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I used to be a diehard fan of IBM (now Hitachi) IDE HD's but I keep finding more reasons not to like them, have had 2 (possibly 3) fail now recently. A 15gig at home which was my primary C:, a 75gig at work in our network backup machine, both kept getting corrupt sectors, the other drive appears to have stopped functioning completely just today, no longer showing up upon boot (a 30 gig), I haven't checked it out yet but possibly a power issue.

I am searching for a replacement and am wondering what the consensus is on who's currently making the best IDE drives? I need drives for machines that run 24 hours with various uses from nightly backup to light web and ftp service to audio editing.

I recently looked at Samsung drives which look good to me, but I need some real world opinions. I have never really heard anything good about Western Digital, some good things about Maxtor, and I don't know much about Seagate. Are there any other mfg's I should look at? For reference I don't intend to spend much more than $80 for an 80 gig bare drive (7200 rpm, 2mb cache), I can buy the Hitachi and Samsung drives for this price.

This source rates Seagate at the top and used to (and probably still does) consider Maxtor as runner up. Doesn't like IBM for same reasons as you expressed. I've had a couple of WDCs without a problem. You just don't find Seagates at the big box stores on good rebate deals as much as Maxtor or WDC. Check the Hot Deals forum herein.

I also have heard that Seagate is good, but I've never used any Seagate drives. I personally prefer Maxtor.

In the last couple of PCs, I have used Seagate Barracuda IDE / SCSI series, none have failed me. Seagate are not the fastest performer, but very reliable in my books. Even when I to get hard drives for computers belonging to my friends, I ususually go with Seagate.

IBM and Western Digital to my dismay failed miserably. Only recently, I am trying to re-establish my trust with WD Special Edition drives because of it's 3 yr warranty and Maxtor drives (when they go on sale, a good bang for the buck per gigabyte, but I don't expect them to be reliable).

All I have used Western Digital drives without expericing a problems.

IBM (good ole one) Maxtor, WD (new 160GB/JB) all good !

I'd rather store my data on a Texas Instruments TI-83 calculator than an IBM hard drive.

I've owned several Western Digital drives, only one failed within the last year, and it was a 1.2GB drive from God knows when...1995 maybe? I still have a 27 gigger and 120 gigger going strong.

I also have two Maxtor 160GB drives, no problems so far.

I have owned Seagate drives in the past, and they are very solid.