Need EIDE Hard Drive recommendations

[sgopal2]

Hi,

My current hard drive is causing problems and I'm looking to buy a new one. I'm interested in:

ATA 100
Minimum 60 GB
7200 RPM or greater
Must be reliable and not have any prior history of problems like the IBM GXP drives

Any suggestions??? I'm considering the new Western Digital WD100 GB EIDE hard drive.

Thanks

 

[cholley]

i have sent several western dogs to the bone yard and i stay away from them
my favorites are maxtor, fujitsu and seagate

 

[sgopal2]

I found a link on tomshardware.com. A reader's choice poll was taken and the top 3 hard drives were:

1) Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 60

2) Western Digital WD1000 8 ms

3) Seagate Barracuda 180 (SCSI)

On Pricewatch the 60 GB maxtor drive is about $70....great price. Anyone got any bad experiences with the Maxtor?

 

[CoDerEd]

Maxtor is the fastest we have now, the only one with ATA133

 

[SmirnoffIsTasty]

Actually the 120 Gig Western Digital is faster. It's also the only one with 8MB of cache. WD1200JB

 

[GiGoLo]

<< Maxtor is the fastest we have now, the only one with ATA133 >>



not to sound like an a**hole or anything, but that comment has no relevance to speed of hard drives. ata/133 gives no performance gain whatsoever over ata/100, unless perhaps you're running 4 ata/133 drives in RAID 0. Smirnoff is right on the money... the Western Digital Special Edition is the fastest IDE drive period, but you pay a hefty price.

 

[sgopal2]

Let me post a few more details:

- I'm running an Athlon XP 1700+ on an Epox 8HKA+ 133 mHz FSB
- The Epox board is limited to ATA 100 only EIDE
- I'd rather not bother with a SCSCI card, and I don't have RAID
- The new drive I'm purchasing would be the main hard drive for my new system (I will partition into C: and D and then install WinXP Pro onto it.

I'm mainly worried about system stability, I currently have an IBM GXP and have problems with frequent loss of data. I'm going to RMA it, but need a stable drive, so I don't have to re-install Windows every few weeks.

 

[minendo]

I have never had a bad experience with WD or Maxtor. They both offer great warranties and I have been using WD and Maxtor for a long time. I started out with my dual WD 400mb Drives. Currently I have two WD 60.0gb drives in my main rig.

 

[cntrlaltdel]

Whats wrong with the IBM GXP's?

(I own 3.....oops)

Robert

 

[DodgyDoug]

Like cntrlaltdel, i'm surprised ibm arent getting more of a mention.. IBM and maxtor certainly seem to be the two biggies at the moment.
I've had faulty maxtors but not a faulty ibm.

Perhaps you could check out www.storagereview.com. .They run a leader board of the best drives (normally maxtor and ibm fighting it out). they also review loads of drive in substantial detail (heat, noise, vibration, and lots of benchmarks).. Worth checking out anyway.

Hope it helps

 

[GiGoLo]

<< Whats wrong with the IBM GXP's? >>



I would provide a link, but I have to run... but right here on anandtech news, there are several articles talking about the class-action lawsuits against IBM for their faulty GXP series line. I personally have gone through 4 replacement 75gxp's, 1 replacement 60gxp, and i currently have 2 x 40gb 120GXP's with one of them making a crunching noise now.... i would recommend for the time being, stay away from ibm... love the speed tho

 

[jackywebdesign]

well, since no one has shared any horror stories w. maxtors yet, my friend is currently on the 3rd maxtor since he originally got a 20gb drive as a present Christmas 2000. The first one had a head crash, the second one just died for no good reason, and even this current one gave me some problems with not being detected when i was installing windows. Oh well, as long as it works for another year, I think I'll be satisfied, but my friend said his, NEVER buying maxtor again. The above being a horror story, my 8 gb maxtor is doing PERFECTLY FINE, and so is my 200 _MB_(!) maxtor in a 386, 1 gb seagate that's 6 years old, 12 gb quantum BIGFOOT (another !, but it's HP's fault), and my new 60 gb WD thanks to ATHD forums and best buy. Out of all those drives, I'd have to say that I like the WD the best, it's cool running, quiet (with a bigfoot in that system, ANYTHING is going to be more quiet), and fast enough. Overall, out of all the drives mentioned above, I pick the WD with 8 MB of cache, it's a great drive from what i had heard from friends.

 

[SmirnoffIsTasty]

I've had all Maxtor up until I got the 120 gig WD SE.

6.4
8.0ish
13.6
27.2
60

All worked great. My WD boots up windows XP literally 10 seconds faster than my latest maxtor though.