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Hard Drive question


kjc5664
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Depends if you're machine supports sata. Sata is faster than IDE, so this would be a better option. If your motherboard supports sata, then go for sata. Else, you'd need a PCI card to supply the sata connections which would incur an additional cost.

 

If it's a problem, IDE's are OK, but 7200rpm is better than 5400rpm. Not sure if it goes any higher than 7200rpm for IDE disks. I tend to go for seagate.

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i like western digitial. but by and far most people have good experiences with their hard disks. i'm not a fan of maxtors (on the whole) because they get loud...like a bearing problem.....later on in life.

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Actually, I have used Maxtors for years. Western Digital has some production problems that has increased their failure rate. They are not doing a good job of tracking the parts used by their vendors who produce thier drives. It is true that Maxtor drives sound louder than western digital drives, although I have to open the box and listen carefully to tell the difference. I would rather have a "bad bearing" that works than a quiet drive that fails.

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Two points I would like to make are:-

I have used Western Digital only. Had originally 4 of 8Gb units (since about 1999/2000 run as a Raid0+1). Presently 2 of them are still being used in other peoples boxes, the other 2 are still usable but unused. Have had 2 of 80Gb units for 4+ years , one of which recently failed and the other is working flawlessly in another windowbox.

NOTE:- In another thread I said that my second 80Gb HDD had failed. This turned out to be incorrect. It was due to faulty cables, 3 different cables turned out to be faulty in fact. The 80 wire cables are nowhere near as reliable as the old 40 wire cables because the wires are so thin but that is another discussion altogether.

I have had recent discussions with a number of component suppliers in Melbourne and Sydney from whom I buy my gear and they tell me that of all the Makes of HDDs they supply, Western Digital gives the least trouble.

 

I could not be happier with the 2 new SATA-2 160Gb 16mb Cache WDs that I now have. A very special NOTE for anyone getting SATA-2 models. When you install the SATA-2, if it is not detected it is because of the following...............Only a couple of recently released Mainboards are SATA-2 compatable and therefore most mainboards with SATA cannot run SATA-2 outright. It is necessary to set a link on the SATA-2 HDD so it runs as a SATA. When you do a motherboard upgrade replacement then you can remove the link from the SATA-2 HDD and let it run full steam.

 

Most Brand HDDs are pretty good and reliable but considering that WD have had 3 year warranties on their HDDs for most of recent 5 years and the New SATA-2 has a 5 year warranty then I think it must tell you something about the reliability factor the manufacturer expects from their product.

 

Cheers. John.

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seagate user here, their hard drives are not only good quality, but much quieter than most others.

 

Using a SATAII and an IDE in this computer, and both work a dream.

 

Any major vendor hdd should work, but some people believe some are more reliable than others. I've heard a lot of negative things about western digital and maxtor's reliability. I've only ever heard positive things about Seagate.

 

As for linux support, it's more whether the sata controller on your motherboard works well under linux. Most do, but some of the newer and less common ones are problematic. If you've got an intel one, you should have no problems.

 

James

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  • 4 weeks later...

Since 1997, I used Maxtor exclusively for both Windows and (since 2003) Linux. Unfortunately, the average lifespan of the Maxtor drives I've used, has been 1 1/2 years at best.

 

In 2004, a Western Digital drive was purchased (60 GB) and is on a dual-boot machine with Mandriva Linux and Windows XP. This drive is going on 2 1/2 years now, without failure. :)

 

My other (and slower) computer which isn't used as often as the dual-boot, has only Mandriva Linux installed, contains a Maxtor 40 GB drive purchased 2 years ago, but due to its limited usage, the drive still functions.

 

(Prior to 1997, I had a Commodore.)

Edited by edwardp
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I had Maxstor drives in a NAS I had. It ran IDE disks, but used the dynamic disk functionality in Windows 2000 for Raid configuration. Unfortunately one of the disks, or multiples failed. We'd only used it about a year maybe a bit longer.

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You are going to get a lot of anecdotal evidence on the question of which hard drive to get. I don't know how valuable that is - hard drives generally do not fail that often so an individual user's experience is limited. I've only had one hard drive die on me and that was a western digital 4GB hard drive after 6 months back in 1996 or 97. I've never bought another western digital since which is pretty stupid. I think that illustrates my point - people hold these opinions based on fairly random events - in my case the failure of one drive after six months of use.

Any of the majors, maxtor, seagate, western digital, are probably equally good. At least it would be hard to scientifically prove one is better than another. To further confound things, they each seem to go through periods where people report problems with drives from one of them. This would indicate that each of the majors is capable of producing a bad batch now and then. Probably the best advice is to stick with the majors and shop price and warranty period. Seagate shook up the industry a while back by lengthening their warranty to 5 years in the US. This was at a time when everyone had gradually scaled back their warranties from three years to one year. That really helped seagate sales to people that build their own rigs.

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Any major vendor hdd should work, but some people believe some are more reliable than others. I've heard a lot of negative things about western digital and maxtor's reliability. I've only ever heard positive things about Seagate.

James

The only negative is the RMA policy is for Internet explorer only or was when I got a dud. I eventually just threw it away since they refuse to deal with RMA's any other way and I bought it in the UK and found it was dud when I got back to France. It was one of two and the other is still functioning perfectly like every other seagate but I find the IE only RMA procedure a bit strange?

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RMA? If that's anything to do with warranty, I get the full vendor warranty through the place I buy my products. Just take it back to them, they send it of, deal with it, and I get a call a few weeks later to pick up the new device. Pretty good service imho, and no effort needed on my behalf.

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I did an RMA on my Netgear router which was out of warranty. I bitched and complained so much that the router never worked correctly even when in warranty for the features it had, and then it died on me. They gave me a free replacement.

 

Oh, their support really is pants too, if anyone has ever experienced it. I know mysti has :P

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