Hard drive relibility.

Ok. This is starting to really irritate me. Just replaced my hard drive in my home computer less than 6 months ago.

Two days ago my computer would not boot. Blue screen of death. Turns out to be bad sectors on less than 6 month old drive.

I even had one drive a few years ago that i got that lasted less than 2 months.

On avarage my hard drives are lasting about a year before i have to replace them.

Really getting annoying. Consumer grade drives are not what they used to be. The newer, faster and bigger drives get, the faster they die.

If i could afford it i would be using server grade high end expensive drives in my computer.

Just ranting. Getting sick of this crap. So i use my computer more than most people, but still, today's modern drives really suck.

And don't bother to suggest SSD. They are to expensive, and way to small for my needs.

 Totally agree Deano ... quality and reliability is not same these days

agreed. 

I used to build computers for a company many many years ago...

certain brands HD's would fail within 6 months, prob 1 in 5...

I think the prob these days is price wars. There are some very cheap manufacturers out there so everyone has to compete price wise. Often quality suffers...

I do think there is a link between bigger drives failing more than smaller ones though.

Deano, I like Western Digital but I don't spill my coffee all over it. LOL

 
I did not spill my coffee on it. And believe it or not, the one that just died is a WD drive.

I also have used Seagate with not much difference in the failure rate. Back in the day of the old RLL and MFM drives, Seagate was the top of the line. Ah, the good old days.

I have been reading reports that currently the most reliable are HGST which were formally Hitachi. Western digital now owns their PC drive line. I may try one of those drives next. But who knows. By next year WD may top the charts again. However, they all currently only have a 1 year life expectancy plus or minus a couple of months at my usage level.

I may just setup a WD Red SATA Raid in my computer so if i have a failure, i at least don't have to spend so much time restoring data and fixing stuff.

Just wish i had more money to play with to setup something decent. I would prefer to setup a SAS storage system to keep all my important stuff on.

you need to check the wire connections of electricity at your home. major cause is the electric fluctuation mostly. my 2 drives died because of the fluctuation from UPS. simple rule if you are not using some thing shut it down instead of leaving it on all the time. you are burning the hours of the life on any thing this way.

I am still gonna suggest ssd :|

You can get a 120 gb ssd for 80 bucks + a hdd for mass storage, that way you can use place your OS and programs on SSD where it shines, and use hdd for storage which you don't access rapidly. It will keep both drives happy. I know its a bit pricey but its an investment and will save you a lot in long run.

 Man I couldn't agree more. I actually have a stack of dead drives on my desk right now. The really crazy part is you can pick out just about any drive and go read the Amazon reviews, the reviews will be about 50% bad. Almost all of them have a huge DOA rate. Ridiculous...

Right now I'm running a 125gb SSD and 250gb SSD in my pc.. but I have 3 NAS units and the regular drives die in those CONSTANTLY. I remember my first drive all those years ago was 250mb.. and it lasted way past being obsolete.

 
My first drive was a Seagate ST238r 30MB RLL that i had in my old 286 computer. It was still operational when i built a new computer.

But yea, older drives of 500MB and under were always very reliable as well.

 I wouldn't think that was the cause; the power supply in the PC is a great voltage stabilizer unless your using an inferior brand.

 I'm liking the SSD on my server more and more!

It was a tough choice choosing in the beginning but now I'm appreciating the speed and reliability. 

 Just to throw this out. What kinda temps are you dealing with?

I know heat will effect the drives more than you think.

I read where Samsung has released a 3 TB SSD; no idea of the price.

I remember WD drives with a five year warranty.  I brought a Seagate drive, use to be good drives; that ended with the click of death after they claimed they had fixed the firmware problem that caused the click of death (this is a seek problem and the drive just beats the hell out of the heads against the head stops).

IDE drives are spot tested; based on stats for how low you want to keep the price against bad drives being sold.  SCSI drives are tested each and every one.  That is why SCSI drives were always more expensive than IDE and why IDE came to be the most used ones in computer systems; computer manufacturers went with them to keep the cost of systems low..  I think the other issue is like the one with my Seagate, bad firmware and controllers (not the ones on the board but the ones on the drive itself.)

I've had pretty good luck with Seagate's hybrid drives.

I have 3 SCSI 80 gig drives that have now been running continuously for 12 years without a glitch...

Here's the solution Deano....

http://www.pcconnection.com/product/sandisk-800gb-lightning-ultra-gen-ii-solid-state-drive/sdltmckw-800g-5ca1/18386917?cac=Result

I've had good luck with Samsung.  I've had 4T for many years.

This article highlights results of a rather large data sample which supports Hitachi as having the least failures vs other popular brands.  Sometimes it is parts quality, but also the instruction sets that drive the heads will vary from manufacturer to the next.  As the drive capacity increases, so does the toil on the mechanical components.  

I have no data, just a strong feeling that perhaps a drive designed for a laptop may have higher ruggedness standards.  If you are not searching for multi-terabyte drives, maybe try a Hitachi laptop drive?

oops, edited to include this link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2089464/three-year-27-000-drive-study-reveals-the-most-reliable-hard-drive-makers.html