[mythtv-users] Hard Drives that Actually Work?

Chris Petersen lists at forevermore.net
Tue Dec 14 16:39:20 UTC 2004


> I just had my second Western Digital Special Edition 200 GB drive die on me.

My company ships hundreds of these every month, with very few problems. 
  Seagate is still our favorite, as far as reliability goes.  We were 
wary of WD when we first started using them (there was a point when 
Seagate just wasn't making big enough drives for our storage servers), 
but the WD "jb" drives (don't bother with the bb, etc) have seemed to be 
pretty decent, all things considered.

Keep in mind that a few drives dying is bound to happen -- there have 
been had lots where every drive in a group will die within a relatively 
short period of time -- but when you deal with hundreds, "a few here and 
there" is a lot less damaging than when the "few" are the only two you have.

No one in the reliable-storage industry trusts maxtor yet.  Their older 
drives are pretty reliable (I have a 20G that works great), but there 
was a period where their quality/reliability really sucked, and they 
have yet to repair the damage it caused to their image.

Please also keep in mind that I'm talking about SATA drives.  WD's PATA 
drives were considerably less reliable than their SATA drives are (but 
still not that bad, all things considered)

Personally, I'd go with seagate 7200.7 -- it's what I have running in my 
pundit, and has been going fine for almost a year now.  Seagate also has 
a longer warranty than the other companies.

-Chris


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