recommend reliable hard drives..

[SNAAKE]

I am tired of hard drives(mainly seagate..never EVER buying again) randomly dying and me having to reinstall my OS because of hd failure. this happens to me like every year. recommend some BETTER hard drives that wont die so much ??

[spoot]

If you keep blowing them up in a year.......check your airflow across the drive.  They need to breath otherwise they go like popcorn.   

[AtomSmasher]

If you keep blowing them up in a year.......check your airflow across the drive.  They need to breath otherwise they go like popcorn.   

Agreed.  If you're hard drives are dying that quickly, then they're probably getting too hot.

[SNAAKE]

actually its not every year lol..

BUT this seagate drive lasted about 2 years then  randomly died. I just got it back from seagate but I dont know if ever wanna use it again and lose bunch of data. I backup important files anyway.

so what are some good/BETTER hard drives out there?? I am building a new computer and ordered everything but the new drives.

[ChadTower]

Sounds like someone wants a RAID array.

[Samstag]

Sounds like someone wants a RAID array.

Seconded.  You should still backup the really important stuff using other methods, but it's nice to be able to replace a failed drive with no loss of data (and if you're really brave, you can continue using the array with a drive missing).

[ark_ader]

Get Western Digital, 5400 drives. 

I did not like the 7200 drives over heating, thus I get good deals on 500gb and 1tb drives (actually 1tb is cheaper).  They are also very quiet.

Raid 0 would not be a bad idea, if you have heat issues.  Get a case fan directed at those drives and control it with a regulator.

I had the same heat issues in my tower case, as I have like 8 drives in there.  After some serious reduction of cabling and the added fans reduced the heat issue dramatically.

I would also look at getting a tower chasis for just your drives and pop a cheap Atom ITX board in there.

[hypernova]

I second Western Digital.  I've got those as externals for the Wii, and also use them in my desktop and arcades.

[Xiaou2]

Ive went back and forth, but ultimately prefer WD, especially recently.

 However, make sure you look at the customer feedback ratings.. such as on Newegg.  You can get a nice idea about the durability of the drives.   The WD green drives for example, do not seem to hold up as good as the WD black series. (last time I looked)

 Clone the OS after its installed.  That way, if anything happens, all you have to do is reinstall programs, and not the OS + every driver needing to be loaded.

 A backup drive is pretty much a must for data that you value.  I chose manual cloning once every month or so, with important stuff copied manually regularly.

 Good cooling really does help.  Blow air across the surface of the drives.  May have to make a custom mount, as some of the mounts are spaced too close together to allow enough airflow.

 External usb Backup drives appear to be of inferior quality.  Possibly rejected from standard production, but deemed ok for limited backup usage.

 edit...

 Also remember to make sure the PC is shut down properly, (no instant power off), as well as keep vibrations to a minimal. (subwoofers could really destroy the drives pretty quickly)

[drventure]

+1 on Western Digital and Raid 0 (Mirrored). Saved ---my bottom--- when I got struck by lightning (I had an offsite backup drive as well, but it was a few weeks out of date).

[MonMotha]

You don't want RAID 0.  You want RAID 1.  RAID 1 is mirroring.  In RAID 1, all but one drive can fail, and you're still OK.  The performance and size of the resulting array is limited by that of a single drive (yes, you can improve read performance at the cost of potentially not catching errors, and some controllers offer this).

RAID 0 is striping with no redundancy.  In this configuration, if any single drive fails, you lose everything.  However, it combines the performance and size of all the drives together.

As for drive failures, I've not had one in several years, now, other than drives that were >10 years old when they did finally fail. I guess I'm either lucky or I treat my drives nicely (or both).  It probably helps that I don't generally use external enclosures as those tend to get bumped around a lot.  I don't think that they're of lower quality (the drives are often not even powered on before they leave the factory, but this applies to all drives).  I think they're just subject to more mechanical and electrical abuse.

Of course, I still keep backups.  I also tend to keep my drives reasonably cooled.  My last "failure in its prime" was a 100GB (IIRC, around that) Maxtor, back when Maxtor was still a separate company.  They even grumbled when I asked for a replacement under warranty.  I've had decent luck with Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi (formerly IBM; actually seem to be very reliable if you avoid the "Deathstars"), and Samsung in various applications from desktop to home server to commercially used arcade games (which is probably the worst possible scenario for a hard drive).

