Uncle wants a new HD, have a couple questions...

[Athlon4all]

My Uncle has asked me to help him buy a new HD. He has currently a 14GB HD on a Gateway (which I believe is a 400MHz or so PII, presumably on 440BX Chipset). Now, I have been looking at the WD JB series, and Maxtor 8MB Cache HD's and my first question is, which do you thyink is better?I see that Maxtor's and IBM's 8MB Cache drives did top the 1200JB in AT's Raptor review in synthetic benchmarks but not in real-life benchmarks, but any thoughts/experience? How's the reliability of IBM drives these days? I'm leaning towards the Western Digital's.

Now my second question. I am not certain on what speed the ATA interface is on his computer (I am attempting to find this out). At worst it is an ATA/33, now, judging from the benchmarks in AT's recent Raptor review of the 1200JB, it does seem that the JB would be slowed down by only an ATA/33 interface (in comparision to a 1200BB 2MB Cache), but does anybody else have some other suggestions? Would I be better off with a BB Series drive? Thanks guys for any suggestions!

 

[Smilin]

I've not shopped in a while for drives so I'm not sure what's the fastest. I can tell you that even most scsi drives don't do a sustained transfer much past 40mb/s. Yeah ATA/33 might bottleneck you a bit on an ATA/100/133 drive but not by a whole lot.

 

[Athlon4all]

Thanks Smilin!

 

[Pariah]

He has currently a 14GB HD on a Gateway (which I believe is a 400MHz or so PII, presumably on 440BX Chipset)

If your uncle has made it this many years on a system like that, I don't think speed is a crucial component of his computing experience, nor is he in need of huge amounts of storage, so why waste his money on somthing he doesn't need? Get him a 40GB Barracuda IV or something like that, you don't have to be a power user to appreciate a little quiet. For a few extra dollars you can bump it up to 60GB's which should be plenty for him for a long time to come. Rather than spending money on extra cache, spend the money on a PCI ATA controller, because any current drive today would be severely castrated by an ATA33 controller. Extra cache on an already bandwidth starved drive would be worthless.

I've not shopped in a while for drives so I'm not sure what's the fastest.

Apparently. SCSI surpassed 40MB/s about 3 years ago. SCSI's current drives bottom out at over 50MB/s with the top end in the mid 70's. Even ATA is pushing 60MB/s at this point.

 

[Athlon4all]

Thanks Pariah, I honestly am not sure why he wants a new HD, I think it is space, but he has said that it is slow, and a faster HD would definately help (my K6-2 475 wasn't bad, it was the HD that was slow), but that might be what I end up doing (getting a BB series drive and a PCI ATA/100/133 Card).

 

[Soulkeeper]

the western digital caviar drives are great
I got me an 80gb 8mb cache one
right now that drive is pretty much accepted as the top performing ata drive on the market
they run about $100 and should be plenty for most anyone upgrading from a 14gb drive hehe
even a smaller one would prob be enough to make him happy <40gb

 

[Athlon4all]

Thanks soulkeeeper! And here's a ^

 

[Athlon4all]

^ Any other comments? If I were to buy a PCI ATA/100/133 card which would be the best manufacturer?