Neshi

Im looking for a new hard disk, somewhere around 400~500GB.
now there are a few things confusing me.. I dont know the top brands for HDD's, are there really any?
Are there brands i should avoid.. I saw Hitachi, Seagate (barracuda), WD, Maxtor...
And whats the difference between SATA I and SATA II.

saw the WD5000KS, looks very interesting...
ive got one 200gb in there now, would it be wise to swap that out and put the 500gb in, or can i have both?

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If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

[hobo]eclipse

Sata I is the older 1.5 Gps while Sata II is the newer 3.0 Gps standard. Im pretty sure all, and i know that most newer SATA HDDs come with a jumper to set to SATA I/II.

If all you've got is one HDD and a ROM or 2 then no doubt you can hook it up. Is your currant drive SATA or IDE? You could pretty much put any SATA I/II or IDE drive in there along with your current one.

I just picked up this Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM Drive. I got the SATA version and the IDE one for a friend, it had 6 bucks shipping and the SATA one's was free. The 320 GB models seem the best bang for the buck as of now size wise.

As far an brands go i now own 3 seagates and 2 maxtors, all serving well. the 30 gig maxtor is old from an HP, its only 5400 RPM and still kickin'.( knocks on wood )

Tipstaff

The top 2 companies for hard drives right now would be Seagate, and Western Digital. Personally, I would go with Seagate as they are the most reliable. However, Western Digital has a line of drives called the "Raptor", which is a 10,000 RPM drive. This drive is perfect for to use as a main drive to put your OS and programs onto. The perfect setup would be to have a WD Raptor drive as your main drive, and use a Seagate drive for storage.

In either case be sure to get drives that have a long warranty on them. Even though both companies tout that they have a 5 year warranty on their drives not every reseller gets the drives with a 5 year warranty. Most get them with 3 years, some even 1 year, so be sure to check out your drive by going to Seagates or WDs site, and checking out how many years are left on the warranty. If it has less than 5 years, take it back. Also, double check the drives before you leave the store, and make sure that no where on them do they say "refurbished" (Seagates refurb labels are white with a green strip around the edge of the label). Now, there is nothing wrong with refurb drives as they usually have at least 3 years left on them, but if you pay top dollar for them, the same price as a new drive, then you're being had. This is currently a big scam going on by some smaller mom and pop shops.

Also, both companies have what they call Enterprise drives (Seagate has the ES line, and Western Digital has the Enterprise line). In particular, you can get the WD Raptor in an Enterprise version. They usually cost about $50-100 dollars more, but their touted to have better reliability, are better built, and so on, and so on. The biggest deal with these is reliabiltiy, so if that's the most important thing to you, than these drives would be perfect for storage. Also, the default warranty on them is 5 years.

Last thing, drives to stay away from: Samsung, or anything that says "Platinum" on it as these are no-name drives that WILL crap out after one year.

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Neshi

think im gonna do 2x 320gb seagate.. they cost me 100 euro each.
then im gonna sell my 200gb from Western Digital..

Seagate 320GB SataII 16MB ST3320620AS
that one any good?

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

PangingJr

the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA model number "ST3320620AS" is good.
be careful, make sure that you're buying and getting this model number.

IF the retailer says they don't have this model, but the other one which is model number "ST3320820AS "
do not buy it and wait for the "ST3320620AS".

both drives the "ST3320620AS" and "ST3320820AS " are having the same specs, except the "ST3320820AS " only have the "multisegmented cache" spec of 8 MB, while the "ST3320620AS" has 16 MB.

H3X4D3C1M4L

About the brands.... it used to be that Maxtor was for all out speed, WDs were nice and quiet, and Seagates were the Volvo's of the bunch

Now WD IMO is more a balanced drive manufacturer.... quiet, high performing drives, and reliable enough.

Seagate is the 1000 pound gorilla now, but I find them to be quite reliable all the same. I use Seagates for my backup drives. (The 5 year warranty which no one else offers also helps )

Neshi

this isnt really helping.. i want the best thing for the money.. what should i get then? i want at least an extra 300gb or more storage..
should i get those 2 seagates, or should i put my money with WD? (or maxtor..)

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

H3X4D3C1M4L

Best bang for the buck? Any Maxtor's you can find, they're on clearance now that Seagate owns Maxtor

BlueMak

I am using Maxtor for the last 11 months now and very happy with them. I have great experience with Hitachi drives and no complains with them.

I avoid Seagate after having 2 of their drives failing on me the last 8 years.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Tipstaff

Seagate is your best bet. Trust me on this. I sell Seagate and WD drives all the time, and the drives I see come back the most out of the 2 are WDs (again, ones to stay away from are Samsung, and Platinum drives). That's not to say they are bad drives, but if reliability is your biggest concern, then WDs are not exactly my first choice. Maxtors are also "ok" for general work, but I used to have these die more than Seagate or WD.

BTW, there is one exception when it comes to Seagate vs Western Digital, and that is in the 2.5" laptop drive market. WDs laptop drives are simply outstanding. Since it's a new market they are getting into they are putting a lot of effort into making a name for themselves in that market, and they are doing that by making top rate drives.

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temeteus82

just got my self barracuda 7900.10 320 gb works fine...

