Are modern drives worse in quality than they used to be?

[MKuiper]

Just for curiosity, there is no problem:

I have bought and installed many hard drives over the last 25 years. Never had any problems, except with old (>3 years) drives or with the one which fell from my desk.

But in the last few months two new drives (not the same manufacturer, but both SATA II) died with too many bad sectors, the first after 3 months of use and the second after 3 hours of use.

What could be the reason of this?

1. Just coincidence
2. Buying it from the internet instead of from a local shop, is the postman playing football with the packets?
3. Is the capacity too high nowadays to be reliable?
4. Is it SATA II?
5. Other??



Marcel

 

[SkipCox]

I'd say better quality...

1&2 - certainly possible
3 - I doubt it
4 - I doubt it
5 - Sometimes, just the luck of the draw "(not the same manufacturer...)"

Skip

 

[goombawaho]

I've seen a lot of bad Maxtor drives in the last 1.75 years I've been doing residential PC tech work. I mean that I've encountered more dead Maxtor drives than any other drive manufacturer.

Now, with that said, these are drives that are about 3 years old (in general). And that means they were from a hard drive series that is now long gone, so I'm not trying to impugn all of the newer Maxtor drives. They may be greatly improved in quality. I have no data on that.

I just know that there are particular model numbers of 60/80/120 GB PATA drives in mostly Dell computers that were dying prematurely in my humble opinion.

FYI - they were model numbers similar to this if you want to check your own PC:

DiamondMax Plus 9 6Y060L0 Parallel ATA 60GB
6Y080L0 Parallel ATA 80GB
6Y120L0 Parallel ATA 120GB

 

[cdogg]

There was a period where I too had many bad experiences with Maxtor drives manufactured 3-5 years ago. Through that same period, however, I did not have any issues with Seagate. Those were the two main brands that I purchased at the time.

Also, I've worked with quite a few Maxtor drives over the past two years that have yet to fail. Perhaps there was a change made to improve reliability or maybe the problems I experienced earlier were from a string of bad luck. Who knows? I'm sure you will find a wide variety of personal accounts from other people.


Bottom line is that I don't believe the quality has gotten worse, though it's quite possible it has fluctuated back and forth a few times over the years.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[MKuiper]

Thank you all for the replies.
I agree with Skip that reasons 1 and 2 are more likely than reasons 3 and 4.
For me reason 2 (buying from the internet) might be the answer: None of the disks I bought from a local shop ever failed within 3 years. Having bought 4 disks from the internet at this moment, failure rate is 50% within 3 months.
Although the internet shop is doing a good job handling these failures, it costs a lot of time and frustration.
If more people can confirm reason 2, it would be a good reason for me to pay a little more and go to the local shop in the future.


Marcel

 

[goombawaho]

I wouldn't think internet suppliers get any different product than big box retailers vs. mom & pop stores. Packing is good enough that you COULD play football (soccer?) with those package and I don't think it would hurt anything.

Usually, if under warranty, it would be the manufacturer that handles replacement. So the manufacturer's policy/warranty terms should be the deciding factor AFTER perceived quality/reliability of a given brand.

 

[cdogg]

For me reason 2 (buying from the internet) might be the answer

There are a lot of factors involved:

1) Were the hard drives that failed part of the same shipment?

[tab]You'd be surprised to learn how often and how harshly packages are thrown around in transit.
[tab]Point is that the problems you're having might have nothing to do with a difference in the
[tab]hard drive.

2) Were the hard drives that failed installed in the same computer?

[tab]A spike or power surge to the computer could have caused damage to the highly sensitive drives
[tab]in such a way that failure wouldn't happen for weeks or months. A faulty power supply could have
[tab]also been to blame (though this is pretty rare).

3) Were the hard drives that failed the same make/model?

[tab]Maybe they were from a bad batch or perhaps that particular model had a higher failure rate
[tab]than most.


As you can see, you can't just get a straight black and white answer on this. I've purchased most of my drives online and haven't noticed a particular difference in reliability as opposed to buying retail in a local shop. Remember, a lot of the ones you can find locally could have gone through the same abuse reaching their destination, and could be identical models to what you can buy online. I just don't see how that's an issue.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[wahnula]

I think...it's all a crapshoot. In the "old days", they did not know the terrain, so they overbuilt. I have a box full of 8-12 year old 1-3GB drives that will NOT fail. I keep them because ya never know, there might be a file on there that I'll need someday, and they don't take up much space. Plus I don't like throwing something perfectly good away .

There were notorious failures like the IBM "Deathstar" drive, but as a rule I say there IS no rule. Considering what they do, it's a wonder they work at all. They're so incredibly mechanically complex yet so reliable...a real paradox.

Modern drives are much less beefy than their elder brethren, yet they are as durable or better. It's like life...a crapshoot. Some last forever, some die young. I need some eggnog...[santa2]

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[goombawaho]

If you want to be smart and conservative - replace your drives every three years and of course, have a backup of important stuff going all the time on a schedule.

If you do that, it won't matter too much about reliability unless you get a drive that really premature failure.

 

[Johnthephoneguy]

If you bought them from the same internet shop it could be something in their procedure. Maybe they have them stored in a hot humid area(ya never know) or mishandle all of their products in any number of ways.

JohnThePhoneGuy

"If I can't fix it, it's not broke!

 

[paparazi]

Hmmmm......Dell cases? with the one 92mm fan drwing warm air through a plastic shrowd off the heatsink? one 80mm in the PSU? and the hard drive mouted away from the lower front vent..kinda central..doesn't sound like a good recipe for a cool hard drive.
Also this was around the era of the Intel P4 5000 series of CPU's that were an absolute furnaces, giving off lots of heat.
All Dell's hmmm I wonder
Martin

On wings like angels whispers sweet
my heart it feels a broken beat
Touched soul and hurt lay wounded deep
Brown eyes are lost afar and sleep