Just for storage: Maxtor 300GB or Seagate 300GB?

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Member
Jan 24, 2005
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There's been much discussion about what's the fastest drive and what's the most reliable drive. Maxtor appears to have the worst reputation while Seagate has the best.

Let's assume you had the choice between using one of the below 300GB drives for storage purposes only (ie, mp3's, video files, log files, etc):

[*]Seagate 7200.8 300GB (7200 RPM, SATA, NCQ, 8MB Cache, 5 yr warranty
[*]Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB (7200 RPM, SATA, 16MB Cache, 3 yr warranty

Would you choose the slower, more reliable Seagate or the faster (16MB cache), less reliable Maxtor?

Final question: If you're going to get a big drive like this, solely for storage purposes, is the overall speed of something like a 16MB cache really relevant for day-to-day usage?
 

DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
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Just for storage, you don't need speed. The "slow" drive is still probably faster than the fastest IDE drives of 2 years ago, and fast enough to support many simultaneous media and data streams.