SATA HD inquiries

[Alphonsis]

I was refered to get the following drive, seeing as how I'm looking to start using the SATA ports on my mobo

Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3300831AS 300GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM

It's currently going to 110. It seems like a decent price point to me. My only concern is that I haven't found any recent reviews of SATA HDs. I normally go to Toms Hardware, but their reviews are all almost 6 months old now.

I would like to what, if any, the differences are between the Diamondmax, Western Digital and Seagate SATA HDs are in the 300GB range.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Bobthelost]

WD are the fastest, Seagate have the 5 year warranty ( although the 7200.8 has a bad name for reliablity) the diamondmax is alright, but i'm a non fan of maxtor so unless it's really cheap then i'd go for something else.

 

[MichaelD]

Seagate owns Maxtor, but the Maxtor warranty is nowhwere near the Seagate's.

Being that you're not looking for the absolute nth degree of speed and/or performance, I'd go with the drive w/the longest warranty. Get a Seagate.

 

[fredhe12]

I went with this Seagate 250gb 7200.9 Sata 3.0gb from NewEgg for $90.

If it's faster than my previous PATA drive, I can't notice it. But it's certainly not any slower. Install was a snap with Seagate Disc Wizard. XP partioned it just fine. Connections are much cleaner inside the case.

Even without a significant peformance increase (in my experience), I would do it based on the prices being fairly comparable and it being a newer interface.

 

[Alphonsis]

I'm actually looking to pick it up to replace a 10k 160uw drive. So the performance would be nice.

Then again, I never really noticed the performance increase with the scsi drive either.

 

[SparkyJJO]

I got the samsung 250GB SATA2 drive for $90 +shipping, its down to $85 now +shipping. 3 year warranty. Fastest drive I've ever owned. Quiet too - you can hear the read-writes, but I personally like that so I know what it's up to. Newegg link

I'm not a fan of WD, I've had serveral of their drives die on me. Never had a samsung die on me yet, and I've owned several. Maxtor seems decent but they run hot. Seagate is good too except I have heard bad things about that 7200.8 line, better bet would be a 7200.7 or 7200.9

 

[trog100]

so far my experience with sata has been all pain no gain.. its probably a mobo thing but but compared to pata.. sata just dosnt seem finished.. without special drivers loaded from a floppy nothing even sees them.. different mobos might have sata sorted but my abit ax8 dosnt.. and a windows repair attempt just died when xp came across the abit raid drivers.. he he.. all in all quite a frustrating experience..

trog

 

[Varun]

Originally posted by: trog100
so far my experience with sata has been all pain no gain.. its probably a mobo thing but but compared to pata.. sata just dosnt seem finished.. without special drivers loaded from a floppy nothing even sees them.. different mobos might have sata sorted but my abit ax8 dosnt.. and a windows repair attempt just died when xp came across the abit raid drivers.. he he.. all in all quite a frustrating experience..

trog

Windows needs no special drivers to see SATA drives. I've never had to install drivers for this. I've used NF3 and NF4 boards and never had a problem. I think SATA is the only way to buy a hard drive these days - and not for the speed since there isn't any gain, but for the tiny connections.

Edit - I have to add that I love the Samsung Drives, quiet, cool, and fast.

 

[Alphonsis]

Thanks for all your feedback. I've decided upon the:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3300822AS 300GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

 

[fredhe12]

Good choice. Good luck with the install.

 

[Rotax]

stay away from maxtor imo . . after doing tech support for 6 months i'm plain scared of those drives . . =

i've recently (last few years) run exclusivly WD drives . . so far so good . . i now added a samsung 250g since there was a decent deal from newegg at the time . . and after some review reading, they seem to do pretty well.. its just a storage drive (and vmem) for me anyway.

 

[WaTaGuMp]

I use WD cause I have the option to still use the stronger 4 pin molex conncetions for the power supply, not sure if the other guys have that.

 

[Zepper]

Check the comparo of current 250GB drives on http://www.StorageReview.com

.bh.