So what's the best Hard Drive today?

[beefkake]

I can't seem to find much in the way of reviews for Hard Drives on tomshardware or anandtech. What are the best ones today? I'm looking for something that's quiet (very important! my system is virtually silent as it is, and I don't want to corrupt that with a noisy hard drive...), fast, and especially reliable. I currently have an IBM 60GXP that is working OK for me, but it has me nervous with IBM's recent reputation. I'm looking for something in the 60GB range. ATA133 is not important as my mb supports only ATA100.

So what's the best one available today?

 

[Supradude]

i have no experience with this line of drives (waiting for next upgrade to buy one), but the new Western Digital Special Edition Drives with 8mb cache are supposed to be the fastest IDE drives to date...

 

[Oreo]

Seagate Barracude IV is the most quiet drive out today. It's got respectable performance (not the fastest but still not bad) and is nearly silent. For alot of HD reviews go to storagereview.

 

[pillage2001]

WD SE drives. Nuff said.

 

[BatmanNate]

Quantum or Seagate 15k SCSI, hands down.

 

[beefkake]

WD SE drives look intriguing. Are they very quiet? It would appear that their performance is top of the line. Only thing is I'm a bit hesitant to purchase a WD drive because the only drives I've ever owned that have failed on me were WD drives. I've found them to be less than fantastic in that regard (whereas Seagate was probably the most reliable). Has WD's reliability improved over the years?

 

[Rand]

Has WD's reliability improved over the years?

They had a lot of problems 3-4 years back, but since then they seem to have picked it up and returned to their long ago highly respected levels of reliability.
Western Digital's "JB" line of drives isnt 'noisey' per-say... it's reasonably quiet as is almost any current generation IDE drive, but it is probably noisier then IBM, Maxtor, and Seagate's competing drives.... though it's also quite clearly the fastest IDE drive available.

If noise is the most important factor then Seagate's Barracuda IV is the quietest 7200RPM IDE drive, though also the slowest.
The best mix of performance and noise level probably goes to Maxtor's D740X, it performs pretty nicely and is second to the Barracuda IV in noise level.

As always, StorageReview is the place to go for HDD reviews. As much as I respect AnandTech and Tom's neither has typically offered very thorough HDD reviews.

 

[Athlon4all]

Seagate Cheetah X15's, although a cheaper one is WD's IDE 800JB, 1000JB, and 1200JB's with 8Megs of Cache

 

[Hector13]

If noise is the most important factor then Seagate's Barracuda IV is the quietest 7200RPM IDE drive, though also the slowest.
The best mix of performance and noise level probably goes to Maxtor's D740X, it performs pretty nicely and is second to the Barracuda IV in noise level.

I just ordered one of the barracudas from dell, does anyone know how to tell if its the fluid bearings model? There was a thread on this before (in hotdeals), but I couldn't find it through searching.

 

[DrZone]

I believe the Barracuda IV's all use fluid bearings. Only Maxtor makes the distinction in their drives with those with fluid and regular bearings

 

[John]

Originally posted by: DrZone
I believe the Barracuda IV's all use fluid bearings. Only Maxtor makes the distinction in their drives with those with fluid and regular bearings

You are correct.

 

[ahsia]

For the best performance: WD 80GB 800JB 8mb cache

For the quiestest drive: Seagate Barracuda IV 60gb

For the best overall drive (speed, reliability, noise): Maxtor D740X Quiet Drive 60gb

If you are willing to take the chance: IBM 120GXP 80gb (benchmarked very well by storagereview)

 

[pillage2001]

Rand, the WD 'JB' series are quieter than any maxtor or IBM drives out there. I own both of them I noticed it.

 

[Rand]

Originally posted by: pillage2001
Rand, the WD 'JB' series are quieter than any maxtor or IBM drives out there. I own both of them I noticed it.

I disagree, going by Storage Reviews idle noise measurements, and my own personal experience the Western Digital WD1000JB and WD1200JB are both somewhat noiser then Maxtor or IBM's competing drives in idle and seek noise. From what I've seen the majority of people tend to agree then the Western Digital 'JB' line is slightly louder.

