I have had very bad experiences with seagate 7200 Barracuda drives of 80GB and 1000 GB capacity recently.

4 drive failures in 12 months. Clicking disk failure...i.e...the internal mechanism went bad.

It seems WD drives are better than Seagate.

Want to buy a new Western Digital hard disk of low capacity, preferably a 5400 RPM drive.....

Which WD 5400 RPM drive do you suggest? A low capacity drive that will not die on me....

Please reply soon as i need to make some urgent decisions.

Just curious why 5400 rpm and not the more standard 7200 rpm? I haven't had many bad experiences with hard drive failures, i've recently bought a couple seagate HD's and I hope they hold up better --- but whomever makes a suggestion probably needs to know if it is IDE or SATA connections.

well I think all mobos now (unless its really really really really really really new) support IDE... so... but yeah I don't understand why you want a 5400 rpm drive... you can get massive 7200 rpm Seagate drives that are the new 7200.11

its an updated firmware that supposedly is very good

supremelaw, you didnt comment on 5400 rpm drives versus 7200 drives.

My experience with 7200 Seagates (barracudas - both IDE and SATA) has been a nightmare in the last 12 months. 4 failures (2 X 80 GB ide, 160GB sata, 1TB SATA).

So much so that I dont ever want to hear the word 'seagate' again!

What about WD in terms of reliability? What about 5400 rpm WD drives? wont they be better and more reliable because of less wear and tear /operating temperature?

Anyone else who wants to comment on my response, most welcome. I am in a bad shape. Seagate makes me want to throw up.

Your understanding that a small 5400RPM drive is necessarily less prone to failure is inaccurate, although you will grow old while it accesses your data. Sorry you got burned by Seagate. I have seen that the 7200.11 drives, which are touted as being very fast, are very prone to failure. Also there are other things that could cause HD failure, the first suspect is a garbage PSU. If you are he!! bent on having a smaller drive then partition it.

Get the Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
It's OEM so make sure you have a SATA cable.

Low Price and Great Performance--Western Digital WD6400AAKS Review

Sounds to me like you may have a motherboard controller problem or some other issue. It's really hard to believe you would have that many hard drive failures in such a short period. Seagate drives have 5 year warranties I would just send them back and try them on another system.

This might not be a 5400rpm drive but should do the trick if you want a new drive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822136098

I find it hard to believe that you had a drive failure on the average of every 3 months. No matter what the MFG of the drives. Drives fail for other reasons, such as bad RAM causing dirty writes, bad PSU's causing premature motor failure, bad wall voltages or ground causing PSU voltage specs, etc. Note that the RAM will not actually cause a drive failure, but it may be perceived as such. And dirty noise on your 12V side of your PSU may not be fatal as well, but is more likely to be.

So how did you determine that these drives failed? Seatools would be my first choice, especially as I'd be looking to RMA them

Note that if you have dirty wall power or a flaky PSU or bad RAM, changing drive MFG will not be an improvement.

Google did a paper, "Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population" that they presented to the usenix conference on drives and storage. While they would not give MFG statistics, the end result was that while their reported trends might shift a bit with one MFG VS another, over all there was not much difference.

I know that I have not helped you in your search for a 5400 RPM WD drive search, but hope that I have given you pause to look closer at 'why' you have lost so many drives in such a short while.

Hi croc, thanks for the response. I was thinking along the same lines. Faulty power supply.

I checked the power supply voltages using a multimeter. The power supply is OK.

There is no grounding problems in the cabinet either.

What do I do? I dont understand what you mean by 'dirty noise'. What is to be done to determine and fix the 'dirty noise'.

I have some RAM testing tools on something known as the ultimate boot CD.

So how to proceed? How to know whether the RAM is causing physical disk failure?

Some of the things you wrote that I did not understand:

"Note that the RAM will not actually cause a drive failure, but it may be perceived as such. And dirty noise on your 12V side of your PSU may not be fatal as well, but is more likely to be."

I checked the drives I mentioned with SEATOOLS - they all fail the DST (drive self test).

If the PSU power supply is correct (using multimeter) and there is no grounding problem (none that i have detected so far) what is the conclusion?

All these drives that I mentioned make funny noises (motor struggling with something). And then they hang. One of them refuses to work totally.

The 1 TB Seagate went bad within one month of purchase. The others lasted longer.

Hi Zorg, yes, I heard the same thing - 7200 Seagate drives are a bad product , prone to failure.

I am looking for an 80GB drive. The one that is available in WD is a 7200 rpm drive named BD800. What do you think of it?

Hi PsyKhiq - How could a motherboard controller cause physical failure in a drive? [clicking disk failure, drive failing the Drive Short Tests etc.]

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I checked the power supply of the PSU - it gives a stable 11.7 volts......could that be a problem? 11.7 volts instead of 12?

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What model PSU are you using? By saying BD800 I assume you mean WD800. That is not specific enough, can you provide the full model name and link if possible? are you looking tor SATA or PATA?

Also what's the power like where you live?

When people talk about "dirty power" they usually mean that the line voltage and frequency fluctuates. It may not be readily apparent so it's a tough call. I happen to use a UPS that has "line smoothing" to maintain voltage and frequency within specs. Zorg is hinting that your recurrent probem may be due to a decrease in line voltage that is also causing your power supply to give fluctuating votage to the hard drives.

