Harddrive

[JavaCowboy]

I've been shopping for parts to build a custom system.

With what I thought was their solid reputation, I was ready to settle on a Seagate 500 Gb drive. However, I read some bad reviews on newegg.com. Specifically, they mentioned noise levels and sporadic reliability.

I read some good reviews of some Samsung drives, but the well-reviewed drives don't seem to be widely available at any Canadian store, online or brick and mortar.

Any recommendations?

[saikee]

Never bother me much as far as the make of the hard disk is concerned.

It appears the popularity has a lot to do with the release of certain capacity. I usually get the cheapest ones and so have all sorts. Samsung used (or still has) a special bearing package and seems quieter but Western Digital was most expensive and preferred when I brough 0ne 3.5" 500Gb and three 2.5" 250Gb in Hong Kong. In Newcastle UK Seagate was preferred in the 500Gb range. I think I got at least one Seagate, 2 WD and 2 Samsung. I am sure there is a Hitachi knocking around, as most of them are in enclosures. These are just on 500Gb capacity.

Didn't find anything differenct among them to tell. I expect hard disks to be manufactured as precision equipment and so all must pass the QC appropriate to this class of equipment.

[fishface]

I believe Seagate have a "ES" range (Enterprise?) which they claim have a higher MTBF rate and have been tested with server usage patterns as opposed to desktop. Not sure if the other makers make this claim or not.

Similar to Saikee, have a mix bag, Samsung, WD, Seagate, all seems pretty decent - one thing why I favor Seagate, for us any way, is the free use of their disk imaging utility, which is essentially a cut-down version of AcronisTrueImage, which we use a lot - other makes I guess have a simalar utility, but our users are user to Acronis, so it helps with procedures, documentation and the such like.

[saikee]

I lied. I got 11 No. of 500Gb disks. Usually I hide the list below because people will laugh at me, even it shows no non-500Gb disks.

500/1 Hitachi Deskstar ATA133 500 Deskstar
500/2 Hitachi Deskstar ATA133 500 Deskstar
500/3 Hitachi Deskstar ATA133 500 Deskstar External hdd
500/4 Western Digital Sata 300 500 WD5000AAKS-00TKM0 Abit Disk A
500/5 Samsung Sata 300 500 HD501LJ External eSata
500/6 Western Digital Sata 300 500 Abit Disk C
500/7 Samsung Sata 300 500 HD501LJ Abit Disk B
500/8 Western Digital ATA133 500 WD5000AAKB Abit IDE
500/9 Seagate ATA133 500 Barracuda External USB
500/10 Seagate Sata 300 500 External eSata
500/11 Samsung Sata 300 500 HD501LJ External eSata

I didn't find any one outperforming the other.

[lazybird]

Seagate did well in the hard drives while Samsung is good at displays.