<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 TRANSITIONAL//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; CHARSET=UTF-8">
<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="GtkHTML/3.16.1">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
Personally i always stick to western digital, as was said before they do fail but so do others, warranties on a drive usually arent worth it from my experience, as it would cost more than half the amount of a replacement drive to send off the faulty one. As far as externals are concerned dont buy lacie, and my suggestion would be western digital, or if you are really worried about it buy something which is in a raid 1 array.<BR>
<BR>
Regards,<BR>
Daniel<BR>
On Tue, 2008-02-05 at 22:49 +0000, Rob Beard wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE>
<PRE>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">Matthew Wild wrote:</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> Hi all,</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> What is the general opinion of the best HDD manufacturer? Over the</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> years I have heard bad about each one in one way or another.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> I'm looking to buy an external HDD. I was disappointed to find that</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> Maplin only stock Seagate drives, and I have always avoided Seagate</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> (even before they released their drives that don't work with Linux).</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> So, what are your experiences?</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> Matthew.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> PS. Any other alternative for large backups?</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">> </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">Well I have a pair of Maxtor drives in my PC (although Maxtor drives are </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">now pretty much rebadged Seagate drives with 3 year warranties rather </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">than 5 years).</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">I've had drives from Seagate, Maxtor, IBM/Hitachi, Samsung and Western </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">Digital all fail on me. An example of one was a Western Digital drive </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">in a PC at work. It failed after 1 DAY (brand new machine, left it </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">installing over night, came in to work next morning, drive was dead). </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">Saying that I've had other Western Digital drives last for years.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">I'm not so sure about Samsung drives, I've had two identical drives (one </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">from a branded external hard drive and one I bought from a computer </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">fair) both fail with the same fault after about a year.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">I've also seen Fujitsu IDE drives fail after about a year too.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">I think maybe you might be worth just buying an external hard drive case </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">and taking a chance on any old drive. To be safe, buy two drives from </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">different manufacturers and keep two backups.</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">Rob</FONT>
</PRE>
</BLOCKQUOTE>
</BODY>
</HTML>