I used to use Western Digital, until my brand new 80gb (back then brand new) drive died within 3 months. Then I switched to maxtor, a little over a year, dead... Seems like the only drives that don't DIE that I have had are Samsung drives pulled from old Crappaqs and HPs... They are just to slow though.\

Anyone have a suggestion?

That might be improper cooling, or a bad/insufficient PSU?

Buy Seagate >.>

Make sure you get a 3 year warranty, that's about it.

I've seen Top of the Line Enterprise grade drives fail in a month, and I have a friend who has been using a DTLA (the infamous IBM Deathstar harddrive) ever since it came out without problem.

In the end, it just comes down to this:

Harddrives fail, deal with it.

I usually buy Seagate. I've had some troubles with Western Digital and Maxtor, but I can usually deal with it.

I know that Maxtors are usually not long for this world (one exception: I have a VERY old 8gb Maxtor that I bought years ago. It still works great after ~10 years, I'm currently running ubuntu off of it) but I'm surprised that so many people have had problems with Western Digital; most people I've talked to over the years have always held them in high esteem.

i got a 320 gig Seagate the other day for about $120 at walmart

great so far

I've been using the same Western Digital and Seagate drives for years and they haven't failed me.

In my 11 years of computing, I have never had a hard drive fail.

Majority of the WD hard drives I've had all had a life span of less than two years. Because of that, I made an oath to stay away from that company at all costs. I currently have a Maddox (I think that's the name) 80gb hard drive for about 4 years now and its been good to me so far.

I have two Maxtor drives in my machine at the moment, and I'm pretty sure they're both on their way to the grave. They both click and squeak every so often. Ah well. As long as they last for another year or so, I'm good. I can't afford to replace anything at the moment. I just need some stability until I can secure a career.

I use DOS. All of my various programmes are on a 1/100 scale model of the Civic Center made of floppies.

What's a hard drive?

Is that a rip or is the US expensive for hard drives?

You could get a 320 gig Seagate for no more than $100-$110 Aussie dollars out here, so about $80-$90 US.

I've had 3 WD HDD's. A 30 gig that's approaching maybe 5 years or so, an external 250 gig that's hitting on one year, and a 500 gig approaching 6 months. All of which work perfectly and have since I bought them.

he bought retail... newegg price for a 320GB seagate is $80... $71 for open box if you feel lucky

I have never, ever had a harddrive fail on me. Ever. I am amazingly blessed.

And no, I'm not going to knock on wood.

Not sure if any of you ever read the report google did on its hard drives but over a 5 year period they found very little difference between failure rate of drives from different companies, but what they did find was interesting...

(the numbers I quote won't be 100% accurate but will be close enough)

If I hard drive is going to fail, it will most likely fail within the first 3-4 months of use, if it survives this period the failure rate from then onwards drops significantly.

So what does this mean....there is no difference between the drives, be nice and gentle to them for the first couple of months and if they survive they will likely last till you need to replace them for something quicker/bigger. If it does fail within the first few months, don't take it personally, thats when the majority will fail.

Just so everyone knows... Maxtor = Seagate, Seagate = Maxtor...

I found a thread online somewhere and someone fixed the drive by 'banging it' which amazingly worked on mine, but im not going to depend on this drive, i have a new one being shipped via 2day UPS from newegg, now i need a good HD image copier... something that can literally mirror one drive to the other where i dont have to install anything or setup anything.... anyone?

Never had a HD fail on me. But years ago a friend wouldn't have bought my old video card if I hadn't coupled an extra Seagate HD I had to the deal, and a month or two later he told me it had died. Either he was unlucky or I was lucky.

Yes, Seagate does own Maxtor. That doesn't mean that Maxtor drives are suddenly the same as Seagate drives, though.

anyone? i need an ap to mirror my drive over to the new one

I paid $99.99 for my 400Gb SATA Seagate months ago...they're definitely getting cheaper. Found a 750Gb for what..$200, I think?

I have a Maxtor 250GB and a WD 250GB in this machine right now, and both are great. I've had one Maxtor fail and they are rather loud. WD has always been kind to me.

Clicking and squeaking are alarming signals of failure. You should backup everything that's important as soon as possible.

1) All harddrives will die. It's really luck of the draw.
2) Maxtor isn't even Maxtor anymore, it's owned by Seagate (which, iirc, has the lowest fail-rate of all harddrive brands).
3) Suck it up.