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Zelig

Personal experience with drive reliability isn't that great unless you have a real large pool of drives to draw upon. I've had Seagate, Maxtor, Western Digital, Hitachi and IBM drives fail on me, but I still don't see enough hard drives to make a good assessment of which ones are more reliable. I think the only drive manufacturer I've used drives of that haven't failed is Fujitsu, I've still got a 13GB Fujitsu drive running as a back-up for some stuff in one of my servers.

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CDsDontBurn

two drives failing in a period of 8 years comes out to one drive every 4 years. Not bad IMO.

Back when i used to work at PC Club, i saw more WDs come back, but that is also because we sold alot more WDs than any other brand HDD. Seriously, for every 100 WDs i would sell, i would sell about 10 Seagates and about 2 or 3 Maxtor drives.

However, the return rate (return rate based on a failed drive, not return because the customer didn't need it or couldn't figure out how to install it) was about 5 for every 100 WD drives. Pretty good IMO .

as far as a good deal on a drive, the WD 320Gb 16Mb cache is going for $100 before rebate on newegg . the 400Gb 16Mb cache drives start at $140. Good deal IMO .

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H3X4D3C1M4L

Actually I've seen 300GB Maxtor drives for as low as $99 before tax CANADIAN locally so I can't see going wrong with that kind of bargain!

CDsDontBurn

yea, but that's a maxtor still .

cheap price = cheap parts .

despite maxtor having been bought out by seagate, as long as the drive carries the maxtor logo, it's still a maxtor to me.

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H3X4D3C1M4L

Cheap parts nothing, it uses magnetic platters that spin and a drive head read/write assembly just the same as a Seagate or a WD.

The parts aren't inferior to WD or Seagate, it just happens that Seagate is liquidating good parts to continue their takeover of Maxtor

CDsDontBurn

w00t w00t~! Seagate FTW!!!!111

lol. ok, i'll stop now

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H3X4D3C1M4L

Jealousy is so unbecoming of you, you know, NO ONE said you couldn't partake in the bargain storage glory!

Neshi

if i buy a seagate or a maxtor, prices here in holland are 100 euro, and thats for a 320gb drive.. doesnt matter what brand i take..
let's see if i can find a bargain store anywhere in this country..
i would love to take 2 drives, but i dont think i have the money for such plans... pity

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

CDsDontBurn

just make sure that if you do get two drives, it's best to have them matched when speaking in terms of raiding the drives together. other wise, it doesn't matter if they're the same or not.

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Neshi

just ordered meself 2 times the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB.
hope it will serve me good

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

temeteus82

I hope so too. I had some minor issues with one last Friday. One chip on the hdd had some kind of malfunction or something...

Link to my post with picture of the damage.

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PangingJr

besides, there was too much heat that can damage the chip or is just possible that the chip itself is defective,
the hard drives electronics, however, as you can see, are not well protected at all, this due to the way of the circuit board and electronic parts are installed on the drives, so i'd think there could be some other things as well that can cause damage to the drive.

Tipstaff

As with any part of a computer heat plays a large factor in drive failure. Never, EVER stack drives one on top of each other. Doing so is just asking for disaster. If you can, cool them down either by using a case that has the hard drive rack right behind a front case fan, or buy yourself a couple hard drive coolers.

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temeteus82

I think that the chip was damaged. The drive was in lower bay with my other secondary drive. Lower bay has four 3.5 inch hard drive slots. And there was one slot between them. And one 120 mm fan moving air. But I'm going to replace it with Noctua's NF-S12-1200 fan.

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PangingJr

okay temeteus82.

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from cheking with the drive retailers months ago, that Maxtor after be with Seagate, has started having DiamondMax 20 and 21 models to replace the older DiamondMax 10/11 models.
the new DiamondMax 20/21 drives have their specs similar to Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 and 7200.10,
however, the Maxtor would be selling at a bit lower, since the warranty time is still different, as i understand.

the Western Digital drives models BB/JB/JD/JS/KD and KS are now also having 5 years warranty and the drives comes with a lower price tag than the the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9/7200.10 on most of the drive sizes and interfaces,
however, i'm not sure if this would be the same as in your area.

i personally like Seagate's, i just don't know if they are the best or even if they are better than the other brands or not.
but, as long as i can remember, i don't have much of a problem with any brands of the hard drives that i used to use and been using anyways. i would only choose to buy Western Digital when it comes to buying the Raptor's drives.

Neshi

i got the NZXT Lexa case, and what i always thought is it has a inhale fan at the front, at the HDD spot. so i guess that's good

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

CDsDontBurn

Yes, i would do this, but currenty my gfx card is long enough to the point that if i were to put the fan back on where it were to go, they would be making contact w/my gfx card. This contact would cause the possibility of breaking off one of the SATA controller on the HDD(s), damaging the molex on the card, or the card's PCB.

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H3X4D3C1M4L

Just as long as air is flowing on it on some capacity it'll be fine, they're meant to run @ 50C for a long time before they die, so anything below that is gravy.

Running just 1 fan on low near my RAID array drops the temp like 30 degrees

[hobo]eclipse

So the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 i picked up the other day is up and runnin nicely so far, Ive got a 100 gig XP x64 partition, 55 gig Vista partition and 143ish gig storage partition. What are some good HDD benches to run? Got some nice new SATA cables with snap on right angle connecters on one end too. So far so good but i only copied things i want on it rather than cutting just in case.