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Poll: With HD prices falling which Drive to choose?

C

cyberizer9

Member
Western Digital 60GB 7200 RPM (for $100) from OfficeMax.Com
Maxtor 80GB 5400 RPM (for $100) from CompUSA
Maxtor 60GB 7200 RPM (for ?) from ?

This is primary drive with moderate gaming and the rig is an overclocked 1.6A Northwood with ASUS P4b266-C.

Thanks!

Edit: Increased the scope of this thread.
 


<<

<< neither get a Maxtor 60GB 7200 RPM >>



Well said. GEt the D740x model. >>



Guys, from where and at what price? I would like to add that as another option for the poll, help me with the details please.
 
the new Seagates are suppose to be mad quiet, as well as very fast..
i'd say the 2 best IDE drives OVERALL are the Maxtor D740X-6L and the Barracuda IV, both are quiet, i have 2 740's in my computer at home and they are pretty much non existant in sound level.. 2 good choices!
 
FYI, your price on that Barracuda IV is a little high...it can be had for $150 shipped. Also, the Maxtor 7200rpm is only around $120.
 
look around on the FS/FT, i paid $80 shipped for a brand-new 40gb Cuda IV.

it is bizarre, you think your machine is hanging all the time because you don't hear the drive. and i have a very quiet pc only 2 low-rpm fans in it.
 


<< FYI, your price on that Barracuda IV is a little high...it can be had for $150 shipped. Also, the Maxtor 7200rpm is only around $120. >>



Edited poll to reflect suggested prices.
 
Personally I'd recommend the Maxtor 60 GB 7200 rpm. I've definately had the most success with maxtor drives; none of mine have failed yet, unlike several WD drives.
 
I'm using a Barracuda. You've got to use it to really appreciate it's overall performance. Those fluid bearings make a difference... this drive is absolutely noiseless! Read performance is among the best, write performance is average though, access time is also not too pleasing; overall the drive is awesome. Good reliability (though it's too early to say so) and noiseless performance
 


<< cyberizer9 Try here
or search here and here. >>



Thanks for the links. I guess my idea for the poll is to come up with a sort of collective agreement on the best HD (in that price range)rather than where to buy it from. It will help a lot of 'newbies' like me who are assembling their own machines.
 
I just got the 80GB Baracuda IV about 2 weeks ago. It IS extremely quiet. You can not hear the thing at all. (Of course, I have a total of 7 fans in my system (4 case, chipset, cpu, gpu). It's very quick, reasonably priced, and can take a beating (350Gs non-operating shock). I had heard they are hot, but mine is in the same cage with 2 other 7200 rpm drives and it's barely warm to the touch. I have a fan over the cage, but still...it's just barely above room temp.
 
I have bought a Samsung 80 GB, 5400 rpm.
Very silent, cool and cheap. And faster than the Maxtor 5400 rpm
But as I have told you, my Celeron 1A has died and I haven´t been able
to test the Samsung well. But is indeed silent.

Arthur
 
Ive got 2 WD drives (40gb and 80gb) and a Seagate drive (30gb).
The Seagate is a bit quieter than the WD ones and also a bit cooler
 
But what happens when a Seagate or Maxtor develops bad sectors? All you can do is run freakin' Scandisk or a similar software disk utility and pray it doesn't lock up everytime the utilitiy encounters it (Which it usually does). Western Digital and IBM offer REAL diagnostic utilities, that interface with the drive controllers themselves and actually let you replace bad sectors with spare sectors totally transparantly to the system instead of just using the software to "mark them bad" in the filesystem so that next time you format you crash FORMAT. Then you delete the partition and FDISK can't repartition it. I've seen it a thousand times and only IBM and WD have ever allowed me to recover... And flawlessly I might add! Get WD, as IBM's current generation has lost their long-standing reliability factor (Though performance is still top-notch IBM style). I can't believe there's only one acceptable brand of HDD out there right now! :| Soon IBM will be bringing their SCSI drive platter techniques over to their GXP line and we'll be OK 🙂
 
My vote goes to the Barracuda. I have their 40 GB model and it is _really_ quiet. Even when unpacking a large amount of data to the same partition it is quiet.
It is also noticeable faster than my previous 5400rpm drive. Thought, from what I've seen the WD drives are faster, but make slightly more noise.

And my take on bad sectors is, if a disk ever gets bad sectors I am gonna replace it ASAP. My experience with bad sectors is that they have a nasty habit of multiplying and I would never trust a disk which has developed a fault.
 
The Barracuda ata4 is silent but a little hot as I read from the spec sheet.
Also note that 2-platter Barracuda ATA4 arenot as silent as 1-platter (40GB).
I saw the specs sheet and there was a considerable jump in dBs.

And about the Samsungs I don´t know if they have the utility you are mentioning.. go to
http://www.samsungelectronics.com/hdd/index.html
there are some utilities there.

Now I will be able to try my Samsung 80GB because thanks to Oldfart,
I have "revived" my dead Celeron 1A. I cleared the CMOS of my MSI mobo and
the DLEDS got out of the red state. (stupid DLEDS... they are as stupid as the FUZZYLOGIC III program).



Arthur
 
I have had NECs, Fujitsus, Quantums before this Samsung.
The NEC and Fujitsu failed soon.
The Quantums rock solid.
My father tried IBMS once... defectives. Changed to Quantum and OK.

Quantum is very reliable... but noisy... and Quantum doesn´t exist anymore, how sad.

The WD are hot, or noisy, I don´t remember well, but they are generally fast according to the reviews I have seen.

My favourite is the Samsung 80 5400 that I have bought. Not very fast, but silent and cool. and Reliable? I hope so 🙂

Arthur
 


<< Ive got 2 WD drives (40gb and 80gb) and a Seagate drive (30gb).
The Seagate is a bit quieter than the WD ones and also a bit cooler >>



IMO, the barracuda drive that you have probably will be a Barracuda-III or Barracuda-II since Barracuda-IV's don't come in 30GB... Wait till you see a Ba-IV... they are faster and quieter
 
Well, I've had a 540m seagate go bad on me a few years ago, a 40g 7200rpm ATA100 maxtor go bad on me last summer (it was only 2 months old!) and just recently my 2 year old IBM 20g 7200rpm ATA66 went bad. The good thing about the Maxtor & the IBM was that they came with 3 year warranties. Maxtor replaced it with a Dell OEM drive (same specs w/3y warrenty) and IBM replaced it with a new ATA100 drive (same specs). Before any of the drives went bad they all worked great. So my advice is to get the most storage you can afford at the speed you want, but make sure it has a 3 yr warranty!
 
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