Hard Drive Recommendations (1 Viewer)

[Darren Lewis]

I'm looking for two new EIDE data drives for my desktop. The largest capacity which the motherboard BIOS will support is 160Gb at UDMA 100.

What would people recommend? They're going to be used for data storage - MP3, video, office files, game installation etc. The OS is on a separate SCSI drive. Applications accessing the drives will be things like Office, photoshop, dreamweaver etc.

I've been looking at the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 which is 7200RPM with 8Mb cache. I'm not so keen on IBM as I've had two IBM SCSI drives fail in the past.

Thanks.

Darren.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Depends if you want outright speed or outright quiet.

For quiet, Seagate Barracuda 7200.2 160gb. Currently at less than £110 in the UK.

For speed, maybe the Westerin Digital or Maxtor. Not sure. I alwways go for quiet.

IBM drives are now made by Hitachi and they ROCK. I've got two of their 185gb models in my second machine and they are fast. Not quiet as quiet as the Seagates but quieter than everybody else's drives.

 

[JamesHl]

I would have to second the WD and Maxtor nominations if you aren't concerned about noise. Get the 8mb cache versions, not the 2.

 

[Jay H]

Cool, I was going to post the same thing, I have a similar setup. I have an old legacy Seagate Barracuda (narrow SCSI) but was looking to get a new hard drive. I have a EPoX 8KHA+ motherboard that supports 2 Ultra DMA/100 drives, I was looking at some cheap WD HDs at newegg.com..

Anybody online having good deals now. Newegg has 80mb WD OEM drives for about $74. Anyother good place to check?

Jay

 

[Steve_Ch]

>>Anybody online having good deals now. Newegg has 80mb WD OEM drives for about $74. Anyother good place to check?

 

[brentl]

"I've got two of their 185gb models in my second machine"

On your SECOND machine

I guess it's true ... you can never have too much storage.

Brent

 

[Rob Gillespie]

First PC has 2 x 120gb drives, second has 2 x 185gb. Third has 1 x 120gb at the moment.


Second machine is used for DVD burning, video capture and editing. I've done some LD-to-DVD conversions recently and when each movie comes it at 25-30gb, you NEED big drives

 

[Darren Lewis]

Thanks for the replies. I'm not too bothered about noise as I've got three machines running at the moment

I keep thinking I should be getting the 8Mb cache versions which excludes the Seagates. The Maxtor are the cheapest I can get at £106 and the WD are £129. The Seagates are £115.

Slightly off topic, have people partitioned/RAIDed these big drives, or is it best to keep them as one massive drive and keep the music/video/data in sepate folders?

 

[Rob Gillespie]

The 160gb Seagate comes in an 8mb version, which sells a little more than the 2mb.

2mb version at Novatech, £106
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...html?SG-B72160

8mb version, £116
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...html?SG-B78160

Partioning is entirely your own choice and everybody has their own opinion about it.

I use Ghost for backups, so I keep the operating system on a separate (small) partition. That way I can backup/restore the OS without affecting my own data.

I also keep my MP3s separate, again for backup reasons.

 

[Steven K]

Rob,

You made the jump to using multiple partitions? ...

 

[Rob Gillespie]

I always have done. In fact I used to use more than I do now. Got me confused with somebody else?

 

[Carlo_M]

I usually go with the quiet Seagate drives. I don't find performance to be significantly lacking compared to the louder, faster counterparts. Sure you could benchmark better with the other drives, but having recently used a Maxtor, WD, IBM and Seagate, I would be hard pressed to tell you a difference in speed. But I could easily tell you which one was quietest...by far!

 

[Steven K]

Got me confused with somebody else?

I dont think so, but I could be wrong... but I remember we used to debate, in threads, whether or not it was better to have everything on one partition, or to divide partitions up. IIRC, you believed that it was not of extra benefit to run seperate partitions, but... I could be wrong. I'll do a search to see if anything is still around.

Edit:
My apologies Rob, I musta had you confused with someone else... there was someone who posted often in The Computers section who debated this point with me. But, you seem like an intelligent guy, so I know its not you (if our MIS guys heard me say that, they'd have my head)

 

[Rob Gillespie]

I remember long threads about putting applications on a separate partition to the OS, which is of very little, if any benefit at all. That was a long time back.

 

[Steven K]

Rob... that musta been it... glad to know that I'm not going crazy. But now that you brought it up...

 

[Darren Lewis]

Well after some thinking, I decided to get the Maxtor drives. I've only had chance to install one so far.

It seems to have an odd problem. It occasionally makes a clicking noise when I first power the computer up. It goes off after a few seconds and the drive seems to be working ok and read/writes data. Should I get it replaced?

 

[John*K]

It seems to have an odd problem. It occasionally makes a clicking noise when I first power the computer up. It goes off after a few seconds and the drive seems to be working ok and read/writes data. Should I get it replaced?

Do a full scandisk! My Western Digital did that for awhile before it died.

 

[Darren Lewis]

The drive died a few days later! Fortunately I'd backed up the small amount of data on it. Maxtor replaced it under warranty with no problems.

 

[John*K]

Sorry to hear that Darrin, but I'm glad that you were able to recover with little inconvenience.