And FWIW, I've personal experience with the drives also. While I don't personally own the Western Digital 'JB' nor IBM's 120GXP I've built systems using both drives, and have sold a handful of them.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this.

 

[Rand]

Originally posted by: DrZone
I believe the Barracuda IV's all use fluid bearings. Only Maxtor makes the distinction in their drives with those with fluid and regular bearings

Indeed, all of the Barracuda IV's use fluid bearings.

 

[Fulcrum]

If noise is a great concern, get the Seagate Barracuda IV series. If absolute top notch IDE performance is your goal get the WD "JB" (Special Edition) series. Since noise level does seem to be a big concern, get the Seagate. The Seagate is not the fastest IDE drive out there, but it's still a very good performer.

 

[spanky]

seagate

 

[pillage2001]

I guess everyone has their own experience. I could hear the D740x read or write when I'm away from the PC. So can I hear the 60gxp. Again, I have to look at the IDE LED to see whether is my WD reading/writting. Is there any acoustic software for WD that turns down the sound of the WD drives?? I would like to check. This is getting weird. Everybody keep saying the WD is louder but I cannot even hear it.

 

[beefkake]

Wow, thanks for all the great replies. I'm really torn now- do I just keep my 60GXP and hope for the best, grab the Seagate which is the performance lagger but has the best noise ratio, or go for something in between (Maxtor or WD). I think the reason why HD noise is so prevelant in my system is because there's very little ambient sound- my case fans are PC Power & Cooling Silencer models, my CPU fan is a very quiet 80mm Panaflo, and I have an Enermax whisper-model PSU. The only fan I even hear is the fan on my gainward geforce3. So, when the HDD is running hard, it's loud.

I'm thinking I may just go with the Seagate even tough the performance is less. Seagate drives, from my experience, are incredibly reliable, and that's important to me as well. I'll keep an open mind though and decide between that and the WD. Perhaps due to the huge buffer, the WD will require fewer seeks resulting in less noise in that way. Too bad a friend of mine doesn't have one of the two that I can go check out.

 

[hmsrolst]

I'm in a similar situation as you having "quieted down" my PC's. Recently I got a 120GXP as an RMA for a 75GXP and put it in my son's machine. The whining immediately drove me nuts, so I got a second Barracuda IV, and it's peaceful again. Once you get the rest of your machine pretty quiet, a whining HDD can really be a pain.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

IBM has a utility for their drives that will lower noise level considerably. I used it, and now i cant hear my drive seek at all. Those annoying clicking and scratching noises that harddrives make are nonexistent. IBM is good, but reliability is a MAJOR issue. I suggest you get the Maxtor, or go for the Seagate (the idea of fluid bearings intrigues me, I believe Fujitsu came out with this first though).

 

[DaFinn]

I have two 40Gig Maxtors w. fluid bearings, and I can say this: If you have a single fan in your computer, it is impossible for you to hear any sound from these babies!
They are really, really quiet. I have had Maxtor drives as long as I can remember, and have not had a single problem with them!

 

[Jman13]

Please realize, that while the Seagate BIV drive is not as fast as the WD drive, it is certainly no slouch in performance. It's not exactly a performance "lagger." It is a fast drive, just not quite as fast as the WD or the Maxtor. I have the Baracuda IV 80GB drive, and it is silent. I can't hear it seek...of course, my case is somewhat noisy. I also have a 20GB Maxtor in my system, which is somewhat loud, but still not bad. For some reason, though I've had no trouble with my Maxtor, I trust Seagate more than other companies. I had a 6.5GB Seagate drive that never had any problems through 5 years of use, and is now the primary drive in a friend's machine.

Jman

 

[hmsrolst]

The noise issue I found with a 120GXP is whine at idle, not seek noise. The former can't be turned down.

 

[hudster]

So for digital video editing, would you say the WD SE drives are the best IDE drives for this?

thanks.