Most reliable 500GB 5400RPM drive?

Hello guys.

I am currently in the market for a 500GB 5400RPM HDD to replace the 160GB on my good ol' Vostro. I just want to know which one is the most reliable among the different brands? Seagate's 5400.6? Hitachi's 5k500? WD's Scorpio Blue?

Seagate is currently the cheapest one available here and I wish to know if they are more reliable than their reputation purports them to be... If they aren't, I am willing to spend a bit more for the other options.

Obviously reliability is my priority but I would also like to know how their performance is relative to each other. Although I believe whichever HDD I get, it will surely be a performance upgrade over my 160GB 5400RPM (which, notably, is a Seagate).

Thanks.

 

Here is the secret:

Brand doesn't matter. Warranty does.​

Everybody will come on threads like these, saying how :

- "Don't buy brand X! I owned 3 drives from brand X, and they all died!" or
- "Buy brand Y! I've owned brand Y drives for the past 15 years, and they never died!"
​

All of that is anecdotal evidence, and not hard data. And even if you had all of the anecdotal evidence or hard data in the world, it would be no guarantee for your individual situation. There are, of course, some exceptions to this that people always mention - the most notable being the infamous Hitachi "Deathstar" drives... but that is the exception, and not the rule. The rule is that there is no possible way for someone to say "If you buy brand X, your drive will last you T amount of time before it dies".

Every drive you buy has a chance of being DOA, or failing after 6 months, or lasting 60 years. And every drive *WILL* fail - it is just a matter of when. And when that happens, brand doesn't matter. Warranty does.

 

I usually stick with WD unless I another brand of drives is significantly cheaper on sale or whatever. Not because I think WD is any more or less reliable, but because:

1) Warranty process I believe is the best. Even better/more convenient than Seagate in my opinion
2) Reading the SMART data and interpreting it is easier than on a Seagate. Most hard drives these days dont seem to fail just overnight, but rather, by looking at SMART you can gradually start to see things going wrong.
3) Ramp load-unload. There's no definitive proof that this increases reliability, but intuitively it would make sense. All of WD's 3.5" drives use ramp load technology, but I believe Seagate still doesn't.

 

Actually there was some hard data on Tomshardware. Iirc correctly Hitachi came out tops.

 

as far as i know , Hitachi makes most reliable drives but why do you want a 5400rpm one? Get a 7200rpm one like Hitachi 7K500 which is quiet and reliable.

 

Every company has it's ups and downs... only a few years ago, one line from Hitachi's were called Deathstars (Deskstars) and had more than 50% failure rate. Nowadays, they're all about even.

 

Thanks for all the responses. Sadly I'm not sure how warranties would work out here in my country... I guess I just have to hope for the best and pray that I do not get a bad drive. )

The price difference, at least for my very limited budget [and also due to the inflated prices of anything tech-related here...] makes it more practical to get 5400RPM. You could say the difference here is "just around $12" [rough currency conversion] but that is HUGE for me. )

I'll try to do a search on it. Thanks!