i think hd is mainly a hit and miss thing. some ppl swear by WD and say Maxtor is craps but i think it's the luck of the draw.

my 60gb maxtor bought in 2001 is still working fine now and has found new life in xbox. even more reliable are those quantum fireballs released back in late 90s. i still have a couple running steadily in my grunt workstations too bad quantum had to close shop.

in my 10+ years of computing, i've had 2 hd failures, one was many years ago (cant remember what brand) while the other was my WD80 which conked out last year. i also had many misadventures with spoilt partitions, corrupted data etc so nowadays i am quite paranoid and have a decent (hopefully!) backup plan in place already. 1 huge 320gb hd to backup the other 2 smaller ones...hahaha.

ur wd which kong had been using how long? i takut mine kong nanti.

WD used to have a bad reputation, but seemed to have built itself up in a short amount of time

used it only 6mths or so before it conked. and i was using it very sparingly too, just used it to store the os and apps only. temp directory and swap file was set to another disk. i also avoid p2p on this disk and instead use my maxtor. yet it still conked.....

so dont worry, like i say, its mostly luck of the draw. just make sure you have some sort of backup plan in place....

Western Digital not so reliable these days.... especially larger HDD like 200GB... i got two of them ... now got some problem...data gets corrupted. O/S missing... but bad sector could be detected

well, Maxtor is not a good brand since last year. In January, when I 1st got my sata, was so happy, my 1st hdd bought by myself, after I install OS, crap, the whole thing crash, den go RMA, come back, still got same problem. Sent it again, when I got it back this time, was working well, but can hear some  tic-tic sound during heavy loading

Too bad that IBM don't make enduser's HDD anymore. been using DeskStar 60Gb 7200 2meg since 2003.
Went to lowyat yesterday to hunt for HDD and  was told that there's no IBM hdd for a long time
anyway, setteled for WD 80Gb 7200 8mb hope that it don't break down like my friend's  WD
I've noticed that after changing to a better PSU, there's no more bad sectors and no HDD deaths. maybe that's the cause of faulty HDDs??

IBM? they sold their entire hard drive division to Hitachi in 2003--either because they find they cant earn too much** from HDD OR due to the infamous 75GXP.

**Conner brought over by Seagate, Micropolis close down in 1997, Quantum sold its hard drive division to Maxtor, Fujitsu exited the mass market in 2001 only make specialist notebook and SCSI drives, Toshiba make only 2.5-inch and 1.8-inch notebook drives.....this is not a easy market to survive.

as for which brand make good harddisk--i own over 10pc of IBM/Hitachi HDD, only one each for seagate, WD and Maxtor--you know what i'm gonna recommend.

IBM and Hitachi also makes good HDD, a forumer uglyvamp uses Hitachi for his Raid setup, and its just sweet

hrmm... if i'm not mistaken, WD offers 3 years of warranty while seagate offers 5 years. that's the draw back. samsung i'm not quite sure.

pls specified ur size, how long u had bought them? 
hitachi if u want, i can order for u but 40gb cost u around RM4xx. 

victorboy
samsung hdd is 3yr warranty.

seemlike WD is also almost like maxtor got high failure rate too. 
dun trust seagate coz my frens all had spoilt 4 pcs seagate 80gb liao. 
i kena *** kao kao coz i recomend them seagate.

first i'd like to say that i have bad bad bad experiences with ALL the three big names of harddisks.... MAXTOR, WD AND SEAGATE. im starting to think that im the HD killer

let me elaborate....

1. MAXTOR 200GB PATA
- bought it for my ext casing. formatted it, put my music (10GB) in it....after 5secs.. *poof* harddisk unrecognized. first time lucky...i copied my data.
- 2nd time reformat...CUT and PASTE all my music and data... about 60GB worth...after 2minutes... *poof* again! sob sob sob...
- tried all possible methods but my data was gone...FOREVER and EVER.
- hit LYP next week to change for a WD 200GB. that was the last of my Maxtor 200GB.

