Is Hitachi HD good?

[jxcheng]

What about the quality of Hitachi HD?
Is it good comparing to WD and MAXTOR?

Fry's has Hitachi 180G HD on sale.
Does anyone have the experience of dealing with Hitachi for rebates?

Thank you!

[osprey4]

Hitachi bought the hard drive business from IBM a few years ago. IBM got out of the hard drive business because of chronic quality problems, which eventually led to a terible reputation; their Deskstar drives came to be known as Deathstar drives (see HERE for the relevant Google search).

It has not been demonstrated to my satisfaction the Hitachi has significantly improved the quality over what IBM was doing, so my recommendation would be to keep looking

[tony_j15]

IBM only had problems with the 75GXP's, everyone has over reacted and thinks all their hdd's are taboo. The latest ones are just fine, and their new SATA models are among the best. I would still call it subquality compared to WD, but on par with maxtor.

[jxcheng]

The 180G Hitachi HD is an IDE drive, not SATA

[samwichse]

Hitachi also had some problems, having >80% failure rates with some models.

Er wait, no, that was Fujitsu.

I've never really heard anything about Hitachis. Their TV's have always treated me right though .

Sam

[sechs]

Originally posted by osprey4
Hitachi bought the hard drive business from IBM a few years ago. IBM got out of the hard drive business because of chronic quality problems

Bzzzt. Survey says that IBM got out of the harddrive business because:

1. They weren't making money, just like everyone else. Remember Quantum? They couldn't make money in the drive biz either, and sold out to Maxtor. Did Quamtum make bad drives? Not anymore than any other maker.

2. Hardware is no longer a core business at IBM. IBM is mostly a software and services company, and making harddrives just doesn't fit in with that. An opportunity to exit the business presented itself and IBM took it.

Now, did IBM make some bad lines of drives? Yes, but so have other manufacturers.

The 120GXP and 180GXP lines have shown to be as reliable as, if not more reliable than, other drives of their class. While the 7k250 is yet unproven, I expect it to be that reliable, as well.