Sun Mar 28, 2004 11:40 am
IIRC all of the newer Maxtors use fluid dynamic bearings, which is a point in their favor. WD hasn't quite caught up yet in this area (some of their models use FDB, but most still do not).
And just to add my own $.02 to the collection of anecdotal hard drive experiences:
- The only drive I've ever had that died outright was an IBM drive that I accidentally dropped on the floor.
- Over the past ~12 years, I've used numerous Maxtor and Western Digital drives, and a few Seagates. One of the older Maxtors was acting up a bit recently, but I think it was just a loose power connector.
- All current 7200 RPM drives seem to be reasonably quiet. (As opposed to a few years ago when 7200 RPM first started to become mainstream -- back then, most of the drives on the market made high-pitching whining noises.)
I believe the keys to hard drive reliability are: A) clean power; B) decent ventilation of your drive bays; and C) never moving, bumping or shaking the drive while it is spinning. I suspect that C is the reason for many hard drive failures -- people put their computers on shaky desks or tables, which results in the drive being jostled every time someone slams a desk drawer, bumps the table, etc...
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
From my research online. I find to my surpise that Western Digital had all sorts of nasty problems with their WD1200JBs making them almost as reliable as the dreaded 75GXP Deathstars. 
He asked me to get some suggestions on getting something much more reliable with at least 100GB. So I came here to gather some third-party suggestions.
)
