Then this list is followed by disks giving a lot of troubles during recovery, although they do not crash more often than the abovementioned devices.
Maxtor made us ‘happy’ with its buggy writing and instability of heads. For WDC it is extremely difficult to find match to its faulty heads and in some cases to restore service area functionality. On top of that they have static translator which leads to inability of reading user data if translator’s modules and services area defect tables are destroyed. Even though there is no more Quantum company, its disks continue to crash and they are virtually irrecoverable. The most effective, however not productive, recovery method is freezing. In some cases a disk, frozen under -10 Celsius, gives data after 30 mins. But bear in mind that this trick is not always successful. Replacement of heads in such disks is extremely complicated and for a three-heads (and more) disk it is virtually impossible (it is possible but it takes an impressive amount of man-hours and efforts). If someone still has Quantum AS, I strongly recommend to get rid of it. Maxtor and WDC do not seem to cope up well with their own flaws and difficulties... Naturally, it is difficult to provide an objective judgment, but I am judging from what I see.”