> I use 10000rpm WD Raptors in raid mode and have never had problems in the last 6 > years. In fact between my brother and father and I we have about 9x Raptor drives and > none have ever failed. > > We've had Maxtor, Seagate, plain Wester Digitals in the past and all have failed > after 5 years or so. > > So the Raptors are the only drives I can trust. Mind you, I would like to go SSD one > day but they are all not created equally. In fact, the slow SSD drives are not much > faster than normal HDD's, so make sure you do your research before hand. Cheaper is > not always the way to go.
Gah. I should show you a picture of all the dead Raptors/Velociraptors I have at work.
Just goes to prove my point of view that - name a HDD manufacturer or model, and you'll find people who swear by them, and people who'll never buy one again. Which makes me believe that reliability/longevity is mostly a crapshoot and has more to do with luck, electrical environment, mechanical environment, and thermal environment.