Hard Drive Brand recommendations

cgarvey · 16-01-2003 5:55pm #1

Looking at getting a ~120GB ATA/100 7200RPM HDD from Komplett. I basically have a choice.

To help me, I was wondering is there any rule of thumb to do with

Western Digital
Maxtor
Seagate

I.e. is it generally accepted not to touch one of them with a barge pole. I'm just talking brands (reliability) here, not specifics about individual drives, or should I take it to that level?

.cg

elexes · 16-01-2003 6:25pm

ibm

^CwAzY^ · 16-01-2003 6:34pm

I've heard only good things about the western digital with 8mb cache hard drive.. go for that

leeroybrown · 16-01-2003 6:35pm

If you lsearch back through the forums you'll see some in depth Hard Drive discussions.

At the moment I have an IBM 60GXP and a Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 120Gig. Also there doesn't seem to be a big selection of IBM's on Komplett right now.

IBM's are still very good drives. And they also have the bonus that of all the Drive manufacturers they tend to be the largest.

Drive manufacturers refer to a Gig as 1 billion bytes (instead of 1024x1024x1024 bytes). Small difference I know but it adds up on a 120Gig drive.

Seagate drives are reliable and tend to br reasonably quiet.

The Western Digital (Special Edition) drives are excellent also. Of course the cost of having the Special Editions 8Megs of Cache is a bit higher.

The modern Maxtors (DM9, etc) seem to be grand, but Maxtor have that old reputation for bad drives. The drives are grand now but I tend to buy other manufactuers drives.

It's really a matter of price and preference TBQH.

unkel · 16-01-2003 11:28pm

Have WD 80GB special edition with 8MB cache. Great drive and very fast. Did you notice that this one and the 120GB one have been bestsellers on komplett for quite some time? The small premium over other drives with 2MB cache typically is well worth it m8

cgarvey · 17-01-2003 10:25am

Cheers for the thoughts guys.

.cg

daveg · 17-01-2003 11:04am

I recently bought the Maxtor 120GB drive from Komplett. Excellent drive. I had the 80GB version before - no problems.

Dempsey · 17-01-2003 4:42pm

Originally posted by cgarvey
Looking at getting a ~120GB ATA/100 7200RPM HDD from Komplett. I basically have a choice.

To help me, I was wondering is there any rule of thumb to do with
Western Digital

Maxtor

Seagate

.cg

I have a Western Digital Caviar 120GB IDE 7200RPM Special Edition 8MB cache and a 80Mb version aswell. No problems with either, I'd recommend them. I also have a old ibm, its about 4-5 years old and hasn't fúcked up on me yet and its still in use.

cgarvey · 17-01-2003 6:05pm

I suppose I should say what I got!! I got the 160GB Maxtor DiamondMax + 9 (wiht 8MB cache), noise was a factor, and WD seemed to be the loudest. I also got a seagate 40GB drive.

Thanks again.

Myg · 17-01-2003 6:54pm

IBMs are probably the best for preformance drives, but since the parts are cheaply made and they are prone to failure its quite a deterrent......

I suggest a maxtor

astrofool · 17-01-2003 7:51pm

WD 8meg definitely, even the 2meg ones are the same performance as the others. + their reliability problems don't seem to be as bad as IBM are

have two of them in raid 0, and they're sweet

gandalf · 17-01-2003 9:19pm

Word of warning on the WD drives. I had a 120GB Special Edition die on me after 8 months probably was unlucky but you never know. Waiting for the replacement to get to me now

Gandalf.

Gerry · 18-01-2003 2:31am

I would say that ibm offers the best value for money. Yes, the 45gxp line had reliability problems, and to a lesser extent the 60gxp, but that doesn't mean you tar them all with the same brush without evidence. To say that they are generally "cheaply made" is quite honestly bull****. The 120gxp line is almost as fast as the wd with 8mb cache, and faster at some things where the cache makes less of a difference, such as multiple simultaneous request handling, and random access.

Cabaal · 19-01-2003 3:31pm

Originally posted by elexes
ibm

whata trying to do, ruin his life and his PC
IBM drives suck ass!!!!

theciscokid · 19-01-2003 3:37pm

maxtor are decent,

but western digital ist da bomb

ibm scsi drives are good

leeroybrown · 19-01-2003 4:04pm

Apart from some problems with uneven platter heating on one model IBM drives are generally excelent. I have one (40GXP) and am involved in running a linux server withch has an 80 Gig 120GXP which is heavily used by a large userbase. I don't really have any major complaints with their drives and they are generally great value.

Hard Drive Brand recommendations

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