favorite ATA/SATA hard disk brand?

[Alex Zbyslaw]

Steve Camp wrote:

>What brand / make / model ATA / SATA hard disks do you prefer?
>
>I am looking to purchase some SATA disks in the 160 - 300GB size.
>I got a good deal (I think) on a Samsung OEM 250GB disk for $95 at my
>local MicroCenter, but read on the web a few days later one gamer /
>system builder / geeks-on-call type that he had *4* Samsung OEM disks
>all die on him.  So he swore off Samsung.
>
>So whom do you like / recommend?
>  
>
For any brand of disk you will always find *someone* who has had 
trouble.  A single report by someone you don't know is statistically 
insignificant.  4 disks out of how many?  How were they treated before 
they died?  How quickly did they die?  If you can find multiple reports 
like that, then maybe you're on to something.  I have three Samsung 
disks (bargain bucket 160Gb SATA for Windows, and a 200Gb and 250Gb 
SATAII running at SATAI).  I can say that they have been fine for me for 
9 months (touch wood), but that's not worth much either :-)

The sad fact is, that some proportion of hard disks pass quality control 
but still contrive to die.  *Mostly*, a disk that going to die, does so 
quite quickly.  Advice I have seen is that you burn the disk in (run 
benchmarks for 48 hours non-stop, say.  Maybe even a week).  And don't 
trust the disk for a month.  If it's still going after that then it'll 
probably last for years as long as you don't let them overheat.  If it 
dies, that's what the warranty is for!

If there is a serious problem with a particular disk model, then google 
will find it for you.  IBM discovered this to their cost when one of 
their Deskstar models turned out to be scrap disguised as a disk, and 
got a Class action lawsuit in return.  Then they sold the Deskstar line 
to Hitachi :-)  FWIW, my only Deskstar (pre-dating the dodgy model) is 
still going after 5+ years, and my only Hitachi (successor to Deskstar) 
is the same age as Samsungs, and fine too.

If I were going to run RAID-1, I would pick two disks of the same size 
but different brands (Samsung and Hitachi 250Gb say).  If you buy two 
disks of the same brand at the same time from the same supplier, it 
always seems to me that you increase the chance that a) they come from 
the same batch b) therefore if one has some production-line-related 
fault, the other is more likely to have the same fault.

--Alex