New Hard Drive Purchase

[OPaul]

I'm looking to purchase a SATA drive. I think I've narrowed it down to either the Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 or the Maxtor DiamondMax 10. The Deskstar is SATAII and includes NCQ where as the DiamondMax is SATA150 but has a 16MB cache. Would I see more performance if I went with the SATAII or with the 16MB cache? Are there any other better options? I will be using the drive as my primary hard drive with Windows on it.

 

[notanotheracct]

what are their sizes? generally, sataII doesn't seem to be too useful, whereas bigger cache seems to have a bit more use. not to mention NCQ is a double edged sword and why i'm glad WD hasn't used it in their sata drives... yet.

and i'm sure the seagate fanboys cometh!

 

[DavidoFoo]

between those two, the hitachi

 

[OPaul]

The Hitachi is 160 and I'll either get the 200 or 250 Maxtor. I'm not really worried about size though, 160 is plenty.

My main concern really is if SATAII is worth it or not. Most of the figures I've seen show NCQ either not helping or hindering performance. And from what I understand all the bandwidth hasn't even been utilized in SATA150 yet so doubling it seems redundant. So I'm wondering if I would see more of a performance boost if I just stuck with SATA150 and got a 16MB cache. And actually the Maxtor (SATA150) has NCQ also.

Maxtor DiamondMax 10
Hitachi Deskstar T7K250

There's also the Western Digital WD1600JS (SATAII) but it doesn't seem to offer much over the Hitachi and costs a little extra.
Western Digital WD1600JS

David, why do you say the Hitachi?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I second the Hitachi, just because I personally avoid Maxtors. Other's swear by them, so it's completely a personal bias.
Tas.

 

[jfall]

Have the T7K250. No Complaints.

 

[Jiggz]

Personally, I'll go with the Hitchie's. This is a caption from a recent review of mass storage.

"To those who might wish to upgrade an existing UltraATA system, we currently recommend the Hitachi Desktop T7K250 because of its great price/performance ratio. Those seeking bigger drives should consider offerings in the WD3200 family or the Barracuda 7200.8 lines: neither suffers from excessive access times, and both offer plenty of capacity. "

They did a test on the Maxtor also but was never mentioned in the conclusion.

 

[notanotheracct]

where are you planning on buying them from and at what prices? i believe there's a 250gb sataII 16mb WD for $120 shipped somewhere.

edit: and are they retail or OEM (bare)?

 

[alimoalem]

the western digital SATA II hard drive with 16mb cache (250 gb) can be found on dealsea.com. here's the link to it:
http://dealsea.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=9047985/search=SE16
it comes to $120 OEM and $121 retail at monarchcomputers.com here's the link to the retail hard drive:
http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant...PROD&Product_Code=150939&AFFIL=pg&NR=1

 

[ElTorrente]

Well, first of all, you should go to Storagereview.com for any questions about harddrives. Nothing against Anandtech and all of the "gurus" here, but... storagereview is THE place to go for these types of questions.

That being said- I'd go with the Hitachi.

I did lots of research on this very subject, and was torn between the Hitach T7K, WD, and Samsung Spinpoints. I ended up with the Hitachi for my RAID, and Samsungs for my "other" drives. Basically, the 16meg cache really doesn't make a difference 99% of the time. The WD is a nice drive, but overall the Hitachi T7K is a little better in various benchmarks- and has the best access time outside of the Raptor. The Spinpoint SP2004C's are very quiet, and have the fastest transfer rates of all the sataII drives, but slightly slower access times.

So, I'd suggest either the SP2004C or the Hitachi T7K series.

 

[bob4432]

SATAII Information

 

[OPaul]

Originally posted by: notanotheract
where are you planning on buying them from and at what prices? i believe there's a 250gb sataII 16mb WD for $120 shipped somewhere.

edit: and are they retail or OEM (bare)?

Newegg

 

[alimoalem]

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2454
that's a link to AT's benchmarks on many of the hard drives. depending on what you need your comp for, you can see what beats what in that section

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: OPaul
I'm looking to purchase a SATA drive. I think I've narrowed it down to either the Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 or the Maxtor DiamondMax 10. The Deskstar is SATAII and includes NCQ where as the DiamondMax is SATA150 but has a 16MB cache. Would I see more performance if I went with the SATAII or with the 16MB cache? Are there any other better options? I will be using the drive as my primary hard drive with Windows on it.

How about both 16MB and SATAII. The Hitachi is a great performer and recent tests showed that the Hitachi had the most efficiant NCQ of all production drives.

 

[Novercalis]

id say look into this one here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144235

Maxtor - 250gb 16mb, NCQ approx .40cent per gb..
I just bought 2 of them.

 

[raildogg]

this Maxtor MaxLine has a better warranty than that DiamondMax.

see the review

 

[Novercalis]

well that review says 16mb but thier link goes to a 8mb cache HD.

anyways, here is a maxline with 16mb:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144185

$10 more and it doesnt say NCQ however a reviewer mention NCQ...

dont know which is better... maxline vs diamondmax 10 which i linked above.
only difference is 3yr vs 5yr.

 

[raildogg]

maxline does have ncq and it has a better warranty. performance should be same

 

[Novercalis]

as long as performance is the same.. 3yr down the road i will change hd, no need to hold till 5 for 10 bucks less imho.
since by than, half a terabyte would be the norm with all high definition, 1080i coming around the corner.

 

[OPaul]

So for you guys the 16MB cache is better then 3.0Gb/s transer?

 

[Novercalis]

from my understandment, i might be wrong.. it seems it doesnt matter 1.5 vs 3.0 since it doesnt fully utlize the bandwidth.. unless i misread or mistintepreted that aspect.. ncq+16mb = good deal wether it is 1.5 or 3.0...

but im fairly new to the harddrive talk so dont take my word for it.

 

[alimoalem]

Originally posted by: Novercalis
from my understandment, i might be wrong.. it seems it doesnt matter 1.5 vs 3.0 since it doesnt fully utlize the bandwidth.. unless i misread or mistintepreted that aspect.. ncq+16mb = good deal wether it is 1.5 or 3.0...

but im fairly new to the harddrive talk so dont take my word for it.

i'm pretty sure you're correct. if you click on the "storage" tab on anandtech and go down to some article. here's the link to it:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2450