Help me choose a new hard drive... (1 Viewer)

[John*Jones]

Hey all, I'm in the market for a new hard drive. I made the mistake of getting a couple IBM Deskstars for a killer price last year and I'm concerned one of them might be approaching its demise.

Here are my priorities in order of importance:
1. Reliability
2. Performance
3. Silence
4. Price
5. Storage

Right now I'm looking at the Special Edition Western Digital drives, but I'm open to suggestions. I have never installed a SCSI drive before, but I'm certainly willing to consider going that route. Although price is low on my list, some of the higher performing SCSI drives are a bit too much for me. I'll be using this drive for my OS, and a two other drives I currently have for storage, so the size of the drive doesn't need to be enormous. Is there a RAID configuration for using 3 drives? Also, I do a bit of gaming and I plan on doing a small amount of video editing.

Any suggestions or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

I'm not sure if they will have an relevance, but I'll post my PC specs below.

-----------------------------------------
ASUS A7V266-E RAID
XP 1800+
512 DDR RAM
ATI Radeon 8500 64MB
Audigy Gamer
2 X 60GB IBM Deskstar
16X Toshiba DVD-Rom
24X10X32 CD-RW
400W PSU

 

[John_Berger]

Western Digital all the way.

I've worked with dozens of hard drives in my past ten years of PCs and upgrades for myself and my family. Western Digitals have proven to be the most reliable of any IDE drives I've worked with.

Seagates are good, but I've had far more luck with their SCSI drives. Their IDE drives seem to get bad sectors far more quickly than they should.

Maxtor is just there. I've had their drives, and although they've never given me reliability problems, I've never been impressed with the transfr rates.

IBM/Fujitsu, never worked with them but certain models have been notorious for having problems.

I won't buy anything other than Western Digitals from now on. Take that for what it's worth.

 

[DaveGTP]

I have experience mostly with WDs and Maxtor. WD Maxtor

 

[Rob Gillespie]

WD would seem to be a good choice.

Seagate's Barracuda ATA IV and ATA V are the quitest IDE drives available bar none, however they don't perform quite as well as the Westerns. There's pros and cons to each make and to be honest, a lot of the measurements you see people quoting are going to make very little (if any) difference in real-world use. It's when you start pushing the performance levels that the figures start to actually mean anything. That isn't going to happen running Windows and surfing the web, if you get my meaning.

By all means, avoid IBM. I don't think I could ever go for a HD brand that specifically tells it's customers not to run their drives 24 hours a day.

 

[John*Jones]

Thanks for all the feedback guys. I pretty muched figured to get alot of WD support...my last WD drive was very solid. Anyone with experience using SCSI drives?

I cannot believe that I just recently came across IBM's "suggestion" about not running their drives 24 hours a day.

Anyway, thanks again and additional feedback would appreciated.

John

 

[MikeAlletto]

Anyone with experience using SCSI drives?

Is there any reason your asking about SCSI? I seriously doubt your going to see any speed advantage in just everyday use. What do you use your drives for?

 

[Kelley_B]

Seagate definetely!

I used to swear by Quantum's Fireball series until they sold out to Maxtor. Since then I switched to Seagate and haven't looked back yet. They are fantastic drives and haven't had a single problem with one yet, and I currently own 4 different Seagates.

 

[John*Jones]

Mike,
I just wanted to cover all the bases, so I thought I'd ask. Also I like to explore things I don't know too much about and any excuse to try something new (I haven't installed/used SCSI before) I jump at However, if I'm going to see minimal gain for a big jump in price, it's probably not worth it. I'll be using the drive for gaming and video editing.
Thanks for the feedback

 

[MikeAlletto]

Considering if you want to go scsi you'll have to buy a scsi PCI card as well as higher priced scsi drives it's probably not worth it if you've already got an investment in an IDE controller and other IDE drives. I'm currently running a ATA100 IBM drive and a ATA133 Maxtor drive. Both 7200 rpm and they work great. Nice and fast. Can you buy serial ata cards and drives yet? Your not going to get any speed boost yet but the easier to manage cabling is worth it in my mind (if you can even buy serial ata yet).
I just looked at Promise Techs web site and they have 2 serial ata cards listed...a 2 and a 4 port card:
http://www.promise.com/product/produ...=98&familyId=3
and seagate has a barracuda 5 drive with a serial ata interface:
http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/...0,,564,00.html
80GB or 120GB 7200rpm 8MB cache
When I build a new system next summer its gonna be serial ata for its drive controllers.

 

[John*Jones]

Mike,

Thanks for introducing me to serial ATA...sounds like a promising technology. I was able to come across a site selling SATA cables and SATA to EIDE adapter kits for older drives. I guess my budget will ultimately determine what I get.

Thanks again,

John

 

[Max Leung]

Be aware that the new(er) WD drives are really picky about master/slave arrangements. If you set the Master jumper on a WD drive (such as my 120 gb or 80 gb WD 8mb cache drives) but not have a slave drive attached, your PC will not boot properly. Setting the jumper to Cable Select or removing it completely will fix the problem.

They are nice drives, but can run pretty hot at 7200 RPM. Theoretically, 5400 RPM drives should be more reliable, but nowadays with scaled-back hard drive warranties, all bets are off!

Performance differences between 5400 and 7200 RPM drives are negligible for everyday use.

 

[John*Jones]

Thanks for the heads up Max, as I am leaning heavily towards the WDs.

And thanks to everyone else who responded...I appreciate the feedback.