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Buying a Hard Drive

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NaCl

NaCl

IS-IT--Management
May 31, 2004
1
CA
I'm building a computer and need some insight on hard drives. I've already bought an Asus A7V motherboard and am looking for a good 30 GB 7200 RPM hard drive. What do you guys think are the best brands as far as quality and price are concerned?

Thanks for your help.
 
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Hi NaCl

I can recommend the Maxtor hard drives. Why? I actually can say why. I use some maxtor drives in my machine and i can't complain.

Check out this Maxtor drive:
name : 53073H4
capacity : 30.7
accesstime: 8.7 ms
buffersize: 2 MB
RPM : 7200
interface : U100
price : 399.00 DM / 200 Euro / ??? $

that's all folks....

frag patrick.metz@epost.de
 
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IBM Deskstar.
Maxtor Diamond Max (as above).
Fujitsu (good drive for those on a budget!)
Those are my choices in order. There are others that people "say" are the best or better, but in my business, I only sell IBM, Maxtor, and Fujitsu.
I won't sell Quantum (not since the "Bigfoot"), and forget Western Digital! Cheers,
Jim
reboot@pcmech.com
Moderator at Staff at Windows 9x/ME instructor.
Jim's Modems:
 
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I don't want to argue with anyone but in my opinion as a hardware consultant I find Quantum's LM series exquisite. 7200 RPM 8.2 access time 2MB cache size double buffering. The price is also good -about 180-200$ (it depends on the country). I could never rely on Maxtor or fujitsu hardisks. And about the Bigfoot ... this was 4 years back... this means an eternity in technology time. I hope this helps more than it confuses you.
MADIAN disconnected.
 
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also try a quantum fireball AS.. ata 100, 7200 rpm, 30 gb, only 140$
or for 30 more $ you can get a 40 gb drive.
I've had no problems with either the 30 gb or 40 gb so far, access time is about 8.5 ms and right now there is a 30$ rebate on the 30 gig, making it 110$, a pretty good price for such a nice drive.
price from buy.com, you can print out the rebate form from there or quantum.com
 
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IBM's always make the best 7200RPM drives I know of, however their prices are a wee bit rediculous.

I myself own only a 5400RPM, but it's a Maxtor DiamondMax60 61.0Gig ATA/66 Drive.

funny thing is that I have an Asus K7V SocketA , and I upgraded to socket thinking it's bios would have ability to reconize my 60G, but instead it acts just the same as my Abit KA7, so I still have to use EZ-Drive.

BUT , with it having 4 IDE Channels (2 supporting ATA/100 and is backward compatible) in the future I Could just get a whole bunch of 30G HDDs.

this is the trend I've come to feel

IBM - Speed
Maxtor - Price
Western Digital - Realiability
Quantum - I'm not sure because they still made 5" Bay Harddrive.
Karl
kb244@kb244.com
Experienced in : C++(both VC++ and Borland),VB1(dos) thru VB6, Delphi 3 pro, HTML, Visual InterDev 6(ASP(WebProgramming/Vbscript)

 
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Sorry everyone else, but read the post from kb244. RELIABILITY! Isn't that what you need most in a hard drive? Without question, Western Digital wins my vote for best reliability. I have built somewhere in the area of 50 different systems, and the WD drives seem to have the best overall price/performance/compatibility package, as well as the best reliability. Maxtors on the other hand have fared the worst. Quantum drives seem to get the best vote for performance amongst everyone I ask, but their price often leads me to the Western Digital.
 
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I'm only going to say one thing, and that is that I've gone TRHOUGH 4 HD's in the past 4 years, all of them WD's. I finally switched to maxtor and haven't had a problem since. Just my $.02



Nate
 
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My husband use to work in support at a PC manufacturer (big one) and they were ALWAYS replacing the Western Digitals. We have installed many Maxtor's with no problems whatsoever.

My two cents!

Mary :)
 
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Maxtors are horrific drives with a miserable lifespan!

Use IBM Deskstars!
30 gig, 45 gig, 60 gig.

Fantastic, Super quiet drives, Long life span,7200 rpm, UDMA 100, 2 MB Cache (sdram) FFFFFFFFAAAAAASSSSTTTTT!!!!!
I can't say enough good things about them.

