I've got a pair of EIDE IBM hard drives that have been running non-stop for over 6 years now without a single problem, but they're getting full and I need to replace them with larger capacity units.

I'd like something just as robust as what I have now. I recall that when I selected them they had a MTBF rating far beyond other comparable drives.

I'm not interested in Seagate/Western Digital junk. I want something really good, but IBM seems to have gotten out of the high-end drive market, and HP drives now seem to be Compaq consumer drives of lower quality.

Does anyone make a really good EIDE drive anymore? I'm not too concerned about price (within reason of course.) My data is worth much more than the price of a cheap drive.

I've read the Hard Disk Reliability section here on The PC Guide, but no mention is made as to which manufacturers actually build high MTBF hardware.

Hitachi and Maxtor seem to be what's used in many servers, are these the best available, or am I missing something?

Thanks in advance...

-gb-

Hitachi bought IBM's hard drive business a year or two ago. I have had good luck with the WDs here, the PC I am posting this from has a Maxtor.

I'm not interested in Seagate/Western Digital junk. Dont agree.

High end servers often use SCSI rather than IDE. WD's Raptors are a very good substitute for such SCSI drives and come with a 5 year warranty - which gives some indication of the maker's belief in their product. see http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=65&Language=en

Probably most makers may get a bad product line every now and again - I know there have been recalls and a class action for some Fujitsu lines (and also for some Maxtors - I believe). With OEM systems one is of course stuch with the maker they have bought from en masse. I have had good results (or luck if you prefer) with WD and Samsung drives.

I have HD failues with every drive manufacturer there is and I have had drives that last forever with every manufacturer there is.

Just the luck of the draw, just reme,ber to back up because:

There are only two kinds of computer users, those that have experienced hard disk failure and those that are going to.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but your opinions are out-of-date. Years ago when you bought your EIDE hard drives, your comments were correct. Today, all hard drive manufacturers are good. A lot of this has to do with a fairly uniform improvement in drive electronics and motors. 3-year warranties are now common, with a few of them (like Seagate and WD's Raptor series) sporting 5-year warranties. If that's not a stellar MTBF, I don't know what is!

For the old PATA (EIDE) interface, the best and last hard drives for it IMO were Western Digital's "JB" series of hard drives. The model numbers look like WD1200JB for instance for the 120GB version. The off-shoots like the "BB" and "EB" series were OK, too, but the "JB" series is the best-performing because of the 8MB cache.

A few historical highlights:

Maxtor used to be synonymous with "oh dear God no!", but their latest DiamondMax 9/10 series of hard drives are among the best and most well-balanced in the industry.

IBM suffered many a lawsuit from their Deskstar (aka "Deathstar") series of hard drives (like the 75GXP, 60GXP, 120GXP, etc) and that pretty much led them to the selling of their hard drive division to Hitachi. Meanwhile, Hitachi took them on and has been making some awesome Hitachi-IBM hybrid hard drives that are very quiet.

Seagate used to be a major cheapo OEM type of company, but now they offer full RoHS-compliant products (well ahead of schedule for the US) and their Barracuda 7200.7/8 series of hard drives are very good, and Seagate is still the only HD manufacturer that offers 5-year warranties across the board.

Well...I have three HDDs in my beastie box--2 WD Raptors and a Seagate Barracuda. My other two desktops have Maxtor DiamondMax drives (one is original equipment amd is 5 years old). My laptop...I have no idea what's in there.

Enviroment and usage contribute significantly to the working life of any device.

Using personal experience as the only criteria for evaluating a device is foolish.

MTBF specifications are just that. Not proof, of reliability or working life of any given unit.

MTBF specifications are just that. Not proof, of reliability or working life of any given unit.
Wasn't it Mark Twain who said there were Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics!

The M in MTBF stands for Mean and all you need to know, without beng mean, is the meaning of mean - in an average sense. We humans all have a "MTBF" as well with the female model having a higher value!