Why is there a lack of reviews in the internet about Hitachi's HDDs?

Pedro_13

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Title is pretty self-explanatory.

I'd like to add that in amazon it's so difficult to understand which is the right model because there are so many versions of the 3 tb hdd, which i want, and there are almost no reviews.
 
Solution
For a fast drive, WD Black are good, so are the Samsung Spinpint drives

You are correct about the hard drive failure tests, https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q3-2015/

Gingerbread

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Well basically from the statistics hitachi make the most reliable big HDDs, in the form of 3tb,4tb and 6tb. WD would be good as well but you should just avoid seagate as their hdds above 2TB seem to be failing a lot, quite rapidly.
 

fudoka711

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Basically this. Hitachi is actually more known for selling their hard drives in PC's that are pre-built or custom built by companies such as Dell, HP, etc.

From my experience/knowledge, WD is the best overall (especially their Black Edition HDD's), while Hitachi makes the best large capacity HDD's (3TB+). WD Blue's are generally very reliable as well in the 500GB to 2TB range. Don't buy Seagate if you can afford it. They are the worst, especially at 2TB+.
 

Pedro_13

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i get this . But in the other hand the WD blue is not made in the 7200 version anymore, just 5400 rpm. Do you know a specific mode lfor the hitachi? I'm confused with the stuff I see in amazon.
|And also, do you know of any statistics about the failure rates of the hdds ? I think I saw something at backblaze, but i'm not sure.
 

fudoka711

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Good info there.

In case anyone is wondering, Hitachi is the same company as HGST (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) and HGST is owned by Western Digital.

One reason why I believe Hitachi/HGST is so good in general is because Hitachi incorporated IBM's HDD business (Hitachi bought IBM HDD) and we all know IBM makes or used to make good products (think Lenovo Business laptops).

Also, WD Blue's do actually spin at 7200rpm (I'm looking at the 500gb and 1tb models). Here is the WD 1TB Blue: http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Desktop-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B0088PUEPK/ref=sr_1_2?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1452530474&sr=1-2&refinements=p_89%3AWestern+Digital

Here's a WD 2TB Black: http://www.amazon.com/Black-Performance-Desktop-Hard-Drive/dp/B00FJRS628/ref=sr_1_14?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1452530474&sr=1-14&refinements=p_89%3AWestern+Digital. (I own this model personally)

Here's the Hitachi 2TB HDD seen in the review: http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Deskstar-3-5-Inch-7200RPM-Internal/dp/B003GSLDRC/ref=sr_1_2?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1452531615&sr=1-2&keywords=HDS722020ALA330&refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_four_browse-bin%3A8067152011%2Cp_36%3A1253505011.

If you are buying an HGST HDD and want to match it to the study, make sure you look at the product number. The one in the study was HDS722020ALA330.

Here's the 3TB Hitachi version seen in the study: http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Deskstar-3-5-Inch-Internal-0S03660/dp/B00HHAJU7K/ref=sr_1_2?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1452531287&sr=1-2&keywords=HDS723030ALA640. Coincidentally, that particular listing shows the other 3TB+ sizes sold directly by Amazon, rather than having Amazon as a reseller.

If you're thinking about buying a 1TB HDD, I would go with WD Blue. If you're thinking about 2TB - go with WD Black or Hitachi/HGST. If you're thinking about 3TB+, go with Hitachi/HGST.

Another couple things to remember. For HGST's, make sure you get the Deskstar version (this is the consumer version). For WD's, make sure you get Blue or Black. Green is really only useful as a backup hdd and the other colors are for things like surveillance cameras and servers.
 
I don't know if having IBMs drive business is good, the Deskstar drives they made had a nickname "Deathstar" because they failed often.
IBM Deskstar 75GXP failures[edit]
The IBM Deskstar 75GXP (six models ranging in capacity from 15 to 75 GB) became infamous circa 2001 for their reportedly high failure rates.[2][3] This led to the drives being colloquially referred to as "Deathstars".[4] Due to this, the drives were ranked 18th in PC World's "Worst Tech Products of All Time" feature in 2006.[5][6] Note the simultaneously announced IBM Deskstar 40GV, a 5400 RPM version of the 7200 RPM 75GXP, did not suffer from the same reported high failure rate.


They actually got such a bad rep that it likely was why the sold the drive division off. They got sued in 2001, then sold the drive division in 2003, seems pretty close there.

The HGST drives have had a good reputation for their products though, but I still see quite a bit of them failing. Probably second behind the Seagates in the laptops I worked on. I am looking at an HGST drive on my desk now that is faulty, and sent back 3 others to Lenovo for warranty. Desktop drives would be different I'm sure, but the "Deskstar" name just brings me back to "Deathstar" so I just can't bring myself to buy a Deskstar product now.
 

fudoka711

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Huh, I didn't know that about their drive business. IBM's stuff has been really good in general I sort of assumed their drive business was also doing well. Nevermind then. I know their 3.5" desktop hdd's are good, but I guess their 2.5" laptop versions aren't up to par then.

When I was looking through reviews, I did notice that any model numbers not found in the study almost always did worse. So that's troubling in terms of overall quality.
 
IBM/Lenovo computers are generally excellent but there are a few series that are just bad. The early Core 2 Duo systems had huge issues with capacitors, as did other vendors due to some bad capacitors getting out to the public, I have worked on stacks of IBM/Lenovo and HP computers that all have had the same motherboard issues with capacitors bursting.

Also the Lenovo T420 models seem to have a much higher drive failure rates than normal, and many have HGST drives or Seagates. I'd say only one of 8 or so failed drives from a Lenovo has been a WesternDigital while the rest are Seagate of HGST. I see less drive failures from older IBM T41/42/42 models and T60s and T400s than I do with much newer T420 models.

It was actually funny that I got a dead laptop to look at yesterday after I was posting in this thread, and sure enough, the bad drive in it was a HGST.