HD speed and reliability comparison? These Seagate and Maxtor models.

[morkys]

Looking at getting a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA150 200G 8M 7200rpm (#ST3200822AS) for my MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum system. I don't think there's any point in getting the NCQ version? Its only 160 GB vs 200 GB. Also, nForce 3 of my MB doesn't support it, so it won't make any difference in speed?

I like the 5 year warranty of the above listed Seagate HD. Any reason I should get a Maxtor 200 GB HD which has a 16 MB cache? Will it be all that much faster than the Seagate?

thanx for any feedback

 

[Matthias99]

www.storagereview.com

They're a hard drive benchmarking website, and have a reliability survey with enough responses to actually make it at least semi-meaningful. Any answer you get from the forums here wrt reliability will be so statistically insignificant it's not even funny.

NCQ will (obviously) not make any difference if your motherboard does not support it. I'm not so certain that it, or 16MB cache, really does much for typical desktop use anyway.

 

[morkys]

I cannot find any reviews about the 200 GB Maxtor Diamond Max 10 SATA with 16 MB cache (#6B200S0). The Samsung I picked up seems like its a good HD. Not slow and probably fairly reliable. Quiet, but hot. No hotter than other drives I guess. The reliability data of the Maxtor's doesn't seem great while the reliability of the Seagates seem high. The Seagate 200 GB 7200.7 is even comparable with a Maxtor Maxline 300 GB model with a 16 MB cache. Granted, it doesn't do as well in certain apps etc, but its close on some, actually better on others, and at least within shooting distance on the ones where the Maxtor does a fair bit better. Again, reliability data and 5 year warranty make me feel warm and fuzzy, especially when this Seagate is quiet and no slouch in the grand scheme of things. For the Maxtor I can't find anything except a 1 year warranty listed on their website and I'm finding negative feedback about them. On storage review their reliability of late comes up very poor.

 

[JBT]

For the DM 10 look at the Maxline III reviews. They are physically the same drive but supposidly the Maxline III's uses the highiest quality components.

I've got the 7200.7 200GB. Its a nice drive and has really good performance over all, very quiet too.

 

[morkys]

Do you figure the 7200.8 200 GB or 250 GB is much faster? Should I swap up or go ahead with the 7200.7? My MB doesn't support NCQ but the 7200.8 has a spec of 8 ms vs 8.5 ms and other performance specs appear faster. Wonder if its worth it.