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Post Your Hard Drive Recommendation Here.

R

Rubicone

Senior member
I am in the market for a new hard drive and probably will buy one 60 to 80 GB in size. The choice seems to be between Western Digital and IBM. All constructive and informed thoughts are welcomed.

Here is some info I have found searching the web:

Western Digital - WD800JB: "The only downside I could have with the Caviars is that whilst they are quiet, they do generate a fair bit of heat. In the test case the hard drives are quite close together and that whole area is much warmer than I would like. A cooling fan is certainly needed should the hard drives lives not be cut short. From http://www.deviantpc.com/reviews/wdhdd/p4.shtml"

"Last month, however, the manufacturer announced the Caviar WD800JB, an 80 GB drive featuring an 8-megabyte buffer. The initial announcement implied that, just like the WD800BB, the new drive featured 27 GB platters. This made sense in a way-
perhaps Western Digital needed to clear out its inventory of lower-capacity platters and wanted to sweeten its offering by
bumping up the buffer. Interestingly, however, all references have changed since then. Specs now indicate a two platter
design utilizing contemporary 40-gig platters. This leads us to the company's irritating naming practice. Unlike those of other manufacturers (where one knows that a 120GXP, a D740X, a 'Cuda ATA IV, etc. feature 40-gig platters), WD's drive names
don't really indicate the drive's platter capacity. Thus, it's difficult to ensure one's receiving a state-of-the-art unit when purchasing anything but the largest WD drives. From http://www.storagereview.com/"

"The Caviar 120 produced a score of 54.4 on our Business Winstone and 8,740 on our Business Disk WinMark tests." From
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,6586,00.asp

-----------------------------------------------------------

IBM Deskstar 120GXP "If you?re upgrading your hard disk because your current drive isn?t fast enough, look no further than
IBM's Deskstar 120GXP. This Ultra-ATA/100 drive was the fastest in our tests, beating products with higher-bandwidth interfaces to come out head and shoulders above the rest. From http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/review/30/2/351.html "

"...our benchmark test results show it to be the best performer we've seen so far, if only by a small margin...Connected to the system's IDE controller, the 120GXP produced a Disk WinMark score of 8,840 and a Business Winstone score of 54.8." From

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,6585,00.asp

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Comparison of the two:

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/char...3400&prodid=13846&prodid=13839&Submit=COMPARE

 
pixie dust has a tendency to run the ibm drives to an early death although i have only heard of a few drives dying it is still too early to not focus on ibm's past harddrive adventures
as such my recommendation is either maxtor(never had any problems with the four i own)liquid bearing drives(quiet) seagate 1V drives are also quiet
for top speed the 120 gig wd 8mb buffer is nice

hope this helps
 
anything on sale right now
search the HOT DEALS forum for staples for a 80gig MAXTOR 7200 rpm for $80 after rebates
given staples' rebate reliability $80 can't be beat
 
I recently bought one of the new maxtor fluid bearing drives. Nice drive that is really quiet. I personally would not buy an ibm drive. I have heard of many problems with them. I haven't heard about any problems with the 120gxp yet but knowing of the problems with the 60 and 75 gxp I would not buy one.
 
For speed I like Western Digital and Maxtor. (I've got the WD 100GB with 8MB buffer in my system.) You can also find good deals on Seagate drives; they're extremely quiet and reliable.

In general I recommend people steer clear of IBM drives. It's a pity, since they used to be the best. However, given their past problems (which FordFreak alluded to) and the fact that IBM is, for all intents and purposes, out of the hard drive business it just doesn't make sense to choose them over the competition.
 
Just bought a Maxtor to replace my receintly craped out IBM (this is my second bad drive). Tired of messing around with IBM even though the drive is under warranty. Honestly, most drives are pretty darn fast these days. I say go for reliability and customer service.

Ed
 
Has anyone here noticed that the results in one of the benchmarks linked by Rubicone are all crazy? I'm referring to the zdnet uk review. In that review, the slowest drive of all was the SCSI drive. Also, the Maxtor 540DX external scored 53% higher in benchmarks than the 540DX internal! The results are just strange.
 
I've owned both WD and IBM drives. Oddly enough, WDs have become more reliable while the IBMs less so. While the IBM I own functioned well for a little over a year, it started to develop some nasty clusters. Get a WD or Maxtor. The WD 80GB Special Edition is said to be especially good. 🙂
 
I got a 120GB IBM 120gxp drive and it works just great. Fast & Silent. Just to be sure I am cooling it with this HDD cooler for $2.99 and it is much cooler than the two drives (Maxtor & Western Digital) that I have in my other machine (Antec SX 1030B case with the 80mm hard drive cooler in front of the drive bay).

