pkphilip

At work, I get to RMA pretty much everything. Failure of HD can happen any brand, I can give you a run down on them. HD failure are mostly due to shock, electro-static, incorrected mounted (causing more shock) and simple overheat. Since none of the above can be traced easily, manufacturers all replaces them with a refurb unit.

Desktop 3.5":
Samsung - rarely see them, they have the best cost/GB ratio
Seagate - My preferred brand due to longer and faster warranty service
WD - Fastest drives across the board, most silent but slowest RMA service (totally ticks me off)
HGST - So many DeathStar in the past, unless they are that cheap, I would avoid

Mobile 2.5"
Samsung - rarely see them
Seagate/WD - Equally popular on higher-end laptop
Toshiba/IBM - One of the most common brand with little or no failure. Most failure due to heat or shock.

If it's external, I would definitely get the Seagate FreeAgent because it's easier and fastest to get warranty. WD on the other hand is super-slow, even I have the HD RMA through next day courier, the status does not get updated for 3 days and they ship back by STANDARD!!!

For internal, I am rocking my rig with 2 WD Caviar SE16 750/500GB, they beat my Seagate 320GB 7200.2 hands down. (note: size does not affect performance)

*don't tell me that Advanced RMA is available, the loss (exchange rate and handling) incurred on Advanced RMA is just not worth it.*

Toshiba/HGST/Samsung has to be shipped direct back to reseller or OEM.

If you want to most reliable storage, get yourself a Solid State HD, currently they come in 32GB or 64GB or 128GB flavors starting at $1299 each. They will last you a life time (5 years if used as primary HD on a system)

Philip

Philip

[ 本帖最後由 pkphilip 於 2007-12-21 00:57 編輯 ]

pkphilip

I just rebuilt my new gaming rig with the Q6700 + Antec Sonata II case. I always prefer my system to be quiet so I will not go for Raptor due to the noise, size, and heat limitation.

Maxtor is now Seagate, so the DiamondMax is history. I will still go for the 7200.11 even I am using the Caviar SE16 as my primary.

RAID gives roughly about 10-15% increase in large files transfer. Unless your video is over 2GB in size, you won't notice the difference. Rather, enabling NCQ and ACHI on SATA will give you significant speed-up compare to legacy IDE mode.

The Q6700 system you are building w/ 6 HD will require you to pick a motherboard that allows 6 SATA set up. Currently most mobo only has 1 PATA, and most has 4 SATA. My Gigabyte X38-DQ6 has 6 SATA on there, and I am using only 3 due to my 500W PSU and my 8800GT SSC. You also need to get a adequate PSU to supply enough power to all the HD.

If you are building a system that deals with a lot of CPU processing, get Vista. XP is not quite efficient to handle newest hardware like ACHI and Q6700. For the same reason, I am running all my games in Vista instead of XP.

Philip