Can You Recommend a Reliable Hard Drive?

swilso on 11/03/2016 - 17:50
Last edited 11/03/2016 - 21:41

Hi. I am looking at a new hard drive to replace an internal 3tb Seagate ST3000DM001 I had that just crashed on me losing a lot of personal & work data among other things. I don't really want to have to spend over $200 so the 4tb drives are probably out and I need a minimum of 2tb.

Does anyone recommend one that has good failure rates? This is the second one in 3 or 4 years I am replacing but I suppose that is common for mechanical drives ?

It will purely be a storage drive for backup and streaming content to the raspberry pi. This time I will be sure to backup the personal things this time round ! Bit of a kick in the **** on a Friday afternoon. Most disappointed about losing photos.

hmm from what I can tell this specific drive is notorious for failure has a current class action lawsuit against Seagate for their failure rate by the sounds of it: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3028981/storage/seagate-slapp…

Computing

Comments

  • holdenmg on 11/03/2016 - 18:04
    +1

    Hey,
    There are some good eBay deals on HDD at Futu Online with the current 20% off promo code of "CTECHIE"

    Check out the offerings @
    http://stores.ebay.com.au/Futu-Online/3-5-inch-for-Desktop-/…

  • scrimshaw on 11/03/2016 - 18:49
    +1

    I'd recommend the WD RED nas drives
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/6157/western-digital-red-revie…

    I'm currently using a 2TB and 3TB in my standalone gaming PC. They are not fast performers though!

  • oscargamer on 11/03/2016 - 19:36

    get 2 x enterprise HHD's (maybe Hitachi) and KEEP A BACKUP !

  • [Deactivated] on 11/03/2016 - 20:56

    you wont have lost everything on the dead drives, dont go trying to continually read and write to them though.

    do you have two identical model drives? if it's just the PCB that's failed you can swap them over, boot the drive, dump it, then put it back on the other drive.

    • swilso on 11/03/2016 - 21:43

      Unfortunately I don't. It just makes like a continual read noise. On my mac I can open the folder structure of the drive and transfer some very small couple kb files but anything bigger takes too long or it gives errors. From what I found Seagate are being taken to court for this specific drive and it's poor (high) failure rate: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3028981/storage/seagate-slapp…

      Guessing my issue would be the heads ?

      • [Deactivated] on 11/03/2016 - 22:16

        there are data recovery places you could take it to but it will cost you, depends on how much the photos are worth I guess.

        • swilso on 13/03/2016 - 16:59

          I'm going to look into it. I'm happy paying probably no more than a few hundred would be what I can afford to see if it can be recovered. It's definitely something mechanical. I will ring Seagate Monday.

  • LionelDroppout on 11/03/2016 - 21:53
    -1

    Hitachi hitachi or hitachi. Personally wouldn't touch a seagate or WD of any consumer model these days.

    I believe Toshiba drives are also Hitachis under the skin so should be good.

    Real shame Samsung hdd got eaten up by seagate, they were also good, now we have less choice.

  • OzByte on 12/03/2016 - 00:00

    That era Seagate drives had an extremely high failure rate, in fact there is a lawsuit underway against Seagate for such high failure rates. So don't get too stressed, it was just a particularly bad series of drives. If you want super reliable drives now HGST is the most reliable.

  • Narx on 12/03/2016 - 01:12

    I suggest you buy a SSD for system and softwares and a HDD for data storage.

    • swilso on 12/03/2016 - 06:53

      That's exactly what I have.

  • Davros on 12/03/2016 - 07:06
    +1

    They are all reliable imho, luck of the draw as to how long they last.
    In 15 years I have only had 1 actual fail across 24 TB of data across 8 to 10 drives inc 2 SSD's
    They run pretty much 24/7
    None of the mechanicals are anything more special than bog standard Hitachi's, WD's or seagates
    Samsung and Patriot SSD's

    I do regular backups of important data

  • swilso on 12/03/2016 - 13:30

    Thanks for everyone's help so far. I will complain to Seagate on Monday and see if seen as though they have a current class action law suit for the same drive they might offer to have a go at repairing it for free (hopes are probably a bit high here) otherwise I will cop it on the chin and learn to backup things better. I'm thinking one of the WD RED 4tb drives to replace it and a Seagate 4tb external purely to backup important files. So bit more than $200 but the headache at the moment is more than priceless.

    My new issue now is here: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/238605 Bloody computer won't even get into the bios screen. Worst weekend ever, thankfully have the ROC race on tomorrow…. and alcohol, lots of alcohol…

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