End of an era?
I may be about to do something I haven't considered in 14 years. I may buy a Western Digital hard drive.
Back in the day (1995-1997) I worked for an ISP. We also, as an occasional side business, built systems. The builders always used Maxtor hard drives and I adopted Maxtor as my go-to brand for drives. (I still have a vintage 1999 8-GB Maxtor drive that works, as well as an 80-GB one from 2003.)
Then Maxtor got bought by Seagate. So the last couple of drives I bought (two notebook drives and an external USB) were Seagates. All are working fine.
Now I'm looking to buy a new desktop drive for Kim's old computer, and I'm noticing a disturbing thing: Seagate seems to have lost its mojo for desktop drives. Only two Seagate SATA drives get five-egg average ratings on NewEgg -- one on the strength of a single review, and one that's not available (and only has 13 reviews).
Of the 18 3.5" SATA drives with five-egg ratings, the brand breakdown is:
Seagate: 2
Samsung: 3
Hitachi: 4
Western Digital: 9 (including rankings #1-6)
That can't be coincidence. Maxtor, Seagate, wherefore art thou crap?
Back in the day (1995-1997) I worked for an ISP. We also, as an occasional side business, built systems. The builders always used Maxtor hard drives and I adopted Maxtor as my go-to brand for drives. (I still have a vintage 1999 8-GB Maxtor drive that works, as well as an 80-GB one from 2003.)
Then Maxtor got bought by Seagate. So the last couple of drives I bought (two notebook drives and an external USB) were Seagates. All are working fine.
Now I'm looking to buy a new desktop drive for Kim's old computer, and I'm noticing a disturbing thing: Seagate seems to have lost its mojo for desktop drives. Only two Seagate SATA drives get five-egg average ratings on NewEgg -- one on the strength of a single review, and one that's not available (and only has 13 reviews).
Of the 18 3.5" SATA drives with five-egg ratings, the brand breakdown is:
Seagate: 2
Samsung: 3
Hitachi: 4
Western Digital: 9 (including rankings #1-6)
That can't be coincidence. Maxtor, Seagate, wherefore art thou crap?