Lower Price HDDs = Lower Quality?

[bill1971]

Since I took the plunge 2-1/2 years ago, and bought my PIII 500
($2000) system,(no burner,just an 8x DVD), to replace my ancient 486, of course prices have plummeted. The PIII 500 and Seagate
28.5GB, 7200RPM HDD, at that time, were both around $300 ea.
streetprice.
Memory prices were high for the longest time - I remember jumping on $120 for a 128MB stick 'cause that was the best deal going at the time.(I've since purchased 256MB modules from $170
all the way down to $28!).
My question is, have we seen an industry-wide decrease in quality
of hard drives due to the economy/lower demand, and hence,
increased competition?
I bought 4 IBM drives because of the rave reviews that were on-line everywhere. I've installed a 30GB and 60Gb, and all appears
to be OK under moderate use. Noticed they were made(assembled?) in Hungary or Romania. The two 40GBs appear to
have been "made in Thailand."

Opinions, preferably backed up with facts, would be appreciated.

Sorry, this post should probably be in the discussion section.
Thanks for the input.

- Bill

[krohnjw]

I would say no.
All drives now are pretty standardly priced. There are only 4 Drive manufacturers really, WD, maxtor, Seagate, and IBM. Now, looking past IBM's Deathstar failings, all make excellent drives for the money. All of the prices are around the same range and I really cannot knock any of them. I have a WD and a Quantum drive and have had zero troubles with any of them. I have installed a few maxtor drives also and have had zero troubles with those also. All have had long life spans, still running, and have been reliable drives. The anamoly here is the Deskstar by IBM. IBM has a history for making great drives, but they muffed up on the deskstar, chock that up to poor engineering or whatever you might, I still feel that it is an anomaly and not the new norm. I personally haven't seen any "no name" drives, as HD are a bit more to manufacture than , say CDR's. So looking at the 4 real drive manfacturers I would say no.

[I_W]

We are probably lucky that some of the questionable manufacturers have died a natural death or been bought up by other companies. IBM is going to become IBM/Hitachi which may well cure some of the IBM problems. It's too bad to see IBM do this as it was IBM that invented the hard drive not far from where I live here in San Jose, CA. Now, the old Winchester 30/30 ...that WAS A REAL DRIVE!

If you think drives are getting less reliable you may be right but you apparently dont' remember buying 10 or 20 MB hard drives for $400 or $500 or more and how clunky they were.

In general I think drives are MUCH better than they were in the "olden days" and have become a commodity item and are pretty interchangeable. Some are noisier than others, some are faster than others and you need to take that into account. I've only had to RMA 2 hard drives that I owned in the days since the earliest HDs. Both were painless processes and fortunately didn't involve data loss. I did have some problems with a high end drive on a server at work but eventually got that drive replaced as well.

Even the most expensive and well made automobiles require service and break down from time to time. You can't have reasonable cost and NO failures at all. I think we're lucky with HDs these days.

[Dax_Brandy]

non sequitor (it does not follow)

there are top of the line HDD's which fail within a few months of operation. it depends actually. for assurance you can check for some quality seal. at least, you are sure it passed quality standards.

[Tomteriffic]

Other than the IBM, "Deathstar" debacle, which was essentially a case of a flawed design, if the design, and the execution of the design are good, price point really shouldn't matter with respect to quality or longevity. There may be a difference in performance, but not basic quality. I've had drives from everybody (it would seem) and everybody's drives, with one exception, have had at least one failure, regardless of manufacturer.

Case in point: When IDE drives first started moving toward the 7,200 RPM spindle speed, they were pretty expensive. I needed a drive with some good sustained throughput figures, and it needed to be quiet, as it was to be the heart of my main audio machine. The 7,200's were out of my league price-wise at the time and were still pretty noisy, too.

I found some Samsung drives, believe it or not, which, at the time had the highest areal density (bits per square inch of platter space) of any drive on the market, a very good sustained transfer rate, and were several dB quieter than anything else out there at the time (they still are). They were also about $20 cheaper for a 20 gig drive (big for it's day) than the competing models from WD and IBM. I eventually bought three of them. They're all in machines right now, all running 24/7 for a long, long time with out a burp, hiccup or anything.

In the meantime, I've been through 1 IBM Deathstar, a WD Caviar that spends most of its time on the road between here and the wD factory getting RMA'd , a Seagate Barracuda ATA, and several other micallaneous drives.

Go figure, the cheapest of my more or less "modern" drives are the ones that have been the most solid performers and have been the most dependable over time.

[Bullion]

i didnt think all "deathstar" models were bad. Ive had a 40gb, 7200 60gxp, for a 5 months now, and im hoping that this model isnt "bad" . My model was made in the philippines

[viztech]

The hard drive industry is no different than many others in that there are cycles where one manufacturer is the clear leader for a time then someone else takes over a short time later.

The same is true at the bottom of the heap. Someone builds a bunch of junk and the warranty problems eat them up. That same manufacturer may learn from the experience, then almost overcompensate with the best stuff on the market!

Such are business cycles..

I started working on computers in '95, so I've seen a lot of changes. Western Digital had the best hard drives (on paper) but personally I had very poor luck with them.
[note to self] Time to run diagnostics on that WD 100 gig HD in the game box [/note to self]
Maxtor was the real goat for a spell, but I have used more of those than any other, with very good results.

IBM seems to have had the situation where they have had the best drives (on paper) that just don't hold up to real use. Many enthusiasts bought them because of the high performance, but got caught in the unreliability trap. Perhaps the cutting edge of performance is not the best point to buy.

Like Tom, I'm still using an 8.4 gig Samsung drive that has been very satisfactory. It's the quietest drive I have ever had. Perhaps I'll start using more of them....

viz

[bill1971]

Thanks for the input, guys.
I have a 30GB Samsung HDD that I got for a good price - haven't
used it yet. I'm quite fond of the Korean producers, namely
Samsung and LG Electronics. Burners and monitors seem to always get good reviews.

- Bill