Over many years of experience seen by MicroCom within the data storage equipment industry, one particular question has been more repeatedly asked than most of the other common ones:  "Who makes the best drive?".  Questions like "What's the most reliable brand of disk drive?", or "What's the best brand of hard drive money can buy?" are heard again and again.  Then there's the permutation "Wouldn't you agree that '-you-name-the-brand-' hard drives just about the worst, most unreliable make of hard drive?"  These and other questions of like intent are often put to experts in the field, and represent an entire class of inquiry used for probing into this one, single issue.

The short answer to this question is the same as the shortest possible English language answer to any question: "No."  Okay, strictly speaking, that doesn't make much sense — but it does convey the right idea.  Asking which brand of hard drives are the best is something like asking the same thing about cars made by Audi, BMW and Mercedes.  There really is no simple informative answer.

The more complicated answer (but also more informative) from an expert in the field is that every single maker of hard disk drives has manufactured certain models that are in every way best of class, and superior to their competition.  And it's also true that every single one of them has put out a model or two (at least), that would make a lemon tree cower with embarrassment.  A truth that should be owned up to by every computer user who uses that computer to store data having value to them is that no matter what brand of hard drive is installed, sooner or later it will fail and block your access to that data.  The most appropriate means to deal with this reality is to have backup copies of all valuable data.

There is probably only one point upon which helpful guidance might be given in this vein, and it's an admonition that applies equally well to all high technology products:  beware the latest, greatest, "bleeding-edge", most advanced high technology products.  A hard drive that is, while not the cheapest you might find, also not the most expensive – will tend to provide the best service from a statistical standpoint.

In the 1980's, compared with today, there were numerous competing manufacturers, well over three dozen that included such brand names® as Micropolis, Rodime, Lapine, Hewlett Packard, Tandon, CDC, Microscience, Shugart, Conner, CMI, Kyocera, Miniscribe.  Most of these names are hardly recognized by anyone now, just two decades later...  indeed, only a few computer hardware buffs can even remember if they've even heard of them.  Every one of the currently existing manufacturers (see list below) were also in the business back in those same early days, and the fact that they are still with us now is strong testimony to each vendor's fierce commitment to data storage technology and the building of a high quality product.  All are excellent brand names, and in general, provide reliability you can trust.

Hard drive manufacturers Quantum and IBM, historically two of the greatest names® in the business, only since the dawn of the new millenium now fail to qualify for the elite group below.  And more recently Maxtor too, another historic and venerable name in disk drive technology, has come under the specter of industry consolidation; in May of 2006 they were acquired by Seagate Technology (it was Maxtor who acquired the Quantum disk drive business in April of 2001).  In the following list are the still extant makers of hard disk drives that have not only survived into the twenty-first century, but who today are still creating indispensable rotating memory hard disk drive data storage products for our computers and a continually growing list of digital communication and entertainment devices:

• Fujitsu
• Hitachi
• Samsung
• Seagate
• Toshiba
• Western Digital

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