Most reliable HD?

[Marc Edwards]

I've just had a second HD die on me. I'm not entirely sure what went wrong with it yet, but I know everything has gone pear shaped, and the drive cannot be formatted by the finder, drive setup, or HDT. Both drives were from IBM, and the newer (only 2months old!) was an 18gb UltraStar. It really hasn't been worked too hard, and i've only moved it 3 or 4 times.

What do you guys find to be the most reliable high-end HDs??? I want to avoid this happening ever again!

Marc

[stevegalante]

Seagate Cheetahs, I've used them in any pro configurations, many sizes, Mac & PC, never had a problem (crossing my fingers...)

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www.downinhollywood.com

[muhamk]

I second that notion.... I use Segate 15K drives and have never had any problems. I run them in my PT system and I've run them in my Nuendo system.

[muhamk]

What kind of enclosure are the IBMs in? Is there adequate ventilation for the drives? Does the dirve enclosure have fans in it? Are the drives hot swap?

[blairl]

I have been using several IBM UltraStar drives with my systems for a couple of years. We have 2 Pro Tools rooms so we swap the drives all the time using DataPort VII cartridges.

www.cruinc.com/business/productsbusiness/productsbusinessdp7.htm

Haven't had any problems at all.

[Marc Edwards]

Thanks for the advice guys. The drive was mounted internally inside the mac (Its the only drive I have in there appart from the standard ATA one), so you'd think anything the IBM drive went through, the other ATA would have to put up with, and I've never had any probs with that. I think I'll be throwing it back at my supplier and getting the seagate!
Marc

[Pietari Koskinen]

I've been using exclusively IBM drives many years. Not a single problem. I chose them because they are the best.

Oh wait, I have one Seagate (old Hawk). It's sitting on my shelf because it doesn't work.

[This message has been edited by Pietari Koskinen (edited February 13, 2001).]

[dBHEAD]

At work, with our TDM system, we use Seagate Cheetahs. At home, with my 001 system, I use Glyph Project X.

It's possible that it might not be the actual drive. Although we've never had problems with the drives for our Pro Tools systems, we've lost numerous drives due to sudden power outages. If the drive is on and suddenly you lose electric power, it evidently is very hard on the drive.

We had some hard drives at the station which ran 24 hours per day and we never had problems driving them that hard -- until a rainstorm or other problem caused sudden power outages. Then the drives crashed and couldn't be revived.

We ended up going with some APC back-up systems and haven't had that problem since.

Also, our engineer said that powering up and powering down the drives more than a few times per day is harder on the drive than running it 24 hours per day.

Food for thought.

[smcoptyltd]

IMHO IBM Hdd’s (IDE) do have quiet high failure rate. (SCSI - no comments, never used or sold one.)
They are the fastest though.
Best run in audio I had always with Quantum Fireball LM series. I've sold about 50 pieces and no one came back. Western Digitals never run in audio, IDE or SCSI (Even from DIGI recommended list!) Seagate, bad as IDE models (very bad!) but SCSI is one of the very best. Samsung and Fujitsu are not the best. They are 'cheap'!
The most reliable hdd I've ever seen is Maxtor. I've never tried it on audio but Maxtor had for me smallest failure rate. I’ve seen ‘bad batch’ of Quantum, Seagate, WD & IBM.
Never saw bad batch in Maxtor.
I'm a computer technician and I've built and sold more than 1000 computers in 5 years.

Regards

[Wooster]

To my expirience IBM and Seagate are the most reliable ones. After being a Apple service engineer for years i can say that it is very uncommon to have to replace a IBM disk. If drives failed it was usually Maxtor or Quantum. This also goes for my expirince with external SCSI disks.

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Best regards
Holger Netterby
ACSE