mb cacheI have 2 of these in one of my computers at home and they are really good. Getting the jumper settings right on them was a little tricky (the original settings I used were fine, only for some reason my floppy drive wouldn't work with those settings. When the jumpers were moved to a different setting, the floppy did all of a sudden work), but other than that, I have no complaints.

I'd put IBM in second place. All my other drives are IBM and have been working great. Speedwise they are only second to the WD 8MB cache drives too.

Hello,

OK Great. Well I made the right choice then. :D

You are right about IBMs failing alot. Maxtor builds mainly for personal use. If you're HD is going to be constantly spinning, I would not recommend Maxtor. WD HD's are built for commercial use, so it will have no problem being on all the time.

You are right about IBMs failing alot.I actually had a talk about this a while back with somebody that used to build harddrives for IBM. He said that it was only certain models that have/had this problem. My IBM drives are running around 14 hours a day, and have been doing so without any problems for close to 2 years now (most of them, some I've only had for about a year). The trick with the IBM drives is to keep them cool, as that is the weakness some of the models have, they generate a lot of heat, which reduces lifespan if not properly countered. I have my IBM drives in alluminium coolermaster harddrive coolers because of this.

Seagate for both EIDE and SCSI

We have 1500+ hard drives installed in our facility. From that experience I would definately recommend Seagate & IBM. Western Digital fails 25% of the time, and maxtor drives cannot take alot of abuse, but are fine for backup drives. Quantum is good as well for SCSI.

Sean R.
BurstNET
System Administration

Western Digital is the best hands down. They are made for a more commercial enviroment while maxtor and segate get quite a bit slower after being on for long periods of time.

Western Digital all the way.

I'd have to partially agree with Sean here... Seagate drives are by far the most stable drives you can get.

However, even with that said, I would still recommend any of the newer JB series of Western Digital Hard Drives. Their performance is nothing shy of amazing and I have yet to have a single failure with any of them (unlike the BB series, which do fail quite often IMO)

And on top of all that, if you can find some true Quantum IDE hard drives that were manufactured before maxtor bought them out then snag em! They are the best all around drive you'll find + you can usually get them dirt cheap.

Originally posted by BurstNET
We have 1500+ hard drives installed in our facility. From that experience I would definately recommend Seagate & IBM. Western Digital fails 25% of the time, and maxtor drives cannot take alot of abuse, but are fine for backup drives. Quantum is good as well for SCSI.

Sean R.
BurstNET
System Administration

Hello,

So. Would:

Western Digital EIDE Special with 8Mb cache work well? What about reliability? We'll be getting the 80GB and 120GB (mostly by far of the former).

We have 1500+ hard drives installed in our facility. From that experience I would definately recommend Seagate & IBM. Western Digital fails 25% of the time, and maxtor drives cannot take alot of abuse, but are fine for backup drives. Quantum is good as well for SCSI. We are seeing the exact opposite. All the drives we see fail are IBM, the most reliable are WD EIDE and Seagate SCSI.

Originally posted by RackMy.com
We are seeing the exact opposite. All the drives we see fail are IBM, the most reliable are WD EIDE and Seagate SCSI.

Hello,

Thats exactly what i'd thought would be the case. :D

We have probably thousands of drives at this point and in the last say 3 years we have had about a 25% failure rate on IBM - we have had about a 10% failure rate on western digital and we have only ever had 1 seagate and 1 maxtor drive die. Most of the failures are right out of the box (new) , except with ibm - they just dont last - we even had 2 60g 7200rpm in a raid and they lasted a year and then both failed within a month of each other - we will not deal with ibm drives anymore if we can help it - really the maxtor and seagate are the most reliable - the western digital drives look cheap and are built cheap compared to the maxtor and seagate - seagate probably inches out maxtor but not by much. That goes for both ide and scsi but mostly ide. Thats our experience.

Yes, I agree with Mike, Western Digital has never failed us.

Hello,

For any SCSI servers we will for sure use Seagate. Even though current pricing on 73GB IBM SCSI drives are good. Just not worth the risk. However, for EIDE hdds - I believe Western Digital would be the best choice in terms of performance and reliability with Seagate coming a close second.

Seagate and Western Digital are my top picks. Seagate may be a just tad slower (I'm talking 161 vs 160, margin of error); but they are quieter, cooler and are much more reliable.

I voted for WD, maxtor would be the runner up. A lot of WD drives fail personally (no less then maxtor), but they have a few benefits.

