If I were you I'll back up first before it act up again.

there's this put the HDD in a fridge theory to savage/rescue data, haven't try that personally though

I've done it before and it worked for me. It only temporarily fixes a particular mechanical failure, the problem would reappear once the HDD has warmed up. If your HDD is failing or failed for another reason, it won't work for you.

In this case, I don't know if the refrigerator trick would apply or not. But I do agree that making backups now would be a good idea.

Currently which brand of hard drive is better, performance and reliability wise. Seagate/Hitachi/ WD? Reading around i'm impress with seagate 2tb performance but then i notice they only provide 1 year warranty. Any advice?

Just got back my brand new seagate hdd after rma-ed my samsung spf3.
Nice packaging.

All manufacturers switched to 1 year warranty after the flood for mainstream OEM HDDs, so no surprises there.
Personally, I like the Seagate 3TB (ST3000DM001). The price-performance factor for this drive is decent especially when WD's 3TB HDD is still the terribly slow Caviar Green and it is being sold for the same price.

If you can't spend RM480 on a HDD then the Seagate 1TB (ST1000DM003) is one of the best 1TB drives out on the market now as it is mostly a rebadging of the popular Samsung F3.

Thanks will keep that in mind. Currently the price vs space is favoring the 2tb from what i see. The 3tb have around the same price vs space ratio as 2tb but the lack of longer warranty is putting me off getting a 3tb drive.

me thinks Seagate should take this opportunity to capture more market share and be the No:1.

http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-6/c...ns-rates-5.html

after reading this i feel scared to get my new HDD adi T_T
Seem like larger capacity hdd have higher failure rate

If based on that article and you get afraid, then why not get 4x 500GB HDDs and issues will be "solved"?

No logic right?
Just go get your new HDD now.

i think eventually all need to get tape for crucial data backup as hdd seems rather fragile but how many are afford to get the tape drive...

Tapes can still fail, and none of them are guaranteed for centuries on end. The only human technology known to last millennia are engraved stone tablets. But with modern technology, we can now upgrade from stone tablets to diamond tablets*. With diamond tablets our precious porndata can now last for millions of years!

* We can manufacture diamonds straight from carbon, without mining them from the ground. But we will still need to develop the technologies needed to create diamond objects of arbitrary size and design.



Bringing up tapes is a bit silly. It'll be cheaper and easier to just buy multiple HDDs and RAID them. So let's please stick to the topic.

This post has been edited by everling: Jun 14 2012, 05:41 PM

tape is the most reliable method since we r talking about reliability over here. dvd/blu-ray media is another option too for data safekeeping rather than hdd.

It isn't the most reliable storage mechanism. While tape or optical media is stored offline, you wouldn't know if they get damaged by a bad storage environment or self-degradation (optical media) or not. I have a number of friends whose anime or video collection burned to DVDs has self-destructed since they last burned it a decade ago.

The most reliable storage mechanism is a live and highly redundant RAID array, where you can detect failures and replace unusable HDDs as needed.

Furthermore, not only you are assured of data availability, you also have instantaneous random access to any of your data. It is something that both tape and optical media cannot provide, as you will need to locate the appropriate tape or optical media and load them before you can access them. Again, once burned to DVDs, it is extremely rare to see anyone going through the effort of locating and loading them into DVD-ROMs and watch the contents at a whim.

Any recommended seller?
What brand should I look for external harddisk? Buffalo ok or not?

Either that or you can buy your own casing and put in your own 2.5 hdd. I prefer the later. Btw thanks guys for all the advice and feedback, settled for a crucial m4 128gb ssd and a 1 tb seagate hdd. Cheers

ur fen using what brand of dvd that failed ar?

lacie or buffalo pntu3 also okie.

Sorry, but I forgot. It was a long while ago and my friends used a large variety of brands, from the cheap to the expensive.

thks for lengthy info sharing

fyi, my 14 years-old kodak cd are still ok until today n i still keeping them, my luck maybe

for corporate normally they backup using tapes, agree that raid maybe a good option for home user

any hybrid drives to recommend? maybe 30gb SSD and 500gb 2.5 SATA?