MiniScribe 3650
The quintessential unreliable 1980s drive; MiniScribe bidded too low and cut too many corners, particularly with rapidly-wearing rack-and-pinion actuators.
But it was an innocent-enough era, and with capacities barely sufficient to begin with, people genuinely needed cheap drives.
Seagate ST-277R
Based on the ST-251, it was mechanically much more solid than the MiniScribe; but RLL (2,7) was too demanding and it gave errors like nobody's business.
If you have one then you can certainly try RLL (2,7) but expect that it may well error out, forcing you to step back to ordinary MFM like the basic ST-251.
Western Digital stepper drives (93044A and related)
Double the density of the Tandon TM362 (later rebranded as Western Digital WD362) they descended from, and many times the failure rate.
Thankfully Western Digital promptly redeemed themselves with the superb Caviar AC140 & AC280, making the most of voice‑coils (with embedded servo) to bring enterprise‑class reliability to the desktop (even though their own descendants suffered sorely under price pressure, particularly the woeful 1.7GB/platter “LB”)…
Kalok Octagon KL3100 & KL3120
The last stepper-motor drives, and obviously a step too far in density.
Early Samsung HDDs (SHD-125 and descendants)
They looked good on paper, but were ridiculously fragile even by the lower standards of the early 1990s.
Later models improved to half-decent by 2000, but even their better models (P40 & P80) were poor cousins to the Barracuda ATA IV and 7200.7.
IBM Deathstar 75GXP/40GV & 60GXP, Horrorstar 36LZX
Would you credit the very inventor of the HDD for bungling it so badly? But that's indeed what happened; although there were some design deficits (the glass platters cope poorly with thermal cycling, original firmware left the heads idling in the same place indefinitely, and of course IBM's flawed head connector expecting soft solder to support contact from the pressure pins
), the main problem was simply the quality control falling apart in IBM's Hungary factory.Luckily Maxtor was back at the top with their excellent DiamondMax Plus 40 (superior even to Seagate's Barracuda ATA II!), and soon Plus 45 with 15.3GB/platter to match the 75GXP (in hindsight Maxtor would have been better-off keeping their full 4 platters rather than shaving 0.3ms off the seek time; but by the 20GB/platter generation, both IBM and Maxtor had 3‑platter flagships and hence reached the same 60GB, and Maxtor still had a massive reliability advantage
).Before the 120GXP (less bad but still iffy) came out, Seagate rose even higher with their outstanding Barracuda ATA IV, making the most of now‑mature FDBs – exceptionally quiet (and respectable even today), decently fast (only substantively beaten by the 8MiB-cached Caviar Special Editions), and implied (though not officially stated) that its design life was doubled to 10 years (observing the POH counter's normalization), perhaps the non‑operating shock resistance too (with both the ATA IV & V having upsized headstack bearings for this purpose, even though 7200.7 onward reverted to the regular size for one reason or another).
Seagate continued their leadership with the Barracuda SATA V (the first‑ever SATA drive), the Barracuda 7200.7's 5‑year warranty upgrade (more below), and the extraordinary Barracuda 7200.8 finally beating IBM/Hitachi to new TMR read heads (promptly blowing away the cost-no-object Deskstar 7K400
).Although the Barracuda 7200.9 was rather rushed and anticlimactic, the 7200.10's perpendicular recording regained the density (and overall capacity) lead.
Tragically, Maxtor's revival was short-lived too…
Maxtor slimline drives (531DX, 541DX, “Fireball 3” and DiamondCrash Minus 8)
Very much a return to MiniScribe's ways (since Maxtor bought MiniScribe as they went bankrupt), 1-head-only and cutting every other corner they could.
Far too many customers hence had entire batches fail (some production was upspecified by OEMs, but I still wouldn't use them anywhere important).
In the Plus (or Minus) 8 the FDB itself was substandard too, allowing excessive moment vibration leading to outer-zone head crashes.
(Data Clinic blamed it on the lower profile, but that's obviously not the whole reason as Seagate's slimline 7200.9/10 models worked just fine…)
I also hate the “Fireball 3” for pissing on Quantum's heritage with the name (while the 5.25″ Bigfoots were mediocre, native Fireballs were always solid).
Maxtor DiamondCrash Minus 9/MaXCrime Minus II (and earlier DM10/MLIII, seemingly all DM11/MLPro)
My own most-hated drives and I've actually added them into my recalls thread, as they were the first-ever deliberately bad HDDs.
IBM's own FUD (about the Deathstars being “not 24×7 rated”, despite their more-durable ceramic ball bearings) enabled this scam, after all…
Eventually Apple and other furious OEMs forced Maxtor to fix their start/stop rating, but it was already too late and the wider public showed no mercy.
What hurts even now is that on YouTube, some of my comments warning about this have been shadowbanned by YouTube's idiotic algorithm
It's obvious why Maxtor preemptively cut their warranty to 1 year, although (given that the drives themselves were a scam) I think Maxtor blackmailed Seagate and Western Digital into doing likewise (instead of the mutual collusion it appeared as from the outside).
(Although the basic U6 was honor-bound to the standard 3 years, the U6 CE released already with a 1-year warranty despite its FDB motor being theoretically more‑durable than the basic U6's BBs; the divine Barracuda ATA V was indeed announced with 3 years in June 2002, before being cut in September.)
