Help needed in choosing Hard Disk

[ianching]

Well, I'm upgrading a PC for my colleague, who's running a P3 667 with 64MB SDR, 10GB HDD and a motherboard with the SiS630E chipset (integrated sound, graphics). I'll probably get him a new stick of 256MB or 512MB, replace the HDD and add in a Liteon CDRW drive.

For the Hard Disk, IBM ones are out of my consideration because of their reliability issues, so I am left with Western Digital, Maxtor or Seagate. From what I've read, the Western Digital drives with 8MB cache yield the best performance (not counting the newest IBM 180GXP) but I have a question.
Since the motherboard supports up to ATA-66, is it wise to get the Western Digital drive? What I want to know is that can ATA-66 take advantage of the 8MB cache in WD drives? If not, I'll just stick to other brands since the WD drives are more expensive.

 

[ai42]

How large of a drive are you looking at getting?

As 8mb cashe drives are pretty high capacity. As far as ATA/66 bus taking advantage of the 8mb cashe the answer is probbably. It just allows for more data to be buffered through, and the ATA/100 vs ATA/66 is just how fast the data can be burst at. Certainly you would lose some performance due to the ATA/66 bus however.

Honestly I would go for a Maxtor they are so cheap at Staples/Office Max/Office Depot nearly every week there is a pretty nice deal on a Maxtor drive.

 

[thorin]

Check this thread:
"Which 80G Hard Drive? Please Advise"

10/29/2002 7:57 AM
Update:

Maxtor: 5 (~23%)
Seagate: 1 (~5%)
IBM: 2 (~9%)
Western Digital Special Edition: 14 (~63%)
------------------------------------------------------
Total: 22 (100%)

Thorin

 

[sechs]

Seeing as IBM drives are no less reliable than other manufacturer's drives, there's no reason to rule them out. These are the guys who are sticking by a three year warranty while other companies flee to 1 year warranties.

Since most drives don't even burst at 66Mb/s (IBM drives are the only ones of which I know that do), there's no reason to think that your interface is going to be a major barrier. However, you may want to focus on lower seek times as an important performance characteristic, as if you're going to saturate your bus, it's better to start sooner, rather than later.

 

[techfuzz]

ai42 and sechs both are correct and have valid points. Many people are favoring the Western Digital 8MB cache Special Edition drives over the competition for 2 reasons. 1st reason is performance; the 8MB cache allows for more data to be buffered and this increases performance. Second reason is warranty; since every major hard disk manufacturer decided to go with a 1 year warranty for most of their mainstream IDE hard disk drives, the Special Edition was left out and its warranty remains at 3 years.

Although most hard disks I have owned usually fail within the first year anyways if they're going to fail at all. It's nice to know that you're hard disk is warrantied for 3 years which is going to be about the average entire life of a computer.

techfuzz

PS - I own the 120GB SE and I have 2 80GB SE's ordered and being shipped as we speak.

 

[Mardeth]

I would say Seagate Barracuda 4.Becouse it is very reliable, fast (WD probably wins in this but you wont notice it in normal use) and its very silent.

EDIT: Btw, never ever have I heard something good about IBMs hdds. Except in the ealy days when they were the fastest. I consider myself very, very lucky as I still use my 3-year-old IBM hdd but it has never worked perfectly, not even at the begginning and now its really slow sometimes and makes an incredible sound.

 

[sechs]

Originally posted by: Mardeth
Btw, never ever have I heard something good about IBMs hdds.

I have two IBM drives, and they're great! Now you've heard something good....

 

[amdskip]

Seagate, very quiet and perform well.