[TheBattman]

I also remember a couple of decades back when Seagate made some good drives...

Then Western Digital drives had a high point..

Now... who knows? I have used Samsung drives with good success, as well as Hitachi (that “distant third” manufacturer mentioned in the write-up).

But my experiences of the last 4 years has been that Seagate drives (both bare and external) are flakey and unreliable in general, and that Western Digital drives are either great or duds - and you never know, even within the same shipment which is which.

I suppose this will all change dramatically if the SSD drives ever get competitive price-wise. Unfortunately, the quality of those will come down with the price (as the outsourcing continually seeks cheaper venues to manufacture).

[tacticalogic]

Do you remember when MiniScribe was shipping bricks?

[max americana]

I have both Seagate and Maxtor HDD’s and my brother has one Western Digital 1 TB HDD.

2 of my Maxtor’s were the original 250 GB’s “big” HDD’s but because they were heavy, portable yet heavy, I only stuck my anime fansubs into it. My Seagate is the Black Drive, with the encryption pw protected version which cannot (supposedly) be cracked without the PW. That’s what I bring to kanadastan and back just in case TSA confiscates it.

My bro’s WD has never failed him either..and it’s the book-size 1 TB he bought in 2008.