Hard Drives

[brnoe]

I was just wondering what suggestions you might have on hard drives. I have been shopping around for a few to upgrade to in the near future and was wondering what everyone used. Both ide and scsi comments are welcomed.
Thanks :)

[jbiz718]

Well I have stopped ordering Western Digital IDE drives, as I have found them to have a high failure rate. For IDE Maxtor or Seagate.

SCSI Seagate is always a good option, though for a cheaper drive Fujitsu is a great alternative.

[brnoe]

Thanks for the input jbiz. I have been using WD for my personal computers but have noticed the problems with them more and more lately (had a 60gb drive fail on me 2 days after buying it). I will check into what some of the others offer (seagate, etc) Any comments on the Maxtor Atlas 10k drives (scsi)? What about controller cards and raid cards?
:)

[jbiz718]

3 ware makes great ide raid cards. Also we use alot of adaptec 2110S Zero Channel raid. Mylex 170 also is a good careds. The maxtor scsi drives are probably fine. Not sure on scsi controllers, but adaptec is usually good.

[brnoe]

Much appreciated, I had heard good reviews on the 3ware cards and was looking into them. I will also be sure to check the others out as well.
Thanks again!

[Roberto]

I love both Western Digital for IDE and Seagate for IDE and SCSI. I have had none of those drives fail. Don't ever put a Maxtor drive in a server, they just aren't built for 24/7 crunching.

[Chicken]

Originally posted by Roberto:

Don't ever put a Maxtor drive in a server, they just aren't built for 24/7 crunching.
Hopefully they are good enough for home use though, as I have a 20GB that is still kicking and a new 80GB which has been fine so far. I have had problems with Maxtor drives before also (kept getting bad batches), but lately, all is well. They took them back without hassle (quick on the phone too!) so at least that was good.

[no1v2]

Originally posted by no1v2:

I strongly recommend you don't use Maxtors, or at least not 7200 RPM Maxtors. Somehow they got past our initial testing, but soon after we deployed hundreds them they started failing constantly. It became a race between them failing and us swapping them out.

We've found Western Digitals to be fast and pretty reliable, and Seagates to be a little more reliable but significantly slower with certain motherboards/controllers.

All of the above just refers to 7200RPM PATA drives. I don't know anything firsthand about the reliability of any SATA or SCSI drives (though I always hear Seagate makes the best SCSIs).

[Shane]

I would highly recommend going with a Seagate drive rather it be IDE or SCSI. This is what we use here at FastServers.net and very rarely have problems with them.

I give them 2 thumbs up!

[interactive]

Originally posted by jbiz718:

Well I have stopped ordering Western Digital IDE drives, as I have found them to have a high failure rate. For IDE Maxtor or Seagate.

SCSI Seagate is always a good option, though for a cheaper drive Fujitsu is a great alternative.

I second that. I'm running a couple older IBM drives (deskstars) and they are awesome. But the newer model (before they were bought out) the 75GXP or something is known as "deathstars" for a reason ;). For IDE you'll never go wrong with Maxtor, and for SCSI you'll never go wrong with Seagate. I haven't had the chance to play with any Serial drives yet though :(.

[beley]

My latest IDE purchase was an 80 GB Seagate... I have been very happy with it. I have some SCSI drives but I think they're all IBM or Compaq's (proprietary hot-swap drives for servers).

[varangian]

I've known a couple of people who bought a WD 120 or 160 GB that failed in about 3 months time. Though I currently have a 30 GB WD in my PC, if I was going to buy a new HD anytime soon for IDE I'd probably go with Seagate or Maxtor.

[mScDeX]

NO MAXTORs!

I have 3 servers running on RAID 0, and i have already had 2 maxtor drives fail, while my seagate and WD ran smoothly.

[markblair]

I have used both Maxtor and Western Digital drives and I find them both to be extremely reliable. Just like anything else in life, even the best parts can go bad. To me it's about how often that happens as well as the type of service your receive getting the parts replaced in a timely manner. Also, if you are dealing with servers, you should have spare drives available even if you are using a top-of-the-line drive. Again, anything can go bad. :)

[Adam]

Western Digital IDE for no very active servers.
Seagate IDE for high end service

and for SCSI i only use Seagate. This may change soon if i dont renew my contract with Seagate.

[MikeMc]

I have experienced a lot of failures with Maxtor drives. They seem really unreliable. The rest of the firms worked fine for me and I have tried other 3 or 4. I would like also to say some good words for the Samsung IDE hard drives since I don't hear a lot to be used for heavy work from others.

[alex042]

Personally, I tend to prefer the Maxtor drives over the WD drive I have for my PC's.

Here's something you may find interesting:
http://www.varbusiness.com/sections/apps/2003arc_results.asp?category=12 . According to this research they found the following for desktop drives with higher being better:
Western Digital Maxtor Seagate Average
75 68 67 70

http://www.varbusiness.com/sections/apps/2003arc_results.asp?category=11
And the following for enterprise drives:
Maxtor Seagate Fujitsu Average
74 74 73 74