Should I buy a Seagate HDD?

[Vlad The Impaler]

Out of the drives I have sold I think the best manufacturer changes with time. Many of the big boys have had their 'time in the sun', and they have nearly all had their 'time in the doghouse'; if you care to look back far enough.

IBM GXP75s, first the best then evil!
WD31600s, they recalled them back last century IIRC.
We all know the story of Fujitsu.
Even Seagate have had recalls.

At the moment for me, Maxtor are evil. Rumours abound of them losing a Dell contract because of reliability issues. We have had several failures with 80 and 120gb Diamondmax 9s. Only today I had a customer 120gb Maxtor running hotter than the surface of the sun and failing to install Windows.

So, Maxtor are evil the month. In six months, who knows? They will recover their reputation just like WD and Seagate did. Just better make sure they don't balls-up to badly by not admitting anything and buy the farm like IBM and Fujitsu did.

 

[Tannin]

I think the best manufacturer changes with time. Many of the big boys have had their 'time in the sun', and they have nearly all had their 'time in the doghouse'; if you care to look back far enough.

Scratch the "nearly all", Vlad, and I agree with you 100%. Seagate have had some utter dogs. Samsung used to make the worst drives in the universe. IBM had a huge fruit-up not so long ago. Maxtor have made more dud drives than I have had hot dinners. And Random Digital go up and down like a yo-yo.

I'm just waiting for Samsung to get it wrong. Sooner or later it's bound to happen, and when it does, it will hit us hard as for some time now we have been a 100% Samsung shop.

But what can you do? It wouldn't make sense to buy a known inferior product just because you figure that the clear quality leader will stumble sooner or later. You just have to call the odds as best you can and wait and see.