tonydude
Today whilst using my PC I received the wonderful message: "Windows Disk Diagnostic detected a S.M.A.R.T. fault on disk ST31000528AS". 
 
This hard drive is dedicated to my Cakewalk Projects and it may well fail. I have a backup via a SyncToy scheduled task and am creating a second manual backup. Later I will be running chkdsk and seagate windows tools on it. 
 
If I do need a replacement, any recommendations beyond the standard 7,200rpm non-green drives?
 
My first choice was going to be something like: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2tb-seagate-st2000dm001-barracuda-720014-sata-3-6gb-s-7200rpm-64mb-cache-8ms-oem-ncq 
 
~ Tony

Big fan of WD Black drives, I have six or seven running now).  That being said, there are different versions of the Black drives.  One has a three year warrenty and the other has a five year, (if I remember correctly).  I don't know if there is a difference between them other than the price.  I've been building my own computers for over twenty years and I only remember one going bad.
 
HTH
 

Seth Kellogg [Cakewalk]
I just saw this news today and figured it would be worthwhile to post here: http://techreport.com/news/27697/latest-backblaze-reliability-data-shows-carnage-for-3tb-seagate-drives
 
Looks like the large size Seagates are leading the pack in failures. 

That article pegs one model of the 3TB Barricuda (st3000dm001), so is a bit misleading. I can only speculate as to "why" but failures at such a high rate (which is atrocious) is often due to dielectric breakdown inside the head... almost like a lower data rate (5900rpm) head was used because it "fit the bill" without proper thermal stress testing (again, speculation, not "fact"). The data rate of that particular drive is pretty high on the HDD listing (#17 of 880), so thermal stress seems a probable factor.

Seagate went downhill I dunno what happened, I had 2 750GB barracuddas from around 8 years ago, one failed on me recently and the other is still going strong and now when I hear "seagate" its usually followed by "dont go near them!"
 
These days I use an SSD for my projects, I know it isn't the most cost effective solution but its certainly a lot safer than trusting your projects to a single mechanical hard drive. When your SSD finally wears out the data is still intact and useable you just cant write to it anymore, my recent hard drive failure with the 750GB seagate went a little something like this....
 
1. Got my first SMART warning from windows
2. Went upstairs to get an old laptop harddrive out of storage so I could backup my important files to it.
3. Turned off my pc so I could install the spare hard drive
4. Turned the computer back on to complete failure, bye bye important files.
 
That will never happen with an SSD, so I dont mind paying a little more for it even if I also need to replace them more regularly.

after hassles at work with them (note to self, check what brand/model, it's about a year old, we run vmware instances off them daily) i'm put off ssds right now; the speed benefit (is there any other benefit?) is still outside the cost/reliability/capacity/worthwhile intersect for me

 
It looks like low reliability is associated with high capacity drives ?
 
I've so far limited myself to 1tb WD Blacks and I think I'll keep it that way for now.
 

I do not think that it is higher capacity, per se, since media is pretty much outsourced and common to most drives (which was typically 2-platter or 4-platter variations). The heads are designed to run at incredibly high temps (15 years ago it was ~255C/500F - which is damn hot), and data rate is the prime contributor to heat (especially write speeds). There is no air flow through the case (making most heat transfer conductive only), so higher capacity does have some credence as far as a 2-platter (4 head) versus a 4-platter (8 head) drive (but actual "capacity" depends on the media).
 
Quick comment to Greeny's post... the most stressful events to a HDD are startup (unparking the heads) and shutdown (parking the heads)... if a HDD is acting up but running, it is best to backup to an external HDD (i.e. do not shut it off). A HDD head actually flies 1-2 microinches from the surface of the disk (this is why they are sealed in a clean room environment, as a simple molecule of cigarette smoke can tear the write head off).

The 2TB Western Digital Black worked like a charm for me and 'feels' about 25% faster than the older Seagate it replaced. I use that hard drive for my project files.
 
There's another hard drive for soft synth's, since they're mostly reads I'm waiting for the 1Tb SSD's to drop in price. 
 
~ Tony

pwalpwal
after hassles at work with them (note to self, check what brand/model, it's about a year old, we run vmware instances off them daily) i'm put off ssds right now; the speed benefit (is there any other benefit?) is still outside the cost/reliability/capacity/worthwhile intersect for me

I have two corsair SSDs, both using sandforce controllers both have been nothing but fast and reliable for me. I can only speak from my own experience. One is fairly new but the other is well over 18 months old now and still going strong. I too have heard some terror storys with some other brands, kingston being one that comes to mind for some reason, I heard the cheaper OCZ ones were a bit dodgy too but for me corsairs = happy greeny.
 
No doubt they are expensive compared to a mechanical drive but when your mechanical drive dies thats it it is dead and there aint a lot you can do, at least with a SSD the data is safe.
 
EDIT: Other benefit is silence that's about all, but the speed benefit is significant, I was suprised to find out just how much of a bottleneck mech drives are in a modern PC.

good input thanks greeny :-)

Greeny

pwalpwal
after hassles at work with them (note to self, check what brand/model, it's about a year old, we run vmware instances off them daily) i'm put off ssds right now; the speed benefit (is there any other benefit?) is still outside the cost/reliability/capacity/worthwhile intersect for me

I have two corsair SSDs, both using sandforce controllers both have been nothing but fast and reliable for me. I can only speak from my own experience. One is fairly new but the other is well over 18 months old now and still going strong. I too have heard some terror storys with some other brands, kingston being one that comes to mind for some reason, I heard the cheaper OCZ ones were a bit dodgy too but for me corsairs = happy greeny.
 
No doubt they are expensive compared to a mechanical drive but when your mechanical drive dies thats it it is dead and there aint a lot you can do, at least with a SSD the data is safe.
 
EDIT: Other benefit is silence that's about all, but the speed benefit is significant, I was suprised to find out just how much of a bottleneck mech drives are in a modern PC.

Is less heat generated by the SSD's. That would be a reasonable benefit too.