What hard drive to get?

Heusen77 · Mar 2, 2006

Hey

I have a Dell Dimension 4600 and would like to get a new primary hard drive. I have three questions;

Firstly, what is a good brand have drive to buy?

Secondly, which one to get, SATA or IDE?

Thirdly, where would be a good site to get one from?

Thanks

evilsaint · Mar 2, 2006

You'll get a bunch of different responses in terms of brand *Western Digital* as there are a good amount of fanboi's here *Western Digital* but you should really *Western Digital* pick which brand appeals to you most

WD seems to offer the most comprehensive warranties and speed, especially for SATA drives, while Maxtor definitely has the price advantage (watch the hot deals forum for rebates a plenty and sales all over the place).

Unless you already have an SATA controller (which you may or may not, but probably don't), you're probably better off going with IDE, just for simplicity's sake, unless you really want the added performance. For IDE, an 8MB buffer is a must have given the tiny additional price that you'll pay for it and the performance advantage that it offers over 2MB cache drives.

Lastly, there's NewEgg, ZipZoomFly, PriceWatch, Fry's Outpost... Basically, find out which drive you think would fit your purpose best, and then find the lowest price.

furballi · Mar 2, 2006

Seagate, mainly because of noise and 5 yr warranty.

CraKaJaX · Mar 2, 2006

Fourthly, how much are you looking to spend?

The new WD drive is very nice, but some people don't want to spend that much on a drive. Seagate is also nice like furballi said because of the warranty, and the drives aren't bad at all. I also like Samsung Spinmasters, very quiet drives. Are you looking for capacity? quietness? speed? Need some ideas.

jdkick · Mar 2, 2006

Another vote for Seagate. I'm not familiar with your system specs, but if it supports SATA HDD's, then buy SATA.

Personally, i'm not a fan of WD drives. I've seen too many failures/odd behaviour and it's left a bad taste.

I've had very good experiences with my Maxtor drives to date but was let down recently regarding issues with the firmware on certain Maxtor SATA drives and nF4 chipsets. Maxtor's support also handled the issue poorly so one of their drives won't be going into my new machine. I will most likely go with Seagate's for my next build. They tend to run quiet and cool and yeah, that five year warranty will probably come in handy at some point.

Centoros · Mar 2, 2006

As long as your PC is equipped to handle SATA, I highly recommend the Seagate drives. They're very quiet and their performance is very good.

mordantmonkey · Mar 2, 2006

First you need to determine if your motherboard supports a SATA drive. They have completely different connectors. SATA is the new standard, so you're probably better off getting a SATA drive if your computer supports it. However, since IDE is an older tech, there are lots of deals on them, i recently got a 120GB ide for $40 out the door. And if you are just using it for storage (mp3's video, etc) IDE will be just fine.

alimoalem · Mar 2, 2006

Originally posted by: evilsaint
You'll get a bunch of different responses in terms of brand *Seagate* as there are a good amount of fanboi's here *Seagate* but you should really *Seagate* pick which brand appeals to you most

according to the responses in this thread, looks like there are more *Seagate* fanboys than WD.

i'm not fanboy and i personally own a hitachi drive but i still would recommend the WD SE16 250gb drive. or the samsung spinpoint if you want some peace and quiet.

Originally posted by: mordantmonkey
And if you are just using it for storage (mp3's video, etc) IDE will be just fine.

this is going to be used for a primary drive....(check the topic summary)

essasin · Mar 2, 2006

Seagate barracuda are the most realiabe hard drives you can buy and they have a warranty to back that up. The Samsung spintpoint p series hd are the oens to get if noise reduction is an issue because I know those Dells are ultra quiet.

ciproxr · Mar 2, 2006

i have a 160 seagate barracuda and one of the reasons i bought it was for the 5 year waranty, but its not quieter than my 80 gb western digital

SparkyJJO · Mar 2, 2006

1. I cast my vote for seagate barracuda or samsung spinpoint.
2. Does your dell support SATA? If not, I wouldn't go through the hassle of getting a SATA controller to make it simple - just stick with IDE. If it DOES have SATA well go for it

3. Newegg gets my vote for where to buy from - I have yet to have a bad experience with them (and I've gotten all my hardware from them)

dunkster · Mar 2, 2006

There's a comprehensive comparative review of current 250GB drives here: http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200601/250_1.html

Hope this helps!

KoolDrew · Mar 2, 2006

Thirdly, where would be a good site to get one from?

I refuse to buy my drives from anywhere other then ZZF.

markkleb · Mar 2, 2006

If you can try to get a hdd with a 16 mb buffer. If you have sata USE IT!
If ur cheap try JUSTDEALS.COM they have free shipping and I have not had any probs with their HDD'S. They are between $36 and $75

In my personal comp I like Seagate.

OSX · Mar 2, 2006

SCSI! SCSI! SCSI!

If your dell doesn't have SATA onboard, which it probably doesn't because dude, you've got a Dell, just put a SCSI card in there.

Yeah, the drives might not be 250 GB but who needs that much porn anyways?

Heusen77 · Mar 2, 2006

my system specs are as follows:

Dell Dimension 4600

- PROCESSOR, 80532, 2.4G, 512K, 800FSB, SOCKET N
- MODEM, V.92, DATA FAX, INTERNAL, ALUMINUM, DELL AMERICAS ORGANIZATION
- COMPACT DISK DRIVE, 128K, I, 5.25" FORM FACTOR, 48X, LENGTH/LONG, 8481B, MIDNIGHT GRAY
- CARD (CIRCUIT), MULTI-MEDIA, AUDIO, SB0203
- HARD DRIVE, 40G, I, 7.2K, 60G/P, HIT-VAN2
- DUAL IN-LINE MEMORY MODULE, 256, 400M, 32X64, 8K, 184

I guess those are the major parts.

OSX · Mar 2, 2006

No, you didn't list the motherboard. Also, please don't use Dell part numbers, use the brand names. I'm guessing that's an Intel proc. from the FSB speed, so that narrows out all the AMD motherboards. Your modem and sound card have nothing to do with what kind of hard disk you can use.

Heusen77 · Mar 2, 2006

i know, i was just putting up as much info. as possible incase i need to get anything else. My main concern tho is getting a compatable hard drive but I can't really tell if it is IDE or SATA. That is what i trying to find out. and from de Dell specs. they don't really give brand names.

NaOH · Mar 2, 2006

I got 6 160gb WD Caviar harddrives from black friday. Sold 3, kept 3 for my family. No problems in the reliability or performance sectors so far. But, if I bought one right now, I'd get an SATA harddrive. A lot neater to wire =)

Bobthelost · Mar 2, 2006

FFS http://www.bizrate.com/marketplace/prod...ils__cat_id--461,prod_id--7824174.html

Yes you can use SATA, your current HD IS a SATA drive according to that.

Seagate if you want the warranty, WD if you want speed, Spinpoint if you want low noise. As pointed out by many people above

Heusen77 · Mar 2, 2006

what about Hitachi hard drives?

Heusen77 · Mar 2, 2006

what about Hitachi hard drives?

Bobthelost · Mar 2, 2006

if they're cheap then why not.

NaOH · Mar 2, 2006

I heard some good things about hitachi.... I think a good google would help answer his questions.

LW07 · Mar 2, 2006

Get a Seagate. WD is not good at all. My brother had one and it died on him in 3 weeks, he went to the store and got it replaced, and the replacement died on him in 2 or 3 months. He then made the store replace it with another brand and he has had no problems with the other brand replacement. Reliability>Speed. Speed without reliability is not speed at all. When it comes to hard drives, go for Reliability and then worry about speed.

What hard drive to get?

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