Hard-Drive HELL!

[JamesMJ]

I have all my parts, I have all my software, I don't have a SATA HDD. I read every review Google could turn up on SATA drives. I had originally picked the Seagate 'Cuda 7200.7 120GB. Looked good, supported NCQ and was the only true SATA on the market. Course all the reviews gave it poor marks. So here I am confused despite my attempts to educate myself on this electromechanical pain. Here's what I know. Hitachi is fast, but I question their reliabilty. WD is rock steady, but tends to be pokey in performance. I'm anti-maxtor drives (too many quit on me) and my Seagate options cost the most and provide the least. Any clarification on the matter would be awesome.

 

[wfn]

take a look at www.storagereview.com

fyi hitachi/ibm drives are just as reliable as any other major manufacturer's drives... whatever other anecdotal evidence there is out there doesn't hold up simply because if they were that bad they wouldn't enjoy the market share they do atm.

 

[TwYsTeD]

Well, I can only comment on the drives that I have.

I have 2 74 gig raptors in raid 0. They are screaming fast and I have not had any problems whatsoever (have owned them since the 74 gb models were released). I also have two 160 GB hitachi's in a raid 0 array. Lots of storage, fast, very quiet, and reliable.

I have owned maxtor and seagate in the past. The one maxtor I have owned failed right out of the box. Seagate typically makes a good solid drive, known for it's silence. However, I recently bought an 120 gig baracuda, and it really felt like it was lacking in the performance sector.

I would highly reccomend raptors, but if storage is an issue, Hitachi's are top notch.

Just my two cents, gl with your decision.

 

[Gioron]

Well, if you want hard drive performance nothing really compares to the WD raptor 74gb drives, but there's a definite price premium and space constraint. If you're looking for "normal" hard drives, there isn't a huge amount of difference between them. I personally have some brand loyalty to Western Digital, but you can probably get about as good results by rolling dice between the major manufacturers. My current setup is 1 74gb raptor for my main disk, and when that one gets close to full I'm planning on moving all my video/audio files to a large capacity WD drive I'll add on later.

 

[Zebo]

Provides the least? Like a 5yr warranty?

Look, all you need to know

Quiet = seagate

Fast = raptor

Balance = Hitachi/IBM

 

[Subhuman25]

Get the Seagate 200GB SATA.
Mines been running just splendid.Fast,quiet,lotsa room on it,reliable trusted brand name,good warranty.
What more can be said.

 

[JamesMJ]

I appreciate all your reply's. I must admit most of the things bad I have heard about Hitachi have been passing commits by the lesser geeks in the check out line. I also am very loyal to WD, but I would like a fast drive, this is the first computer I have actually built for me (with all new components) Usually I do these things for my buddies or customers. I'll probably buy the Hitachi. Like someone mentioned it has a nice balance of features. 3yr Warranty is good too, In three years the tech will different anyway. Thanks again folks.

 

[erikistired]

just ask yourself, what would fish do? fish went out and bought himself a hitachi 250gb sata drive and is happy with it. it has a 3 year warranty and is very fast.

wow that's scary. anyway, i really like this drive. i can't hear it over my case fans & psu and it's pretty quick.

 

[LordPhoenix]

lol@crying about milliseconds

just pick one.

 

[baumerz]

All that it takes to appreciate what's important in a HD is the loss of all of your data. Why do you think Seagate is the only one who dares have a 5 yr warranty? They perform very well (especially the new NCQ drives) and are rated the highest in reliability. IF any drives outperform them in some benchmark test (which may or may not be accurate) you won't notice the difference. I can't remember seeing a "poor" review on one and if you do a search on these forums you will realize they are by far the favorite.

Hope this helps,
BaumerX

 

[thorin]

Zebo's got it right.

Thorin

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: baumerz
All that it takes to appreciate what's important in a HD is the loss of all of your data. Why do you think Seagate is the only one who dares have a 5 yr warranty? They perform very well (especially the new NCQ drives) and are rated the highest in reliability. IF any drives outperform them in some benchmark test (which may or may not be accurate) you won't notice the difference. I can't remember seeing a "poor" review on one and if you do a search on these forums you will realize they are by far the favorite.

Hope this helps,
BaumerX

For Christ's sake stop whoring your goddamn company.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: baumerz
All that it takes to appreciate what's important in a HD is the loss of all of your data. Why do you think Seagate is the only one who dares have a 5 yr warranty? They perform very well (especially the new NCQ drives) and are rated the highest in reliability. IF any drives outperform them in some benchmark test (which may or may not be accurate) you won't notice the difference. I can't remember seeing a "poor" review on one and if you do a search on these forums you will realize they are by far the favorite.

Hope this helps,
BaumerX

Still no excuse to not do backups.
Oh yeah, JamesMJ, also check this relevant link.

I don't know that you're going to see a massive difference between hard drives. Yes, some are faster, but it depends on the user. When I finally got an 8MB cache drive, it still doesn't feel any faster than a 2MB cache drive. If you really really want fast hard drive speeds, get RAID. RAID 0 is risky - lose one drive, and all your data is gone.
RAID 5 (which I have and seem to have some strange fetish for) is very nice - good speed and redundancy at the same time. Only problem - the controller cards for it are expensive, as they need a powerful processor onboard to do the parity calculations, and they need a stick of buffer RAM (regular sDRAM, PC100/PC133 in the case of my card, a Promise SX4000). I'm running the card on a regular 33MHz PCI bus, with 4 hard drives, and it nearly reaches the 133MB/sec limit of the PCI bus when the array is in full swing - and that's not the buffered speed. A single hard drive just can't come close. Load times are low, and transfer speeds excellent. But that's what you get with 4 hard drives, each on its own channel.
*breath* *breath* Ok, I'll stop gushing on the wonders of RAID 5 now.

Seriously though, I'll go along with your anti-Maxtor thing; they've also died on me too often, or rather, turned up too many bad sectors. In addition, I've used Seagate, Samsung, Western Digital, IBM, and Hitachi (the latter are in my RAID 5 setup). I've done RMA's through all of those, except the new Hitachi drives. Only Maxtor really stands out as having had the most RMA's. And all but maybe 2 of the RMA's I've done over the years were for bad sectors. Those other two were:
Samsung. Dead drive given to me by a friend.
IBM. 120GXP 60GB. Stopped spinning. When it started spinning again finally after sitting a few days on the floor doing nothing, the heads were scraping across the platters.