I got so much response in my "Maxtor or Seagate" thread, so I thought these polls would be an interesting idea. I think they could function as a pretty good reference to those thinking about purchasing a new HD.
Tell me if you think I left something important out of the polls.
Thanks for contributing!
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02/22 Edit: Consider not voting as the "none" or "other" alternative. For example, if you haven't tried NCQ, obviously, don't vote. You can still see the results by pressing the "View Results" button.
Thanks for all the votes and replies so far. I'm a bit surprised that people find WD drives the most problematic, since I have personally considered them very reliable. I have handeled many Caviar drives, and haven't seen anyone die yet. The raptors also seem above average in reliability AFAIK. I really expected the Hitachi/IBM and Maxtor drives to top the list.
It would be interesting to hear from you who voted "yes" to NCQ benefits. How can you describe the benefits? Does it just feel faster/smoother, especially when multitasking, or do they benchmark higher?
The amount of people noticing benefits with raid 0 was also above my expectation. I'm reffering to ATs test of the raptor in raid 0, where there were almost no improvement at all. Maybe other drive configurations gain more? In that case, it would be interesting to know which?
Personally I don't put too much value in a 5 year warranty over 3 years, since if I have a crash, I would be more concerned about the data I loose than getting a replacement drive. On the other hand, one could expect a drive to be more reliable if the manufacturer has given it a longer warranty.
The results of the defragmentation question was about what I had expected. Personally I have moved most of the "dynamic" content from my system partition to another drive/partition, like the temp folder, temporary internet files, swap file, emails, my documents etc. I still defragment my system partition every now and then, but it usually doesn't get very fragmented.
I'm getting the Raptor 74GB for the system I'm building now, since I believe the harddrive speed is essential to the total system performance. I also store most of my large files on a network drive, so I really don't need a lot of storage space locally.
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02/23 Edit2: I recently added the latest poll, so consider the result there not as reliable until the number of votes catches up. Also, I know it's hard to choose one of these alternatives, as many of these things may be more or less important to you. I had preffered if the poll had the functionality to let you choose from a scale (1-5 for example) for each item, but it doesn't.
One thing to remember when voting and reading the results is that a popular drive will naturally have more failures. The idea when choosing the most problematic HD is to use common sense. If you had 30 WD drives so far, and one of them died, I assume you won't vote for it as being problematic. However, if you bought two Maxtor drives, and both of them died within the month, you would naturally vote for Maxtor as being problematic.
Finally, the brand you prefer does not have to be the brand you have used the most. Your preference could be based on what you have read in forums lately, your friends experiences as well as your own experiences. You could say "Seagate" is your preffered choice, even if you never had one.
Btw, excuse my English; I'm from Sweden
Tell me if you think I left something important out of the polls.
Thanks for contributing!
---------------
02/22 Edit: Consider not voting as the "none" or "other" alternative. For example, if you haven't tried NCQ, obviously, don't vote. You can still see the results by pressing the "View Results" button.
Thanks for all the votes and replies so far. I'm a bit surprised that people find WD drives the most problematic, since I have personally considered them very reliable. I have handeled many Caviar drives, and haven't seen anyone die yet. The raptors also seem above average in reliability AFAIK. I really expected the Hitachi/IBM and Maxtor drives to top the list.
It would be interesting to hear from you who voted "yes" to NCQ benefits. How can you describe the benefits? Does it just feel faster/smoother, especially when multitasking, or do they benchmark higher?
The amount of people noticing benefits with raid 0 was also above my expectation. I'm reffering to ATs test of the raptor in raid 0, where there were almost no improvement at all. Maybe other drive configurations gain more? In that case, it would be interesting to know which?
Personally I don't put too much value in a 5 year warranty over 3 years, since if I have a crash, I would be more concerned about the data I loose than getting a replacement drive. On the other hand, one could expect a drive to be more reliable if the manufacturer has given it a longer warranty.
The results of the defragmentation question was about what I had expected. Personally I have moved most of the "dynamic" content from my system partition to another drive/partition, like the temp folder, temporary internet files, swap file, emails, my documents etc. I still defragment my system partition every now and then, but it usually doesn't get very fragmented.
I'm getting the Raptor 74GB for the system I'm building now, since I believe the harddrive speed is essential to the total system performance. I also store most of my large files on a network drive, so I really don't need a lot of storage space locally.
-------------
02/23 Edit2: I recently added the latest poll, so consider the result there not as reliable until the number of votes catches up. Also, I know it's hard to choose one of these alternatives, as many of these things may be more or less important to you. I had preffered if the poll had the functionality to let you choose from a scale (1-5 for example) for each item, but it doesn't.
One thing to remember when voting and reading the results is that a popular drive will naturally have more failures. The idea when choosing the most problematic HD is to use common sense. If you had 30 WD drives so far, and one of them died, I assume you won't vote for it as being problematic. However, if you bought two Maxtor drives, and both of them died within the month, you would naturally vote for Maxtor as being problematic.
Finally, the brand you prefer does not have to be the brand you have used the most. Your preference could be based on what you have read in forums lately, your friends experiences as well as your own experiences. You could say "Seagate" is your preffered choice, even if you never had one.
Btw, excuse my English; I'm from Sweden
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