1. Most of the failures have been after a good chunk of time.
2. Very few have been abrupt, you'd see the drive generating little errors, SMART status telling you it was going to fail a few months ahead of time, plenty of time to prepare
3. Lets face it, no brand is perfect, the amount of WD's i've had fail is around the same amount as anything else (ok its been more, but i have a LOT more WD's then any other brand)
4. Their advanced RMA is pretty sweet, and they have a local plant, so shipping is like $4 cdn/drive, and they get it within 1 day usually by standard ground :D
5. WD are the only oens with the 8mb of hdd cache AFAIK.

5. WD are the only oens with the 8mb of hdd cache AFAIK.Not correct, but other brands see the 8mb cache as a reason to charge double the price, compared with the 2mb cache models.

Originally posted by Tazzman
Not correct, but other brands see the 8mb cache as a reason to charge double the price, compared with the 2mb cache models.

Which other manufacturers make 8mb cache IDE drives? I've yet to see any, might just be me not paying enough attention granted :D

Just a few examples grabbed from a Dutch price comparison site:

IBM 180GB (Deskstar 180GXP, 7200rpm 8MB Cache)
Maxtor 160GB (DiamondMax plus9, 7200rpm 8MB cache)
Seagate 80 GB (Barracuda V, 7200, 8 MB)

Intresting, the seagate has dropped to only 10 EURO's more than the WD 80 GIG equivalent, so my statement would now seem to be incorrect about the pricing.

cant believe maxtor isnt winning!

Hrm, good point tazzman, guess my vendors just keep me sheltered :D

Just noticed the Maxtor 8mb cache drive (80 GIG) is currently cheaper than the Western Digital.

Maxtor 80GB (DiamondMax plus9, 7200rpm 8MB cache € 118,-
Western Digital 80GB (WD800JB, 7200rpm, 8MB) € 122,-

Hello,

Its only $4 difference. :D

Never had a single problem with IBM and Seagate (both IDE and SCSI), but after the rumours about failing IBM drives I choose Seagate for all my recent drives.

I have 2 80gb WD 8mb cache in software RAID 1. The comparable Maxtor drive tends to run a little pricier, in part because it hasn't been around as long. I think the Maxtor outperforms the WD by a little bit (not totally sure), but it wasn't available when I built my server.

Of course, reliability is more important in this case than a little performance boost. Who knows how these Maxtor 8mb drives will compare to the WDs regarding reliability, but the WDs have earned a good reputation.

http://www.bestbuy.com/Detail.asp?m=1581&cat=1588&scat=&e=11098610

http://www.storagereview.com/welcome.pl/http://www.storagereview.com/php/benchmark/compare_rtg_2001.php?typeID=10&testbedID=3&osID=4&raidconfigID=1&numDrives=1&devID_0=222&devCnt=1

Western Digital..

Is the most fast and realible HD in the world, but it is the most sensible. " to shocks"

You might want to put a HD-Cooler on each western digital to help keeps thing's very fast :)

I use a HD-Cooler on my HD's and i have keep up for 3 mo. a
(win 2000 adv. server-it no service pack)
But i need it to reboot due to software's update.

Video card / and etc...

The Seagate / Quantum it's a fun party i have lost one seagate beacuse off overheat.

And the quatum some times freeze the os beacuse off overheat.


I will never use a seagate / quantum on a server....

They heat up too fast

( notice that all my hd uses the same cooler... that works on 5.200 RPM and goes on the botton off the HD )

I've had 5 IBM EIDE drives die on me in the last 1.5 years (#6 just tonight actually, replacing it now). I now use Seagate and Fijitsu .

Ive always been a western digi guy . All manafactures have rma'd drives , its a fact of life . I find most wd's are DOA . I guess thats kind of a plus . In fact , just a couple of months ago , i had to rma my 120 gb drive , i got a DOA drive in place of it. I complained to them , asked for an upgrade . They sent me a 180gb drive retail when the customer service rep said he would upgrade me to a 160 which was the next size up . All in all , thier support is great , havent had one fail on me yet(knocking on wood)

hmm - i have 3 IBM Deskstars - nice and fast...............

UNTILL - i decided to have them raided - they seem to just go haywire and lose all their data every few months - with whatever raid adapter i try. :_(

We have 4 servers,

1- 2X WD120GB 8MB cache
2- 2X Maxtor40GB 7200RPM
3-6X WD120GB 8MB cache
4- 2X IBM40GB 7200RPM

truely i have been impressed with the WD 8MB cache drives. i am using 2 120's on my personal machine running raid 0, btw, all the servers above are running raid 0, 1, 5, and 5 + 0....got to love adaptec for their ide raid cards...