Tim
 
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Hey I have tried Maxtor and Western Digital, and I like Maxtor. My Western just died but my Maxtor is still going stong and I really abuse it as a test drive. Hope this helps your decision. :)
 
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I just bought and installed an IBM 75GXP 30 GB HD. While they are pricer than Maxtor/WD/etc bcs those can be found at the mass retailers on sale, I got this one for $139 from UBID. That's about the same as the others 5400 RPM drives on sale, so I'm pleased. It is VERY quiet. I had heard nothing but good things about IBM drives for a long time but this is the first I've bought. While I've never had a drive die, I did just replace one out of a Gateway that was unbelieveably loud. It was a Quantum drive and how it was still functioning is beyond me.
 
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well I can recommanded to buy the IBM or the Quantum
I'm a system administrator and MIS Manager
i have in my company several maxtor HD (i didn;t bought them the general manager ordered them before I arrived)
well no problem until now but i'm prepered
about the WD compaq sell them in their EX models and several more...I'm not recommanded on them because they doesn't have long life.
so what's left it IBM or Quantum
hope it will help you
 
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Wow great posts up hear. Its Kinda funny because a friend of mine is into the music business and he just bought cakewalk and gigasampler and now wants to add another hard drive to his computer. I was going to tell him western digital but now I dont know. I will have to go back and do my research. And since he is using it as a slave it only works as well as the Master. But thanks for all the information...

Malik...................

 
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If you're running any app that requires speed (cakewalk for real time editing, Steinberg, etc.) he should be considering SCSI.
Given the amount of use the drive is going to get (lots), if it's master (with the OS on it) or slave with cakewalk or somesuch, I'd go with ATA100 IBM Deskstar 7200, on a RAID array for max speed from an IDE device. By the time you get all that set up, you could have a 10,000 RPM SCSI drive and controller setup for the same price (well, almost.)
Take a close look at the specs for Cakewalk. If it's like Steinberg CUBase, it really should be on SCSI. Cheers,
Jim
reboot@pcmech.com
Moderator at Staff at Windows 9x/ME instructor.
Jim's Modems:
 
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IBM Deskstars get my vote as the fastest, most reliable and quietest drives around.

Maxtor are a very good budget choice.

If you're going SCSI, and can afford it, go for the Seagate Cheetah X15. It's the fastest drive on the planet!
 
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Yea I was telling him to go SCSI but then a friend was explaining to me that the new slot (ata100?) works just as fast as SCSI. I never thought about how much his drive would be running. I like the Raid suggestion and think it would be the best for him on wear and tear on the hard drive and speed. But to bad he bought one of those major names computer and now he is stuck, in a way, to there specifications with little to no growth. I better tell him to back up a lot. Lucky its just a hobby for him right now and not a business.
 
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ATA 100 has a potential burst transfer rate of 100Mb/sec.

The best benchmark I've seen gives it sustained DTR of around 30Mb/sec.

You can buy an ATA 66/100 card from Promise or ABIT (probably others as well, but these are the best known). These manufacturers also make RAID compatible cards, such as ABIT's HotRod.

The Cheetah X15 is a 15,000 RPM drive, with a potential transfer rate of 160Mb/sec (Fast U/W SCSI). SCSI RAID is the fastest disk technology commonly available (apart from solid-state disks, of course!).


The fastest part, of course, is the access time. IDE is doing well to achieve 12m/s (measured, as opposed to manufacturers' figures). Fast SCSI achieves nearly half that - hence faster sustained rates, and on a caching RAID array with, say, 128Mb cache, it's even quicker.

Access time is a simple equation; if a disk is spending longer finding the data, it's not going to transfer it as quickly. Therefore the lower this figure, the better. Never mind 7,200 RPM or whatever, it matters more how quickly the disk can find the data than how quickly it spins - although this is a contributing factor.

Drawback - SCSI costs more per Mb. Simple theory - the faster the storage medium, the more expensive it is per Mb.

IDE < SCSI < RAM < Cache

I hope this information is useful (and interesting!)
 
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