Winchester Disk Drive, Hard disk drive, Hard disc drive, HDD or ‘that big box under the desk‘ (which is the answer I often get!) or I’ve got 500GB of memory or is that disk! I don’t know!
it’s what makes most computers go, most of the time, and if they go bad or stop working, so does your computer usually!
A number of years ago (7 years), I always used Western Digital hard disk drives (HDDs) but after a spate of failures with the new (at the time) WDC WD1200JB, the JB features a 7200 RPM spindle speed coupled with three 40 GB platters. The JB’s key feature, is its 8-meg buffer, four times that of competing drives at the time. An ATA-standard 3-year warranty backs the drive.
But after many of these failed, I decided to switch to Seagate Technology, backed by a 5 Year Warranty, and hard drive manufacturer I’d not used for many years.
The hard drive manufaturer market has certainly got smaller over the last 20 years, many names have disappeared, Connor, DEC, Fujitsu, IBM, Maxtor, Miniscribe and Quantum have disappeared. Quantum acquired DEC, Maxtor acquired Miniscribe and Quantum HDD, Seagate acquired Connor and Maxtor, Hitachi acquired IBM HDD, Toshiba acquired Fujitsu HDD, Western Digital acquired Tandon HDD.
So that leaves us with
- Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (1967)
- Seagate Technology (1979)
- Toshiba (1967)
- Western Digital (1988)
- Samsung (1999?)
So, we still have plenty of HDD manufaturers to choose from!
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500Gbytes ST3500320AS and Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black WD1001FALS
But for me, I’ve decided to go back to purchasing Western Digital Black Drives for the moment, and spread the risk between Seagate for the NASes and Western Digital Black for the workstations!
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