Best hard drive brand?

[BGoins12]

Out of this list? I am looking to buy a used HD for my A31, but want a quick opinion first.

Toshiba
IBM - Travelstar
Hitachi - Travelstar (Obviously same as the IBM one, correct?)
Fujitsu

I was told by another person that Toshiba would be the best out of all of them. True?

[sarbin]

prepare to get several opinions on "best".

my personal preference, from years of thinkpad experience is for travelstars. whether from the ibm days or now the hitachi line, i've never had a problem with any of them. note that hitachi is selling their global storage technology unit to western digital, so we'll see what happens.

hth.

[BGoins12]

So it's generally recommended to stick with the Travelstars? The Fujitsus make me weary... I've had bad luck with Fujitsu desktop drives in the past.

[sarbin]

i like the travelstars, best. my t60p is running the 500gb/7200rpm and it's quite snappy. others on the forum have expressed high satisfaction with the wd blacks. the only hd i ever had fail was a seagate, and it was the only seagate i ever owned.

[BGoins12]

I sprung for the Toshiba... I did some research and asked some more people, and most recommended Toshiba drives.

The travelstars make me nervous because I had 2 fail on me in the past, as well as the current one in my Dad's Dell that makes clicking noises every once in a while. Luckily he has nothing important on there in case it fails. We are actually waiting for it to die.

As for Seagate, I never had a problem with a Seagate drive, in fact they are my preferred desktop drive.

[ZaZ]

Here's a vote for WD. Not because I think they're better than the other hard drives on the market now, but because they have the best replacement policy should a problem arise. If your drive fails and you give them your credit card, they'll mail out a new drive right away and then you can ship the old drive back in the box the new one came in. As long as they get back in 30 days, you won't get charged. Most of the other manufacturers I've dealt with make you send the drive back before sending a new one out, which depending on the transit times can be a week or more, but with a WD it's only a few days.

[craigmontHunter]

I go for whatever is cheapest because I have seen all brands of drives fail - maxtor, WD, Segate, Fijutsu, IBM/Hitatchi... I just go with the cheapest one that fits my needs and make sure I have backups

Like that, WD has a very efficent warrenty service, even if you opt for the traditional replacement.

[bill bolton]

but because they have the best replacement policy should a problem arise.

That depends very much on where you are in the world.

Where I am, WD's replacement policy is very far from the best.

Cheers,

Bill B.

[GomJabbar]

The original 60GB 7,200 rpm Hitachi Travelstar is still working in my T42 (with XP and Mandriva on it). A Western Digital that I bought to supplement it has already failed. I now have a Samsung in place of the failed Western Digital drive. I did receive a replacement from Western Digital, but I am not currently using it. I also have an old spare Fujitsu drive that I have a backup on. Had two Maxtor SATA desktop drives that didn't last a year...

[sarbin]

i'm currently running the ibm/lenovo secure data destruction tool on an 10 year old 32gb ibm travelstar that's still running fine in my ancient t22. i'm gonna load puppylinux on it sometime this week just to play around.