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, though that does represent a minority in the first year.
- Maxtor 1.04% (against 1.73%)
- Western Digital 1.45% (against 0.99%)
- Seagate 2.13% (against 2.58%)
- Samsung 2.47% (against 1.93%)
- Hitachi 3.39% (against 0.92%)
It’s curtains for Hitachi, who were in no.1 position last time round! Western Digital is still in second place in spite of an upward trend, while Maxtor takes over no. 1 spot.
Now here are the rates for 1 TB drives:
- 5.76%: Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B
- 5.20%: Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C
- 3.68%: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
- 3.37% : Samsung SpinPoint F1
- 2.51%: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12
- 2.37%: WD Caviar Green WD10EARS
- 2.10%: Seagate Barracuda LP
- 1.57%: Samsung SpinPoint F3
- 1.55%: WD Caviar Green WD10EADS
- 1.35%: WD Caviar Black WD1001FALS
- 1.24%: Maxtor DiamondMax 23
Hitachi is the worst positioned, with two separate ranges! What about the 2 TB versions?
- 9.71%: WD Caviar Black WD2001FASS
- 6.87%: Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000
- 4.83%: WD Caviar Green WD20EARS
- 4.35%: Seagate Barracuda LP
- 4.17%: Samsung EcoGreen F3
- 2.90%: WD Caviar Green WD20EADS
Overall, the rates we’ve recorded here are poor. They don’t really inspire confidence in putting 2 TB of data in the hands of a single drive: a mirroring to back up your data certainly won’t go amiss. Of course 7200 rpm drives are less reliable than the 5400/5900 rpm ones, with almost 10% for the Western!
For the first time, we are including SSDs in our returns rates. Here are the figures by manufacturer:
- Intel 0.59%
- Corsair 2.17%
- Crucial 2.25%
- Kingston 2.39%
- OCZ 2.93%
Intel stands out here with a very good rate indeed. Among the few models for which over a 100 models were sold, none has a returns rate of over 5%.
