Hard drives
These rates were only for returns to the retailer, which isn’t always the case as you can also return a product directly to the manufacturer: this does however represent a minority in the first year. Here are the figures:
- Western 0.89%
- Hitachi 0.92%
- Samsung 2.25%
- Maxtor 2.79%
- Seagate 2.89%
Western and Hitachi both do very well, but the situation has got a lot worse for Seagate and Maxtor (Maxtor, remember, is owned by Seagate). If you look at products with rates of 3% or more, the reason becomes obvious:
- Samsung SpinPoint T 500 GB: 12.9%
- Maxtor DiamondMax 22 1 TB: 6.5%
- Seagate 7200.11 500 GB: 5.2%
- Maxtor DiamondMax 22 500 GB: 4.8%
- Maxtor DiamondMax 22 750 GB: 3.9%
- Seagate 7200.11 1 TB: 3.7%
- Seagate 7200.11 750 GB: 3.6%
- Seagate 320 500 GB IDE: 3.2%
The 7200.11s and DiamondMax 22s have a big negative impact on the Seagate and Maxtor rates, because of a bug in a firmware update at the beginning of the year in this series. Note moreover Samsung’s very very poor score for its SpinPoint T 500 GB. Here are the rates for 1 TB drives:
- Maxtor DiamonMax 22: 6.5%
- Seagate 7200.11: 3.7%
- Samsung SpinPoint F1: 2.9%
- Samsung EcoGreen F1: 1.6%
- WD Caviar Green WD10EACS: 0.9%
- Hitachi 7K1000.B: 0.8%
- WD Caviar Black: 0%
- WD Caviar Green WD10EACS: 0%
The DiamondMax 22 is followed by the 7200.11 and then the SpinPoint F1. The most reliable drives are from Hitachi and Western Digital, with two models at 0% returns over the period!