I would guess that each of the new drives is great though. 🙂
 
If you can wait a bit, the next line of WD drives is on the verge of being released, with preorders appearing at various places and they should have a pretty decent performance lead until the other manufacturers release their next gen.

The UK ZDNet bm's are pretty odd. The internal drives have results that are way too low. The Barracuda180 wasn't that fast when it was released over a year ago with a 7200RPM spindle and access time in the IDE range. The purpose of the drive was extreme capacity for servers which it had with over twice the capacity of the next largest drive available (73GB). It's odd they ZDNet included that drive in the roundup at all. I don't see why you would include a $1400 year old server drive in a desktop external drive comparison.
 
It looks as though it's going to be Western Digital
To Pariah: Regarding your statement "If you can wait a bit, the next line of WD drives is on the verge of being released..." Can you be more specific/precise on a date as I was planning on making my purchase next week? Also my motherboard (ASUS CUSL2-C), unless I am mistaken, only supports the ATA 100 standard (don't know if this makes a difference with these new hard drives.
 
For absolute speed, the Western Digital "SE" series is untouchable. That said, I'm a big Maxtor fan. D740X is a fine drive (in fact, nothing in the IDE arena seeks faster) and Maxtor's technical support and return policies are (bar none) the best in the industry.
 
" Can you be more specific/precise on a date as I was planning on making my purchase next week?"

I don't know. The press release said July, so I would think they should arrive soon. WD put the 200GB version up for preorder on their website, so it shouldn't be too much longer. Next week may be a bit too soon, I don't know. If you can, just wait and see. If not just buy a WD SE model that is available.

"Maxtor's technical support and return policies are (bar none) the best in the industry."

I would agree it is very good, from personal experiences I believe WD is just as good though. The thing with Maxtor is, the reason I know they are good is because I've had to use their service so often. Every person I know who has had a Maxtor drive in one of their systems has had to replace one. I've replaced 4 of their drives myself, so I don't have a lot of faith in their reliability. I've had 2 WD drives fail, but they were from the recalled 1.6GB model years ago. I've owned 7 or 8 of their drives since and not had a problem with any of them.
 
I`ll make this simple, for pure speed go with the Western Digital WD800JB,for good allround HD & best customer support the Maxtor D740X takes a lot of beating.I`m more then happy with my D740X .

🙂
 
Originally posted by: Mem
I`ll make this simple, for pure speed go with the Western Digital WD800JB,for good allround HD & best customer support the Maxtor D740X takes a lot of beating.I`m more then happy with my D740X .

🙂
Click to expand...

Agreed😀
 
"Maxtor's technical support and return policies are (bar none) the best in the industry."

I would agree it is very good, from personal experiences I believe WD is just as good though. The thing with Maxtor is, the reason I know they are good is because I've had to use their service so often. Every person I know who has had a Maxtor drive in one of their systems has had to replace one. I've replaced 4 of their drives myself, so I don't have a lot of faith in their reliability. I've had 2 WD drives fail, but they were from the recalled 1.6GB model years ago. I've owned 7 or 8 of their drives since and not had a problem with any of them.
Click to expand...

i agree with Pariah. i returned at least 4 of their drives in the past. they do have excellent service, but i rather not have to deal with service at all. that to me indicates a good product, when i don't have to call for service IMHO.
 
Originally posted by: Linux23
"Maxtor's technical support and return policies are (bar none) the best in the industry."

I would agree it is very good, from personal experiences I believe WD is just as good though. The thing with Maxtor is, the reason I know they are good is because I've had to use their service so often. Every person I know who has had a Maxtor drive in one of their systems has had to replace one. I've replaced 4 of their drives myself, so I don't have a lot of faith in their reliability. I've had 2 WD drives fail, but they were from the recalled 1.6GB model years ago. I've owned 7 or 8 of their drives since and not had a problem with any of them.
Click to expand...

i agree with Pariah. i returned at least 4 of their drives in the past. they do have excellent service, but i rather not have to deal with service at all. that to me indicates a good product, when i don't have to call for service IMHO.
Click to expand...

 
I highly recommend avoiding Maxtor. I work at a Staples that does warranty work for HP systems (which largely use Maxtor drives at the low and mid range) and these drives just eat themselves. Lots of returns on Maxtor drives and people coming back 3 months later saying they're having drive problems and pissed at dealing with Maxtor support. Maybe they're stupid people (I wouldn't doubt it really...) but in my own experience I've had 2 Maxtor drives form bad sectors and eventually just die. Same with a VERY old WD. Seagates I've had some bad cluster issues w/ but never failures.

I'm not exactly sure why everyone disses the IBM drives, the 75gxp drives were great (IMO, I build systems and use nothing but IBM drives). The 60gxps did have issues but I've seen no problems with the 120gxps which makes me think whatever the problem was was fixed. Performance wise no one's beat IBM yet, period, no arguements.

Adam
 
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