But no worries – by July 2004, Seagate thought better, upgrading to 5‑year warranties on all Barracuda 7200.7s and other internal drives
(Western Digital would have done well to unite with Seagate against Maxtor, though; instead of upselling their “RAID Edition” and hence dragging Seagate along into upselling the Barracuda 7200.8 as “NL35 SATA”. The 7200.7's datasheet listed Near‑Line Storage in their Best‑Fit Applications, after all
)Even once Maxtor was driven out of the business, though, it wasn't all rosy – in fact, that itself led to more problems…
Seagate Badacuda 7200.11/ES.2
The shameful downfall of the 15‑year‑strong Barracuda name, with the ES.2 being easily the worst “enterprise” HDD ever made.
Seagate got their enterprise act together reasonably soon with the “Constellation ES” (borrowing their name from the adorable Constellation 2.5″ nearline drives), but Maxtor's vicious managers continued dragging down the Barracuda name in the “consumer” market (the 320–375GB/platter 7200.11 “Brinks” being much worse than the initial 250GB/platter “Moose”; the 7200.12, “Pharaoh”, retained a very substandard start/stop count; and the Grenada was Seagate's own Deathstar).
After mercifully dropping the Barracuda name a year into Grenada's production, Seagate subsequently demoted it (in CamelCase, as “BarraCuda”) to their middling consumer models (not complete doomed trash anymore, but much more akin to the U Series than the classic Barracudas).
Seagate “Grenada” platform (only one letter away from Grenade – how's that for black humor?)
These need no introduction here, do they
The first drive with multiple 1TB platters; cheap, surprisingly fast and power-efficient (decently quiet too); and virtually guaranteed to crash their heads.
That said, I find the CS's trick a remarkable silver lining; by double-marketing them, ostensibly as an entry-level enterprise drive but with only 3‑year warranties and specifications so dismal that no competent enterprise would even consider them (unlike the MaXCrimes which looked like the real deal on paper), Seagate enacted some much‑needed revenge on the “Cloud Storage” industry (with its hypocritical propaganda model built on the myth of HDDs being inherently unreliable, yet the industry itself more‑reliant than anyone on reliable HDDs to exist), and sold them the hopeless HDDs they deserved
(Sure they also sacrificed the Constellation name in the process, but its meaning was already lost after extending it to the 3.5″ Barracuda successors.)
Seagate “Rosewood” laptop drives (by this time they moved from black humor, to just taking the piss
)Worse than Grenada; indeed, even in the 1980s there was never a less reliable drive. Their thinness obviously doesn't help either (I severely doubt the rated 400G operating shock, especially considering the Constellations' admitted compromises as they moved from 3 to 4 to 5 platters in the same 15mm height).
Why are people so obsessed with thin, anyway? Is it a leftover from older generations?
The Constellations are twice as thick, twice as heavy, but at least 10 times more reliable than the Rosewoods (and much faster, being 7200rpm and non‑shingled). (If you don't mind the comparison – thin girls have never appealed to me, and at least in Australia, they're now the exception at any age; so in this respect, even young girls are much more akin to the Constellations than to the Rosewood. 
Since late 2013, even Japanese people are coming around to plumper girls too; but I've said enough already 
After all, just to survive in this maladjusted society, you have to be a best boy and then some – just like Shinya Satou in Mitsudomoe
)Summary/Conclusion
With three former reliability strongholds (IBM, Maxtor and Seagate) all falling in rather-quick succession, it was wise to keep anything important on a known‑good but fairly‑young drive like a 34GXP or earlier Deskstar, DiamondMax Plus 40, or Barracuda 7200.7 (indeed in 2011 or early 2012 after becoming uneasy about my own ST31000528AS, I migrated the more‑important stuff back to my ST380011A and then WD800JD‑00LSA0 when I changed mainboards and had to switch to SATA; but I dodged a bullet nonetheless, by running it 24×7 and originally filling up the ST380011A before Grenada came out
)But now that the 2016 lawsuit's been, the HDD reliability reckonings largely-concluded and Seagate and Western Digital are both back to making solid high‑end models and mediocre‑but‑passable consumer lines, I've given them a chance at redemption with my new ST10000VE001 (oddly the closely‑related FireCuda, their direct competitor to the Caviar Black, only comes up to 8TB with 8 heads
).Will it outlive my trusty ST3160827AS with Agere+SH6950 (used externally as my S‑tier backup drive), probably not (observing its SMOOTH chip and flip‑chip MCU, both also in BGA instead of the old QFPs)
– but it's heavy enough (717g) and seeks noticeably quieter than the WD3003FZEX with equal speed.Mark my words, though – if you buy any modern HDD with less than a 5-year warranty, you will regret it eventually.
If I get enough votes for a particular model not listed in the poll, I can add it (you'll just have to all recast your votes)…
Just bear in mind that failures caused by substandard outside component suppliers (not the HDD manufacturer's own fault) are ineligible unless the HDD manufacturer actively evaded responsibility; many early Barracuda ATA IVs were seized by manufacturing burrs in the FDB (Seagate fixed that soon enough), and countless Barracuda ATA Vs and 7200.7s malfunctioned (and still do) due to shoddy STMicroelectronics read/write channels (Seagate revised their specification by late 2004 or early 2005, from 4490D6 to 4490D8 on PATA models and 4490D5 to 4490D7 on the non‑NCQ SATA; I still trust the Agere 4490D4/5/6 over STMicroelectronics 4490D7/8, but there were indeed also an Agere 4490D7 & 4490D8 which theoretically should be most‑reliable of all in the series).
That doesn't detract from the unsurpassed reliability of ATA IVs with good FDBs, or ATA Vs and 7200.7s with Agere read/write channels…
(And preferably with the Texas Instruments SH6950 motor driver on all three series, of course; rather than STMicroelectronics SMOOTH.)
