Originally Posted By: wfaulk
Part of the problem is that new models seem to be more and more frequent, so that bugs tend not to get worked out over time, and there's not a long enough in-market time for there to be any significant feedback. That is, by the time that the drives die, they're already well into a new model.

I don't entirely agree with that. Hard drives development seems to have stagnated in the last couple of years. Up until a few years, drive sizes were rapidly increasing. It seemed like every so many months, the capacity doubled. That came to a halt once the 1TB barrier was reached. Then everything slowed down considerably. It took a lot of time before the 1.5 TB drives were released, and now 2TB has been the maximum size for quite some time (2 years?). So what are HD manufacturers doing with that 'extra time'? Most of them don't spend it on SSD development, that's for sure. Of all the classical hard drive manufacturers, only Western Digital has now got an SSD (which is not particularly good). Samsung has them too, but that's to be expected from a company which also produces the flash ram chips needed to create such an SSD.
I also can't believe the're now spending MORE time on ironing out bugs, because, as you say yourself, there tend to be more bugs plaguing released hardware these days than fewer. So what are they directing their efforts at?
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