[conspire] Reliable 1.5TB SATA drives?

[Mark S Bilk]

On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 11:46:15PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:

Hi Rick,

First of all, please delete my post to the list that didn't 
go through because it had an attachment.  I resent it 
without the attachment (the jpg showing the System Monitor).

>Quoting Mark S Bilk (mark at cosmicpenguin.com):
>
>> What is the most reliable brand and model of 1.5TB SATA 
>> hard drive available today at a reasonable price?
>
>First, listen to Luke, as he's right.

He sure is!

>Second, have you considered that your problem might be less choice of
>hard drive make/model than the purchasing and service-handling habits of
>the vendors from whom you buy?

I bought the drives last week from Frys in Sunnyvale.  The 
salesman paid no attention to what I was saying, and then 
dropped one of the boxes containing a Seagate FreeAgent 
Desk 1.5TB USB drive about 10 inches onto the table.  When 
I said, "What are you doing?  That's a delicate machine!",
he replied, "Don't worry, the box is tightly sealed."

He then followed me around, repeatedly asking, "Can I write
that up for you?", so he could get a commission on the sale.
I said, "I have to think about it some more", and rolled the 
cart with the drives out of the department.  (When a Frys 
salesperson is helpful I make sure they write up the sale 
so they can make a few bucks.)

>Back in the days of LP records, I was initially surprised to find that
>many record stores had shrinkwrap machines in the back _specifically_ to
>re-seal LPs returned by customers so they could be put right back in the
>racks looking still fresh from the factory.

Apparently Frys not only shrink-wraps the returned drives, but 
even puts on those heavy reinforced plastic straps.  But they do 
put orange labels on the boxes.

>You mentioned Fry's Electronics.  Might be just me, but somehow it'd
>just never occur to me to go shopping for hard drives at Fry's.

As far as I know, other stores won't take items back for a full
refund within 15 or 30 days without a hassle.

>> Seagate tech support suggested [...]
>
>As Luke said, why on Earth would you believe what they say over the
>telephone about whether a drive is bad or not, especially when
>smartmontools will give you actually reliable, good data? 

The suggestion from tech support was that the FreeAgent Desk 
external USB drive was doing frequent recalibrations (lots of 
clicking) because it was sensitive to noise pickup in the USB 
cable, and that I should try a different cable.  I did, and 
the problem went away.  So the drive itself was OK.  I don't 
think smart would have been relevant to this.

Thanks for the advice!

  Mark