ALWAYS keep backups.  Drives are so cheap, now, that there's no excuse for not having them.  Perform a test restore every now and then to make sure your backup process works.

[drventure]

You know. I knew I'd get that wrong (Raid 1 vs 0) when I wrote it. Well, at least I did say "Mirrored" 

Monmotha's right, you want MIRRORING not STRIPING.

[Blanka]

Forget RAID, set up a good software mirroring program. RAID can make drives unreadable if one of the 2 drives died or if you put one of them in another computer or USB case. A software cloning program, works with every new drive, even across a network or with external USB disks. Nobody has such demanding drive access for personal use that a RAID setup is needed. Try automatic cloning with the free multiplatform Synkron or so.

[Blanka]

Beside the mirroring, another positive thing of a software mirror is that the disk don't have to be in the same case. You can keep one at your office, with your parents or so.

[MonMotha]

My servers generally run RAID 1 for hot-failure tolerance (one drive can die and the system keeps running through it) and various methods for backup, including disk imaging.

Disk imaging/cloning is a handy "total backup" method (and it makes for an easy restore!), but it won't keep the system running if the primary drive fails.  Of course, you probably don't care about this in most home applications, and it gets you a proper backup (with incremental and/or offsite capabilities, if you want) without the need for a 3rd drive in the mix.  RAID is more about availability than guarding against worst-case data loss.  It's not a total backup solution as it ONLY guards against drive failure.  It won't save you from errant file deletion, while a proper backup will.

As cost is generally more of an issue on my desktops, and power/space is an issue on laptops, my desktops and laptops only have one drive that backs up to either an external or, more commonly, a server (which itself is backed up off-site and with "back in time" capabilities, as well as generally having a RAID 1 setup for availability).

I do usually just use software RAID.  This means I'm not tied to a weirdo controller (that probably is just software, anyway).  I can access my RAID array from any Linux system.

[SNAAKE]

how..so a subwoofer around the computer is no good?? I have one about a feet away. there are 2 other hard drives on this computer they never had any issues. only the "re certified" one from seagate.


should I move the sub elsewhere??? or just throw it away

[Xiaou2]

Heat and Vibration are the two major factors in premature HD failure.  When the drives fail is anyones guess... but wear and damage are always going to lead to a reduced lifespan.

 Mounting the HDs on some sort of vibration free suspension system would be a good course of action.
Such as a hanging cradle suspended by low tension bungee. (can swing around, and even bounce gently, with no hard 'shock')
 

[Howard_Casto]

-1 for RAID

Yes technically you are automatically backing up your data, but raid arrays are designed for server grade components.  At the desktop level they simply add heat, air-flow issues (more blocked space inside the case), more power consumption and added expense. 

Just back your data up regularily.  Even if your hdd "fails" I've yet to see a hdd fail and be so toasted that you can't recover 99% of the data off of it.

+1 for WD

I used to get seagate drives because of the cost... also had trouble.  My newest pcs have WD drives, as does my wii.... haven't had any issues with them. 

[Blanka]

My WD greens run very well (have the 640gb,1tb and 1.5tb flavours). Even dropped one on a hard floor from 1 meter. Still running great.

[MonMotha]

RAID is for availability.  Availability is good but generally not something that home users care a lot about.  Downtime is more of an annoyance than anything to a normal home user.

RAID WILL keep you up and running in the event of a drive failure.
RAID WILL NOT save you in the event that you do something you don't mean to do like accidentally delete a file or overwrite something important with new data.  All members of the array will happily reflect this new state.

Proper backups WILL protect you in the event that you do something you don't mean to do.  Good backups will allow you to go back to any time in the past with reasonable (say once or twice a day) granularity.
Backups generally WILL NOT guard against unavailability due to hardware failure.

There exist some creative hybrid solutions.  ZFS is an example.  btrfs is another (though not ready for prime time, yet).  Neither of these apply if you're running Windows.

In general, backups are more important than RAID.  Generally, a home user can tolerate a little downtime.  A home user cannot (or doesn't want to) tolerate loss of data.  RAID doesn't necessarily prevent the latter.  Good backups will.  Both is even better.