Hi. I work at a huge computer store and we sell all kinds of hard disks. These are the brands we carry:

ExcelStor
Fujitsu
Hitachi
Maxtor
Samsung
Seagate
Toshiba
Western Digital

I've always been happy about Western Digital and Seagate. They're a little more expensive but I've always have nothing but good experiences with them. I have one of those Caviar SE16 disks with 750GB in my computer. We also sell a lot of Samsung disks. I don't know why, but I'm not so fond on those. Samsung is a fairly new player in the HD market. I've never really heard about ExcelStor but we recently sell those too. I don't really like Maxtor since one crashed on me, but that was the old maxtor. At this moment, they are actually Seagate disks on the inside, right? I have no experience with Fujitsu, Hitachi and Toshiba. Who makes in your (HDD Guru) opinion the best and worst drives?

I had myself no problems with no brand. Samsung is making hdds since the early 90's. Excelstore are refurbished Conner and Hitachi, I knew. I prefer Samsung for quality and Maxtor for repair.

I am personally warming to the new Samsung drives, seem very quick and good quality.

The Seagate 7200.10 drives all seem to have an inherrent problem with spindle seizure, the slightest knock and they're buggered, and the platter guards inside inhibit platter swapping with regular tools. Fortunately, we've developed a method to work around this, but that's not the point!

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

Don't trust any hard drive company (Sxxgxxe) with its own data recovery sub company. Spindle seizures have been very common over the years and they do nothing to prevent it. In my opinion, its Sxxgxxe's way of improving profits in a slow market. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why they are made to be complicated.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

ExcelStor - Run!
Fujitsu - surface/head problems
Hitachi - surface/head problems
Maxtor - Made by Seagate now
Samsung - My 1st choice
Seagate - seizures/heads/surface. Great warranty!
Toshiba - My 2nd choice only because they are so easy to recover after motor problems
Western Digital - heads/surface problems

Personally I do use Seagates because of the 5 year warranty and price, but only in raid mirroring backup systems. At three years every one of them develop strange problems and I get a new and faster drive with another 5 year warranty.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Hello,

I think, this question can't be objective, because manufacturer makes different quality over the world.
In Hungary, we have a looot of bad samsung drives, and i never suggest this brand for nobody....

The question is still interesting, but please, if somebody post he's opinion, please post the location as well.

Personally, i preferring the WD and Maxtor, Seagate drives for the desktop, and toshiba, hitachi, wd for notebboks. (in this order)
But of course, i use raid if the data is in important place, and have make a lot of backups over the lan/net.

Regards,
Janos

Oh, almost forget this part:

All the manufacturer has good and bad series, and the user always need to have a little fortune, to catch the good one.

J

United States

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Let's add that not all brands are sold everywhere in the same amount.
We see some brands/series for DR more often, but don't forget to investigate how many of them was sold.
The more they sell, the more will come for DR. Of course there are differences between the brands, but the amount of drives coming from one brand just doesn't say anything in itself.
IMHO.

pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery

I think there is no brand better than other, all manufacturers have bad and good hds, and any of them have no problem in sell hds that they know are bad manufactured ..., dont have quality, and more.

If you want data secure, the solution is BackUp, no other one.

Bye

Note: my prefered brand is Seagate.

ExcelStor nope
Fujitsu crap
Hitachi crap (not bad
Maxtor crap (aka seagate own them now again maxtor crap beep beep beep
Samsung good Great drive
Seagate good Great warranty which you will use for sure 3 years
Toshiba good
Western Digital

end of the day brand new hard drives have a lot of errors
they simple just remap them so the drives does not use the sector they are on

in recovery problems we had seen a lot of western digital and maxtor and seagate

I think a lot of opinions on the best HDD is loosley based on how easy or difficult it is to recover from, and the common failures associated with it, rather than the performance value. My favourate HD to use myself is Seagate or Samsung becuase most common failures with these I can generally recover with ease, while these may not even be the best performing HD I feel better saving my data here!

I agree that most major players has some good and bad models. Right now i like Samsung very much. I have been curious about the newer F1 series. 334 GB per platter. The thing I don't understand is why the 500gb model? Surely it uses two platters, right? Does this mean they waste the rest? I guess I don't get marketing... surely this can be "fixed". I like the idea of the single platter with 334gb on it. Even then, at 320GB, implies you are wasting considerable space.

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http://pcrecoveryllc.com

That's what factory selfscan and excess inventory parts are used for...

You didn't say anything about WD

Samsung is my first choice both as a user and a data recovery specialist.

Hey, Dellguy - don't hold back! Seagate are producing rubbish drives, and they should be taken to court because I believe they are not fit for purpose.

The fact that they also own a data recovery company is a mockery, and I have to question the integrity of Seagate as a whole.

Duncan
Retrodata.co.uk

My main job is pc and notebook repair - the typical s/w and hw defects.
Now we receive 97% notebooks and the rest is pc.

After about 3 years one should carefully watch the (notebook) hdd´s.
Customers think they got a virus or bad program, but its the hdd...
The defect drives ( 2,5" ) usually are
Hitachi / IBM, Seagate!!, Fujitsu, Toshiba
very seldom WD
one in the last 2 years: Samsung

I prefere Samsung for all my PC´s
We replace all Notebook drives with Samsung.

I had only one strange experience with a new Samsung 2,5":
On a PC I got a SMART error with that drive, the Samsung test software
reported the drive to be OK - I returned it, got a new one which worked
without problem.

***

A little far fetched don't you think? Their DR business is worth what, 1% of their hard drive business? Increasing the failure rates artificially will end up hurting them as a whole because even a tiny drop in HDD sales is a heck of a lot of money...

I understand what your saying but, why do SeXgXtes still have motor spindle seizures after all these years? For most other brands this is rare except for Toshiba. How could this hurt them? One drive probably costs them under a dollar to produce in some overseas factory and one recovery nets several thousands of pure profit. Why not make some drives fail from an easily recoverable failure and perform the recovery within the company? Its great for business as long as you keep your retail prices low and dont alienate your customers. If they dont need a recovery they are only out a dollar from the warranty.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.