The problem with getting an absolute answer is that you need to take measurements under a load condition. That may be almost impossible for the average person to do without some sophisticated equipment. Capacitors and other electrical/electronic components in your power supply age and degrade and affect power supply stability. The best way to check that is to take the power supply out and have it checked by a reputable shop.

For line voltage, an indication of instability is lights dimming when many appliances are plugged in or turned on or if the outlet you use for the computer also has a motor or high load component on the circuit (refrigerator, fan, toaster, etc).

The fact that you've received so many failures indicats that there is a causal factor outside of the brand of hard drive you're using although I can certainly understand your reluctance to go back to Seagate after you've been bitten so many times - their fault or not.

1) Why in the world would you want a 5400rpm drive when faster drives perform so much better and do not cost any more?
2) Something is amiss in your system. In good conditions, the MTBF for a drive is supposed to be a million hours. That's over 100 years. To get 4 failures tells me something is wrong.
3) Excessive heat can shorten the length of drives. Is your drive cooling good?
4) Identify your PSU and whatever else is in your system. A low quality PSU can deliver flaky power under conditions of heat and load. A voltmeter test is only the most basic of tests.
5) Are you overclocking? Bad writes can sometimes occur.

Try a complete format of the drives to see if they are recoverable. Otherwise, RMA them. Sell the RMA units if you are uncomfortable with Seagate.

Additional insight on “Dirty power”

Line fluctuations and spikes can cause Noise on the output as pointed out in previous post. The cheaper the PSU the more noise on the output. Another culprit is the switching Power supply itself. This is the biggest drawback to switching Power supplies (switching noise riding the output) and why audio “freaks” pay big bucks for “old” analog series regulated PSs. A multimeter will not show this noise in DC mode. Sometimes you can see this by using the AC mode, should read zero; but alas this will not show spikes – for that you need an o’scope.

11.7 V at idle is a little low in my books as the loaded value could be dropping even lower. 12 – 3% = 11.64 V. Down load cupid as it shows min – max in addition to present value. Then run a program to load the 12 V. I use ATI tools and run their “View 3 D mode. While monitoring the min value

So, do you have the PSU model, HD model that you want, and info on your local power?

See if you can borrow a recording voltmeter and monitor your PSU while it is loaded heavily. A Fluke 87 or equivalent would do the job nicely. The Fluke would also be able to check the RMS of the DCV output. May be more cost effective to just egg it and spring for a new QUALITY psu especially if your is several years old and you intend to keep it running for sometime in the future.....your call.

You can get a psu tester to see if everything is okay.

Hi all, thanks for your wonderful inputs.

I think I am going to trash this cabinet/PSU and get my hardware shifted to a new cabinet with a new PSU.

My old PSU is 2 years old. I am from India - power conditions from the supply are quite ridiculous.

But I have an APC (www.apc.com) UPS that has surge protection in it. And provides a stable 230-233 volts AC to the computer.

There are frequency fluctuations in the outside power from time to time but I have no way of measuring that.

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Any suggestions on how to get to know whether the new PSU is a good one? Is using a multimeter enough? I have absolutely no idea which PSUs are availbale in the market, my side of the world - but please do suggest some reliable brands that I will try and search for. OR maybe I can buy a new PSU from some hardware shop like newegg. But i dont know which PSU is reliable.

It would be nice if it was possible to test the new PSU before unleashing it on my system I guess....! Is that possible using some software?

My current PSU model/make is something known as 'NAV TECH ATX450T'.
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Geofelt - You asked "5) Are you overclocking? Bad writes can sometimes occur.". How do I know whether I am overclocking? I havent done anything intentionally. Can overclocking destroy a hard disk?

Zorg - here's the WD800BD drive's link: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/pro [...] anguage=en.
This is the only WD model that is available at the shops in the 80GB category - i am looking for an 80GB - to keep my winXP on it and nothing else.

My current PSU model/make is something known as 'NAV TECH ATX450T'.

RetiredChief - You wrote "Down load cupid as it shows min – max in addition to present value. Then run a program to load the 12 V. I use ATI tools and run their “View 3 D mode. While monitoring the min value".

Where do I download 'Cupid'? And can you re-explain what you have written in the above sentence?

The WD800BD should be a good drive. If it fails then you definitely have another problem. Given the large number of failures you probably do anyway, as was said several times already.

The UPS should clean up bad power from the wall, I suspect it is a must in India.

I can't find anything about your PSU, I wouldn't trust it. Get a new PSU before you install the new HD.

I don't know what is available over there but I think you should be able to get a Corsair, they are good PSUs.

I don't know what size because I don't know your configuration.

The VX550 should cover you nicely and give you some headroom since you are using a 450, but that's just a guess.

Here is the link to CPUID's HWMonitor. http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

On my system the 12 V is 12.1 V This is at idle, not much running.
If I run ATI tools ( free download, use google search) my 12 volts drops to a steady 11.84 V (0.26 volt drop). Graphics cards are the single biggest load on 12V Rail. The 2nd is the Processor.
You can also open up a DOS window and do a "dir x: /s" where x is your drive with the largest Number of files. My 12 V droves Momentarily to 11.97 then back to 12.1.

Zorg gave you good info on HDD's

Overclocking is the process by which the cpu speed is increased beyond the original specifications. It is done by selecting new parameters in the BIOS on certain motherboards. It is most unlikely that you did it unintention