2. WD 200GB PATA (replacement for MAXTOR 200GB)
- unlucky me....harddisk casing failure...causing my WD to have a power failure and had them go through warranty.
- 150GB data kaboom in the destruction... SOB SOB SOB SOB...
- (though not a hd failure, still was a BAD experience)

3. Seagate 120GB SATA (internal)
- using for 2yrs++. still working
- no problems whatsoever until lately... HD spun 4times slower with occasional clicking sounds.
- thought was bad sectors... used Seagate Seatools to diagnose...no bad sectors.
- problem detected by Seatools --> FILE SYSTEM ERROR... WTF?? NTFS index system (or some sort) has some error...
- backed up all my data...albeit a 4x longer transfer time...(3hours for 40GB imagine that!)
- reformatted
- working fine now...

So you see...im kinda paranoid now.... esp about harddisks...

And fyi...my hd are kept far away from my sub or speakers so they're not in any sort of magnetic field or such. As for now... my WD 200GB and Seagate 120GB are holding up...

As for GOOD harddisks, i think the better ones of the 3 is Seagate and also Western Digital. i dont believe in THE BEST harddisk...cos to me...there isnt any

You use the world's toughest SCSI drives also no point if using "icute PSU".

I use Maxtor with ENlight 250W for 2 yrs plus (only complain slow lah, dunno why a DMP9 80gb slower than a Quantum AS Plus 30GB that is way older).
Then sold to a friend.. kena *** kau kau just like supermac cos the thing kong in 2 months. She was using a caplang PSU.

ceo684...were you refering to me?

does the PSU have an effect on the HD?

i am also of the opinion that chapalang PSU would definitely shorten the life of any HDD's.  power fluctuation/ inconsistent current..... is probably the culprit.

hmmm.... but i wuz wondering. my psu is a 370W enermax. izzit ok to connect 2 hdds to a single power connector??  i getting worried now...... 

erm... i'm noob.
i heard that eventhough seagate have 5 years warranty.. maxtor's performance is better than seagate wo...
correct me if i'm wrong.. (again, i'm noob >.<)

why i never heard any people here talk about SAMSUNg ar ? 

samsung also dun think is reliable as my fren work in samsung rma center inform me.

o no...internal informer info always true le...cham la like this~i pay xtra rm20 to get the samsung sp1614...now the truth is i m not get the best one...bloody hell~

but recently samsung seem like ok liao, but still need wait 8 month to confirm again.

now china review show tat hitachi is recomend buy since it QC is stable & higher.

最超值的80GB S-ATA硬盘

    在日立硬盘中，最受消费者欢迎的要属其7K250系列的硬盘了，该系列硬盘已高性能高稳定性赢得了人们欢迎。并且和其他品牌硬盘相比，7K250的电路板上多了一块控制芯片，这是因为日立将数据处理芯片和命令控制芯片独立分开，使之工作的效率更高，处理性能更好。

http://news.onlinedown.net/info/16170-1.htm

WD RMA location somewhere in Pj...i forgot where alredi...but it's NOT the Western D you see from LDP.  I think WD is the best and it's usually cheaper...

so got any conclusion? so far i see maxtor got many complaints.... WD not really much... Seagate kena praised and giving 5 years warranty(damn) and samsung not much ppl talk about it. My father going to KL 2molo so i might ask him to get me a 200gb hard disk. So Seagate or WD is better?

my father bought 160gb pata seaget hard disk... hope it wont disappoint me..

@ben3003
I'm sure it won't, Seagate HDD are very well favored among enthusiasts and it is a good HDD, have personal experience with it

My experience with HDDs.

WD 80GB went kuku due to that SMART shait after a year...RMA then now still running fine and coming to one yr anniversary...hope nothing goes wrong again.

Bought a WD 120 GB during RMA period and coming to one yr anniversary as well...really hope dun both kaput on me.

my old 20GB Quantum still good though but spins at 5400rpm so less prone to fault gua.

no pening kepala, coz want buy 2 unit 160gb to replace my both 80gb but seagate & WD both not stable ler.

I have 20gb, 40gb, 80gb 120gb, and 320gb. I ned 2 buy 500gb hdd so tat i have enough space 2 put all my movie

wow.. how much have u invested on storage spaces?