WD vs Hitachi which drives to prefer for reliability

[TaskManager]

Recently Seagate drives ( all latest families like 7200.11 / 7200.12 /ES.2) are having some kind of defect.
SO we have left WD & Hitachi . Can someone please suggest which is better option in terms of reliability?
I have read that Hitachi drives are having 5 platter design & not energy efficient as well as slow in performance.
If someone has done research on internal design & testing on WD & Hitachi , pls. suggest me a reliable hard disk.
I appreiciate your time , thank you

[lcoughey]

Here is my order of preference, even though we just sell Seagate here.

1. Hitachi
2. Seagate
3. Western Digital

As far as I'm concerned, the Seagate issues are minor in comparison to those of Western Digital.

[CK]

The only drives we buy for our lab are:

Hitachi
Samsung

[N.C.]

i always suggest hitachi for my customers, but the list looks like this:

hitachi
seagate
samsung
wd

[CK]

Seagate over Samsung? Really?

Sorry, this is to get more DR jobs in right?

[poehere]

The only drives we buy for our lab are:

Hitachi
Samsung

I recommand these two drives also and this is what I use in my systems and shop. In Tahiti they sell as lot of WD Blue and Green and they are the ones to stay away from. At least here they are really bad drives and normally do not last any time at all here on the islands.

[-BR-]

I think everyone is entitled to have their preference

In our experience for example, (brazilian market) the order of reliability should be:

1. Samsung (the best by a VERY LONG shot!)
2. Seagate (you buy it, you'll have to fix it in the near future)
3. Western (same as Seagate but with less warranty)
4. Hitachi (never recommend this piece of %$#@, even for your worst enemies )

This offcourse while considering 3.5" Sata hdds

-BR-

[drc]

Personally I use lots of cheap WD drives for things and have never had serious issues with them.

Their RMA policy is very forgiving, so if you do have issues then they are easy to replace. I can see how this gets more difficult outside of the States.

Ultimately the only reliable drive is the one you have full backups of

[CK]

4. Hitachi (never recommend this piece of %$#@, even for your worst enemies )

Seems that your experiences are polar opposites of mine. My preference is Hitachi, I find them the best on the market at the moment - I'm talking about the latest Hitachi drives, not the old stuff. Also find them most recoverable if they do go wrong. Just bought a batch of Samsung & Hitachi today, hopefully they won't prove me wrong

[-BR-]

Hi CK!
I wish you the best luck with those Hitachi hdds

Here we really won't use them as anything else than paper holders
But maybe that's because Hitachi has a policy to send the worst materials (mostly refurbished) drives to 3rd World countries like mine

Everything they won't find acceptable to US and Europe they "discard" here

[jono-ats]

I have a skewed opinion because we don't get good drives in for recovery.

We like both long warranties and ease of recovery when we recommend drives to our clients. Sometimes those two things do not occur together . . .

We tell our clients that the newer drives don't seem to last as long as the older stuff, so they should back up to more than one hard drive, and realize that ALL drives will eventually fail. Brand doesn't matter - just buy 2 or 3.

[N.C.]

Seagate over Samsung? Really?

Sorry, this is to get more DR jobs in right?

Based on my experience, my statistics, yes.

This kind of topic was before, and this support my old theory, wich is the following:
The manufacturers makes different quality drives on different locations, and sells drives with different policy as well!
For example, if i am right, WD gives 7 years warranty in Italy, here, in Hungary only 3-5.
But other locations, maybe more less....
The quality can be different too.

BTW samsung and WD have serious PCB oxidation probems wich eliminates the "LONG SHOT" purpose.
Seagate is a little bit better, but Hitachi the only company who knows how should be made the PCB!
(The schematic circuit is different question. )

Janos

[-BR-]

Another thing to keep in mind is that some mechanical hdd manufactures are desperately trying to give their products more advantages over solid state products

For instance, I think it was not a coincidence the 7200.11 fiasco!
(remember Seagate was not manufacturing ssd in large scale at that time)

It seems that they had to release the product in the market to achieve larger volumes quick, wherever the product was ready or not

And if you look at their newest products, for example, the latest Seagate 1Tb 2.5" Freeplay drives, you can see that not much have changed
Seagate's 2Tb 7200.12 also seems to not have overcame the stuck spindle issue

Some of this new drives seems to be like clock bombs, just waiting to explode

-BR-

[TaskManager]

Thank you all for valuable information.
NC's explanation was useful , pcb corrosion is very quick on even 3 month old drives for Seagate as well.
I will start using and promoting Hitachi drives now.