Which brand of hard drive do you recommend? I'm using Toshiba and it seems to be working okay; however, if there's something better out there, I would like to know before Christmas, if ya know what I mean.
You forgot to add a few big players like Samsung and Hitachi. Im usin a WD Black sata600 right now, its like kinda ok lol. I guess i expected better performence of it.
Right now I think Western Digital....though that's on my part only. Have used Seagate for seems like forever but lately the new drives which came from Thailand and China have been showing bad sectors and head defects. Used RMA on a couple of them but the replacement was the same after only a month of use. Upon return/replacement the same story again...So I transfered to Western Digital. It's a year now and no problems whatsoever. I still have the "Certified Repaired" hdd replacement here from Seagate but I just left it in the box now. Service for Seagate is something else. They respond promptly and replace fast at their dime as long as it's under warranty. Western Digital varies per country. But upon inquiry, if 6mo of use or less just present the reciept from where you bought it and replacement is upright. For >6mo , RMA and contact regional office for replacement. Youd have to shoulder the shipment though.
I've never had any manufacturer's hard drive failing. Everything has always worked perfectly. So I have no preference. Currently both of my 2 hard drives are WD ones.
Hitachi Global Storage for me currently, used to use Seagate until about 2 years ago when they had some trouble.
I've had good luck with western Digital HDs, no mechanical failures. When they do go bad it is the control circuit board, I found out their replaceable within families. But the Western Digital Website Doesn't list replacements for the control board
I like my 640 gig WD's with two 320 gig platters. If I did want to buy a new HD I would probably go for the WD Caviar Black which has 500 gig platters and 7200 rpm even though a series of Caviar Green has platters of 667 gig it spins at 5400 rpm. HDD Platter Capacity Database
Franklin make sure u have anti noise reduction in place, installing stuff makes a whole lotta noise. Other then that i guess its workin fine
THIS +1 But of the options listed, i would go for WD, i feel they're all the same but since i've only used WD in all my pc's and they have NEVER failed me ONCE i'm going with them I still got a 5gb WD that works like a charm and a 40gb one too (From 2001). I use them as backup disks, specially de 40gb one, 24/7 use!
What ya bringing up noise for? If you read something at the link about noise then I musta missed it as I was on more about data density. No noise, no heat from my new 40 gig SSD I'm playing around with atm and after a few days all I can say is that it's OKish and seemingly just a bit snappier than the WD's 640 gigs. And besides my case sits at desktop height with the side off at all times.
Don't know who the best is. For me the worst is Western Digital. I have no success with their drives. Of the last 4 I have purchased, 1 is still fully functional. 1 gives me problems and can't be relied on. 1 came in a usb drive that lasted less than a year ( and probably less than 200 hrs.) The last ( and the last straw) is a 320g 2.5" scorpio that I bought over Christmas 2009. It now will not even be recognized by the bios. It gave me problems from the start. It is my LAST WD drive. Despite their poor reviews, I have had great success with Seagate, but I never buy a Seagate model until it has been in circulation for a few months. I have had them fail, but normally not until 5 yrs or more. I did have one arrive mail order that was DOA. I've never used Hitachi. I have a 1G Samsung that has been in service for 3-4 yrs. It has been very reliable. It is my current system drive.
Just a pre caution m8, thats all I was talkin about the WD, besides it seems i have the exact same model as u although i gotta admit and this will sound strange perhaps but the noise level is much much worse in the beginning. It seems to have really settled down after a while so it must feel at home I had this buzzin sound from my stock cpu cooler in idle, very annoyin. I took off the side n bam gone U must know what ur doin then
What is a good replacement for WD External drives now that WD has all that junkware hardcoded onto the drive?
I have used WD exclusively for the last 2 years at home and work and have no complaints. Seagate is probably the only brand mentioned I would not buy. They tend to be the quietest, but are slow and more likely to fail in my experience.
Used Western Digital for many years and they have always been a good and reliable companion. No hard drive crashes no weird sounds from the harddisk, and no peculiar smell of melted wires. So of course I choose them, WD
OCZ all the way. The 90gig vertex2 is the best all around boot drive mixing decent OS/app space with a decent price. I have Vertex2 drives in 4 of my 5 systems currently and could not be happier. I cant wait for 25nm flash and the next gen SATA600 sandforce controller based drives.
I've had 3 WD external drives fail that were only 2 years old. Anyone got any recommendations for a replacement other than WD? I need 2TB drives. I also hate the fact that the newer WD drives have software hardcoded onto the drives.