Hi Chuck,
I did a lot of research before buying my last drive, and went with a WD
750GB, from Newegg. I, too, read of the complaints about Amazon shipping of
drives.
I just located a refurbished drive identical to what I have, at a cheap
price, but I am still weighing my options.
Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck Norcutt" <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Olympus Camera Discussion" <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2011 7:47 PM
Subject: Re: [OM] Strictly OT: System Crash
> I'm not quite with Moose on this one. I agree that, in general, the
> remaining drive makers (and there are few of them) make the same quality
> product. Howver, one can detect significant differences in the user's
> ratings of various drives on Newegg.com's site assuming you are looking
> at drives with hundreds of ratings (statistical significance) rather
> than tens or even lower numbers.
>
> For example, the 1 TB Seagate ST31000528AS that I recently commented had
> announced that it was failing after only about 6 months, has a notably
> high incidence of early failures in Newegg's ratings. When I reordered
> I decided to go with the equivalent Toshiba drive which had a similar
> number of reviews but only a 10% problem rate vs 20% for the Seagate.
> But then I got a small surprise by going to Amazon. I decided to order
> the Toshiba there since I was going to buy some other stuff there anyhow
> and I'd also save a few bucks on price and shipping. But I looked at
> the Amazon reviews and saw that the problem rate there was 20% vs the
> 10% I had seen at Newegg. Some further investigation showed that the
> problem was not Toshiba but Amazon itself. Drives were arriving from
> Amazon with packaging typical for a book but not sufficient for a hard
> drive. The buyers were complaining about damages and early failures
> which they were blaming on Amazon for shipping damage due to poor
> packaging, not on Toshiba. I ended up buying the Toshiba but bought it
> from Newegg who know how to properly package drives for shipping.
>
> Moose is correct that an initially high failure rate might be corrected
> in later production without a model change that we can see. But there's
> no way I can know that. So my solution is to read the reviews and pick
> the one that doesn't have a high infant mortality rate in the first
> place. There are differences but you have to dig through the numbers.
>
> Chuck Norcutt
>
>
>
> On 6/8/2011 7:52 PM, Jim Nichols wrote:
>> Thanks for the useful advice, Moose.
>>
>> Jim Nichols
>> Tullahoma, TN USA
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Moose"<olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
>> To: "Olympus Camera Discussion"<olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2011 5:10 PM
>> Subject: Re: [OM] Strictly OT: System Crash
>>
>>
>>> On 6/8/2011 2:17 PM, Jim Nichols wrote:
>>>> My C drive is the original 80GB drive, and is 6 yrs old. If I replace
>>>> it,
>>>> what is the currently preferred manufacturer,
>>>
>>> It doesn't matter. I went through this a couple of years ago and
>>> concluded
>>> it's a mugg's game and not worth it. Not
>>> that there aren't differences between different batches from various
>>> manufacturers. It's that it's impossible for an
>>> individual buyer to know enough to make a meaningful distinction between
>>> brands. I went through this a couple of years
>>> ago and concluded that.
>>>
>>> For example, at that time, there was a lot of noise on forums about one
>>> brand of a particular size drive. However, it
>>> was already old news. The old ones that ran afoul of some quirk in some
>>> operating system or other had all been fixed or
>>> replaced and a slightly different numbered drive was current. The
>>> replacement model didn't have that particular problem.
>>> Whether it, or any other model/brand, would have a problem in the
>>> future,
>>> nobody knew, including the makers. I bought
>>> another drive of another size at the same time, smallish, not bleeding
>>> edge. It failed while being initialized. That
>>> happens, but the incidence is so low that it's jut a crap shoot.
>>>
>>>> and what software would you use to clone the drive?
>>>
>>> If the existing drive is WD, I'd get a WD to replace it. They have a
>>> free
>>> version of Acronis which only works WD to WD,
>>> so you can save a couple of bucks. I've been using it to clone my C:
>>> Drive
>>> fairly regularly for insurance.
>>>
>>>> Do you open up the case and connect the new drive to a cable and clone
>>>> it
>>>> that way, or do it over a USB connection?
>>>
>>> I would either install the new one in the case next to the old one or in
>>> an eSATA external case. Either way works fine.
>>> If the first, you can then remove the old one, if you want, or just
>>> unplug
>>> the connectors. USB is WAY slower than
>>> SATA/eSATA.
>>>
>>>> The last HD I bought was WD, and it seems to be fine. It is my external
>>>> eSATA photo drive. WD and Seagate are the big dawgs. One of them
>>>> absorbed
>>>> Maxstor a while ago and one is buying Hitachi's drive operations (or is
>>>> it Toshiba's?).
>>>
>>> I have mostly WDs lately, partly as chance that brought a couple with my
>>> last computer partly based on pricing when I
>>> was buying and partly because of the Acronis drive clone/backup
>>> software.
>>> But I'd have no hesitation at all in getting a
>>> pair of Seagates, Hitchais, etc. in my next image data upgrade.
>>>
>>> The only drive I've ever had fail, above, was a WD, but I think it's
>>> just
>>> the luck of the draw.
>>>
>>> Moose
>>> --
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>>>
>>
>>
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