New Hard Drive Advice

[TheCorm]

Some of you guys are gonna hate me for asking this questions, as it's a "what should I buy question", but.....

yesterday I was certain about what one I wanted to get but I am not so sure, so I would appreciate any recommendations of any drives that people have seen that are quite good and fit the following specs:

Speed: 7200 RPM
Cache: 2MB
Interface: UDMA100 preferably(maybe UDMA66)
Size: 15-20 GB

Any Advice?, Cheers
Corm

 

[madthumbs]

A 40-45gig isn't significantly more expensive ($120-$150). 7200rpm is good for current tech. The ATA rating isn't as important on the drive as it is on the controller card since I don't think most current drives can make much use of the spec, but if you have it on your controller then it will help you with your next drive/ drives if you get one that can utilise it properly. Where it would make a difference is if you had 2 HD's on the same channel, then they would have more bandwidth to share if you are reading or writing to both at the same time. Small cache size may affect Raid 0 if you plan to use it on this drive/drives.

 

[TheCorm]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I'm not looking for that much more space, although I have noticed that the price isn't too much more for drives around 40gb, but 20 will do me fine.

I will be keeping my seagate as a slave drive, so I will have nearly 40gb combined anyway, the seagate is UDMA-66 which is what the controller is so they will both run at that, I was just looking for UDMA-100 as a bonus really for future possibilities..

Since RPM's are not shared on one channel, I will be using the 7200 rpms drive for my system files, games, videos etc and the slower one for images, MP3's and what not.

I am currently looking at the Maxtor Diamondmax +45 15.2gb, any opinions?

Thanks....Corm

 

[Bignate603]

IBM 75GXP. Comes in 15gig steps (15, 30, 45 etc...) Good drive, and fast. Pick the size you want and buy it. I just got the 45 for $150

 

[obeseotron]

Go for the IBM.

Without a RAID with two drives on one chanel, ata66 will never be more than 5% faster than ata33 with the 75gxp, and not faster at all with current other drives. ata100 is not even close to important.

 

[Dulanic]

The Maxtor is a good HD... I own a 30GB myself, they perform very well, and are really quiet. And especially since your going for a smaller HD its obvious you want to save a little money, the Maxtor would be the best bet... they are great when it comes to price/performance.

 

[TheCorm]

I think I may go for the Maxtor drive, I do think the IBM is a slightly better drive but it also costs a bit more, the 5400rpm IBM is about the same price as the 7200rpm Maxtor.

So, anymore details on "Without a RAID with two drives on one chanel, ata66 will never be more than 5% faster than ata33 with the 75gxp, and not faster at all with current other drives. ata100 is not even close to important" obeseotron.

Cheers, Corm

 

[owensdj]

TheCorm, I'd suggest you get one of the IBM 75GXP drives. You can get 15GB, 30GB, and bigger 75GXP drives, but the 30GB gives you twice the space of the 15GB for only about 30% more money.

 

[Oyeve]

Damn drives a huge and cheap! Just a few years ago (4 years) a one gig drive cost 300 bucks. I remember buying my first drive back in '89. It was a 32 megger and cost a mere 400 dollars.

 

[office boy]

Have a look at the Quantum drives from staples, use a coupon, and there are rebates to be had also.
BTW storage review rates these fireball AS drives just under the IBM drives, and only because they are not as quiet.

 

[TheCorm]

Thanks for all the advice, I did look into getting an IBM 15gb drive because I have seem lot's of good stuff said about then, it's the IBM drives that always seem to have better disk performence in tests.

I am actually in the UK, I tried to look up the 15Gb IBM on www.dabs.com who are a big mail order company over here but they seem to no longer do it, despite it being in their Jan 2001 catalogue for cheaper than the Maxtor, go figure.

Corm