drive recomendations

[professor_jonny]

I have had all my Seagate 7200.11 and 7200.12 drives fail in my computer to be honest I don't think I'm going to buy another so I'm in the market for new stable brand drives to replace my current ones but I'm not 100% Sure on what to use but I'm tending towards a hgst 4tb deskstar drives or wd 4tb black.

all my drives are in the 1200 to 1400 hour running mark and are only used for storage in a personal pc sharing/ archival in my computer that basically acts like a cheapskate server in my home and is basically left running 24-7.

When should I retire them is there a recommended life time to retire them?

Would it be wise to invest in a hgst or a wd drives as it seems that these are the longest lasting and is a enterprise drive worth the extra money or is a raid drive best for me?

What are thoughts on the new helium filled drives best to avoid until the technology matures or best to avoid them like the plague as I guess repair and recovery becomes an issue in the future?

[RolandJS]

Since nobody that I know of can predict a HD's early or expected demise, I purchased Hard Drive Sentinal [the 5PC family pack] and installed same on each computer. At the very least, I will get a "NORAD"-type warning if any of my internal or external HDs even begin to show signs of early or expected demise.
** I'm not making a commercial! Even though I bought the pack, one can download the free version if one wants to. **

[data-medics]

Here's the basic breakdown based on what every data recovery company is currently seeing:

Seagate - avoid like the plague, they are dropping like flies
Western Digital - hit or miss, some are very reliable (usually the more expensive ones) some are not.
HGST - Rock solid, very few failures especially of the 3.5" models. Even their cheapest drive is more reliable than a good WD. Though you should watch out for some of their really new 2.5" models that are actually cheap WD blue drives in disguise.
Toshiba - Also very solid. Probably the most reliable of the 2.5" models. Many of their 3.5" are actually HGST so you're still safe.
Samsung - Generally pretty reliable, but they are owned by Seagate and there is crossover. Some Samsung branded drives may actually be Seagates in disguise. Oddly enough some Seagate externals are actually Samsung in disguise. I guess even they aren't stupid enough to trust their own drives in a portable external.

[MeepsterNotchy]

Samsung should have bought Seagate.

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Samsung should have bought Seagate.

Well,
Best comment in ages

[fzabkar]

Hitachi should have bought Western Digital.