Need a new HDD fast

[ColdFlare]

My Maxtor ata 133, first models 40gig version just died. It keeps making a clicking noise, and I'm trying to reformat it in Windows 2000 and the formatting takes forever. It doesnt look like it will complete the format, and even if it did, I dont think it will work.


So I think my hard drive died, yesterday I was playing a game of civilization 3 and the HDD Just started clicking and I got a BSOD something about ntfs.sys file and a reboot. And it never booted into windows again.

What is the best HDD on the market now. I want the fastest HDD now on IDE that is 7200rpm since the 10000rpm IDE drives are $$$$ out of my budget. Something under a $100 would be nice. I try looking at this site's reviews, but I have no idea how to read the benchmarks. There are so many benchmarks leaving me to believe that not all of them are reliable?

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

 

[DaveSimmons]

WD "special edition" with 8 MB cache are fastest, and have a 3-year warranty.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

that drive should be RMAable thru Maxtor ...roll over to HotDeals forum...

 

[ColdFlare]

Originally posted by: ScrapSilicon
that drive should be RMAable thru Maxtor ...roll over to HotDeals forum...

Yea I plan on doing that, but I need a replacement fast.

Anyone have any other opinions other than the WD JB SE drives? I think i'm looking into getting a single platter which would be faster than 2 platters right?

 

[Anonemous]

pssst roll over to hot deals

i think this week they have lots of deals on the maxtor 8 meg cache drives... like 80 gigs 8 meg cache for 40$ or something

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=40&threadid=1071901

 

[Corporate Thug]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
WD "special edition" with 8 MB cache are fastest, and have a 3-year warranty.

 

[NTB]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
WD "special edition" with 8 MB cache are fastest, and have a 3-year warranty.

A little OT, but I'd still like to find out - the extra cache helps most if you're dealing with a lot of small files, as opposed to a few big ones, right? I'm looking at buying a new drive soon (something in the 120-160GB range), which will be used mostly for storage - mostly video and audio files - and for video capture from my Hauppauge WinTV-PVR tuner card. Any oppinions one way or the other?

As for the original poster: personally, I would go with a WD drive. I've got 1 WD and 1 Maxtor, both 7200 RPM models, in my case now, and it seems to me that the Maxtor is much noisier and runs hotter than the WD does. I don't have any experience with IBM/Hitachi or Seagate drives, so I can't say anything about those.

Nate