Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 or Western Digital SE? [Poll]

[Ardan]

Which one do you think, the 80Gb 8Meg-cache DiamondMax Plus 9 or the Western Digital 80Gig Special Edition drive? I have used Maxtor drives forever, and we have an 80Gig SE drive in the other Athlon XP (a 1600+ KT333-based system) and I know that it is very fast in that system.

Edit: The 3 in $83 is a typo. I buy off of Newegg and it is $89 instead.

 

[XBoxLPU]

I personally would buy Maxtor

 

[Corporate Thug]

i'd buy whichever is cheaper

 

[JZilla]

Originally posted by: XBoxLPU
I personally would buy Maxtor

 

[zzzz]

Buy whichever is cheaper. But I have both the maxtor and WD SE drives and the WD is faster.

 

[starwarsdad]

I have used both drives and would happily pay a premium for the Maxtor.

I have had problems with dozens of Western Digital drives. I have also had an equal number of problems with Western Digital's warranty and support departments.

I refuse to do business with WD any longer.

Maxtor has always been there for us.

The Western Digital drive is faster though

 

[neutralizer]

I have those exact two drives (WD800JB and Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9 80 GB) and I find the Maxtor louder and slower. The Maxtor seems to hang a lot while my WD has been speeding along.

 

[Ardan]

Ahh, and because of our great experience with that Western Digital, I just might go w/ the Western Digital drive.

I am surprised that people said the Maxtor is louder and slower. It looks like it is quite fast on StorageReview, though in some of their tests, like a Fileserver test or their OfficeMark tests, the WD drive surpasses the rest. Though its not much, the WD SE got 45dB/A @ 18mm and the Maxtor had 41db/A @ 18mm. However, noise really doesn't concern me from my hard drive so I guess it just boils down to warranty, reliability, and speed. I would go with what someone said, and just buy the cheaper one (WD) because they seem to be fairly close in noise level and speed (though I agree at WD drive must be a little bit faster).

I suppose I can't go wrong either way, right? I have had many more maxtors than Western Digital drives, but our old WD drives never failed us either.

 

[Rand]

I'd go with the Western Digital drive, it's faster and only the tiniest margin louder. Besides that I found the pitch of the seeks on theDM9 plus to be rather irritating.

 

[bigpow]

I'm interested in this too since I'll have both by Monday.
Will let you know, which one is faster between WDC SE 120GB and Maxtor DM9 160GB

 

[Hanzou]

Remember to take into account that the WD has a 3 year warranty while the Maxtor only has a 1 year warranty.

 

[Arcanedeath]

Both are pretty much equal drives, but I'd go w/ the WD drive as it's slighly cheaper and has a 3 year warrenty. Just my 2 cents...

 

[Ardan]

Arcanedeath, that is precisely my thinking. The 3 year warranty would be VERY nice . I'm glad I asked here, though! I heard from somewhere else that there was an annoying pitch to the seeks on the DM+9, and I guess this confirms it.

 

[sniperruff]

WD SE. they are the first one that came out with the 8mb drives. they are also quiet and relatively cool

 

[nanyangview]

MAXTOR all the way, their newest 200GB Baby even outperforms the RAptor!!!

MAXTOR drives all use Fluid Bearing motors which translates to super quiet and high reliability. I have used both WD and maxtor and now i only stick with maxtor!

 

[neutralizer]

I don't know about that. My Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 has FB but when it writes I can feel like on the carpet. It almost sounds like SCSI HDDs. Maybe just but I don't know... and the 3 year warranty on the WD is enough to pick WD over Maxtor.

 

[Chrisdragon]

I use a WD now, since I had a 30gb maxtor and it's replacement die within the warranty period. They're sending me a newer and bigger model to me now (40gb)

 

[Ardan]

Hey, now that we have this clearly down, anyone know which nForce2 Ultra 400 I should get?

 

[Arcanedeath]

I just recently purchased a Biostar M7NCD Pro motherboard from newegg for 85 bucks shipped for a friend I was building a system for. It turned out to be a great board, I got a Tbred B 1700+ to go to 2.2Ghz w/ 200mhz FSB with a SK-6+ using a Sunnon 80mm 51cfm fan, (had to run the cpu at 1.75 volts and the ram at 2.8 volts to make it stable (corsair VS pc 3200 memory)) but for the money I can't really rec. any other Nforce Ultra 400 board atm. Hope this helps...

 

[Ardan]

Do you people think it is worth it to get a Parallel ATA drive now, or wait til I get a new motherboard with SATA and get a SATA drive instead? I hear there isn't much difference between them, but still. I have to get a new motherboard first because of a problem with mine right now.

 

[PraetorianGuards]

I'll just echo what everyone above has said . Both drives will be good; both have good warranties and are pretty silent. Personally, I would go with the WD SE. I literally have to put my ear next to the computer to hear it working. It is darn good.

 

[Arcanedeath]

Personaly I don't think it's a big deal if you get a motherboard w/ built in Serial ATA atm b/c other than intel's new chipsets the controlers all use the PCI bus, so you can just by an Add in card to get SATA if you really need it down the road. JMHO

 

[stingygrrl]

I bought western dig stock at $4-7, and suggest you buy that brand

 

[bigpow]

Okay, the results are in.

This is not really matching the thread title, but hey, these are all I got:

Western Digital 120GB SE 8MB ATA-133
Vs
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 160GB 8MB ATA-133

HDTach showed that Maxtor is faster.
.9ms access time (diff)
7M/s sequential read (diff)

Noise? It's very subjective test, but I think Maxtor is less quite (believe it or not), especially during boot-up time.

So there you go.

Test-rig is listed on my rig page

 

[Sid59]

i like Maxtor .. but get whatever is cheapest.