Hitachi vs Seagate: Opinions wanted

[Don Lewis]

On 29 Jun, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> 
> I've always used Seagate or Quantum drives in my servers ... with the 
> recent thought about switching to Dual-Athlon servers, from Intel, and the 
> caveats about both heat and power that I've had, its been recommended 
> switching to Hitachi drives from the usual Seagate ... also, apparently 
> the failure rates are higher on the Seagate's are much higher then the 
> Hitachi ...
> 
> Since I can't say I've ever had a complaint (other then the U320 firmware 
> fiasco that Seagate did fix), I'm wondering if there is that much of a 
> difference with the Hitachi's to warrant the extra ~$50/drive ... ?

I don't have any experience with Hitachi (or IBM, except for that 2.5
inch laptop drive in my firewall box).   I've always had good luck with
Seagate SCSI drives, except for a couple of early failures of bottom of
the line Hawks just before that product line was phased out.  I was
happy with the earlier Hawks, though.  There are some drives that draw a
lot of power and get hot, like the early Barracudas and more recent
bleeding edge drives, but I've always purchased the lower power drives,
including the 10K RPM 1" high U160 Cheetah that I bought a few months
back that only draws about 10 W, which is quite acceptable.  It doesn't
have any special cooling requirements.

Pretty much all the WD SCSI drives that I've used (purchased by a former
employer) have developed bearing problems after a while that make them
sound like a dental drill.