hard drives - where to find reviews?

Is there any site that keeps track of HD manufacturers and issues
regarding the quality of their drives? I posted a similar question
last year, I think, and am wondering if anything's changed.

Between floods in Asia over the years, most recently Thailand, it seems
like some mfrs are still having quality control problems. I've read
reviews at NewEgg for some of the HDs from Western Digital and Seagate
that have horror stories of DOA drives or ones that function for a week
or month and then die. OTOH, I have to question if those reports are
due to bad luck or are an accurate picture. It's also a bit disturbing
to look at NewEgg's feedback statistics that usually only about 75% of
the responders rated any one product 'good' or 'excellent'.

TIA,

John

Yes wrote:
Is there any site that keeps track of HD manufacturers and issues
regarding the quality of their drives? I posted a similar question
last year, I think, and am wondering if anything's changed.

Between floods in Asia over the years, most recently Thailand, it seems
like some mfrs are still having quality control problems. I've read
reviews at NewEgg for some of the HDs from Western Digital and Seagate
that have horror stories of DOA drives or ones that function for a week
or month and then die. OTOH, I have to question if those reports are
due to bad luck or are an accurate picture. It's also a bit disturbing
to look at NewEgg's feedback statistics that usually only about 75% of
the responders rated any one product 'good' or 'excellent'.

TIA,

John

My advice is "look for signal, not noise" :-)

Compare the items. If the best rated hard drives average "4", then
perhaps that's the highest opinion the users have to offer. That's
what happened to motherboards for example. After a while, you could
no longer find any motherboards, with "exceptional" average of 5 ratings.
The customers were too jaded for that.

If two items have the same "profile" of ratings, and are the
ones best rated, then presumably quality isn't an issue.

People are more likely to write a review if they have a problem.

Some reviews are for how an item is packed. On Newegg, you'll find
many instances of a hard drive arriving poorly packed, no bubble
wrap or whatever. And then, that doesn't constitute a hard drive issue,
it is a shipping issue. But knowing the drives are poorly packed,
or inconsistently packed, would then tell you that the data
may be skewed by shipping related fatalities.

What I look for in hard drive reviews, is functional issues.
When I was shopping for a Seagate branded drive, I detected
that two of three members of the same drive family, had an
"excessive spindown" issue in firmware. A replacement firmware
was even issued, but the SMART counter was still counting
spindowns. Even though the clicking noise was gone. Because
the firmware didn't result in "complete satisfaction" of
the customers, I chose the drive known not to have the issue.
That's what I'm looking for in a review, manufacturing stupidity.

At least for motherboards, one e-tailer was (for a short time)
giving field return rates for each motherboard. About 3% of
customers were returning motherboards, on average. The motherboards
didn't all have the same percentage, there was some variation. But
you can use that number as a sanity check on the Newegg reviews.
The Newegg reviews are likely to be based on a lot of that
3% writing their thoughts. The 97% with functional motherboards,
have no reason to write a review. (The e-tailer doing that,
was threatened with having its supply of motherboards cut off.)

I have no similar data for hard drives. The consensus seems to be
(from reading many threads on user gripes on hard drives), that any
brand of hard drives, can have an issue. But if a brand
****es you off enough, you might never buy from them
again. For example, I wouldn't touch anything branded "Maxtor"
with a barge pole, because I had three failures. While my
Seagates seem to last for a couple years now, before the
SMART stats start to show a problem. So far I've been able
to swap them out, before I lose data. As long as degradation
is gradual, and I catch it by checking SMART every once
in a while. you can count me as a happy customer. Even if
I'm not happy that the drive didn't last for seven years,
like one SCSI drive I had at work did. Seven years of
24/7 operation. Modern drives won't match that, even
though technically they have frictionless motors. My old
SCSI drive, was a ball bearing drive, and while noisy,
it lasted for as long as I wanted to use it (went to the
landfill, still operational).

If you see reports on a product, of "instant death", that's
more of a concern. Because you might get caught with your
backups out of date.

Also, what I watch in SMART, is not only the value when
they start to degrade, but also the rate of degradation.
When a drive started showing errors in SMART, the rate was
visibly growing over a three day period. So I didn't wait
too long to swap it out.

On one of my infamous Maxtors, I was using the drive, and
in mid-session, it got "amnesia". It started "clunking", which
means it lost the platter and was doing reset to track 0.
The drive eventually attempted to reinitialize itself
(reload firmware off the platter). And for the remainder
of that session, the 40GB drive reported itself as a "10GB drive".
Which means the firmware didn't load, and the generic ID
appeared instead. Now that failure was annoying, because
there was no warning. On the next powerup, it was dead.
No more responses. So a firmware reload mid-session,
you still get a (lame) response, while a firmware issue
at startup, equals death.

Paul

On Fri, 3 May 2013 15:14:42 +0000 (UTC), "Yes"
wrote:

Is there any site that keeps track of HD manufacturers and issues
regarding the quality of their drives? I posted a similar question
last year, I think, and am wondering if anything's changed.

Between floods in Asia over the years, most recently Thailand, it seems
like some mfrs are still having quality control problems. I've read
reviews at NewEgg for some of the HDs from Western Digital and Seagate
that have horror stories of DOA drives or ones that function for a week
or month and then die. OTOH, I have to question if those reports are
due to bad luck or are an accurate picture. It's also a bit disturbing
to look at NewEgg's feedback statistics that usually only about 75% of
the responders rated any one product 'good' or 'excellent'.

TIA,

John

If you find a good rating with lots of participants, question is, out
of those 25% not rating it well, is how many actually know what the
hell they're talking about. Should be easy, then, to otherwise tell
what's salient to a good HD - the manufacturer is obviously promoting,
and the reviewers in suit to follow in support. Is how long
applicable to a more-of-recent product...you can or not go back six
months, a year for consistency?

I've a pet theory, that the more reviews you read the more readily
you'll spot use from within a review, as from someone picking their
nose with a distasteful bugger to display stuck to their middle
finger.

As for concrete or any sense of irrefutable HD brand makes being less
prone to failure. . .the consensus will always be indeterminate. You
just take your place on the skew and plot it from there, as to whether
you bought a HD that's going to break on not [sooner than you wish].

That doesn't, however, mean that you can't take a sensible or educated
approach to underlying reasons you place weight on a decision to buy
brandname X or Y HD.

....As to say, haphazardly in buying one for no particular reason
whatsoever.

I used to buy locally when sold for outrageous low prices and special
yearly promotions. Not no more, Bub, I'm here to tell you. Even if
online under similar circumstances, I'm very much gunshy without
taking some effort to review the drive, to include reinforcement of
its reviewers/purchasers when applicable.

Good habits, need I mention, to get into in this outsourced world we
now live in.