What is good in a HD?

[davour]

What is good
What is bad

What is tollerable
What is intollerable

Opinions and facts welcome, Thanks

[doctorgonzo]

Could you be a little more specific? Are you looking for brand recommendations, features, or what?

[Antistupid]

If you are looking for brands, I suggest <b>Maxtor</b>, <b>Western Digital</b>, or <b>IBM</b>.

Regardless of the brand, get a HDD with the storage space you want, 8mb of cache, and 7200 RPM. This is the fastest HDD without getting expensive stuff like SCSI.

[HAL9000]

I would stay away from IBM... at one time they were a pretty good drive.. but went downhill with their Deathstar series.. IBM has since sold out to Hitachi and Hitachi isn't exactly known for their drives... WD or Maxtor only for me.

[bsemaiktehr]

I've got a 80 gig 7200 RPM Maxtor with an 8 meg cache that i bought for only $60 from best buy... its a great item. I'm very impressed so far.

[Hi Ho]

Stay away from IBM. I don't know why my Deskstar (Deathstar) drive is still running. It might be the last on earth :). Western Digital and Maxtor are the best drives. Make sure you get 8 MB of cache not 2. Also get at least 7200 RPM.

[Antistupid]

I got a Maxor my self (80GB 8MB cache 7200RPM). I also heard WD and IBM are good, but if it isn't that good, I's stay away from it.

I learnt something here aswell!!!

[Hi Ho]

IBM used to be a good drive. Untill the Deasktar. Those drives dropped like flies. They rarely lasted a year. Now no one really knows how good they are. Hitatchi took over IBM's hard drive line and Hitatchi isn't known for there hard drives.

[Panama Red]

The latest high speed IDE drives are 7200 rpm with and 8Mb cache. Available in many sizes and brands. Serial ATA or SATA are becoming more popular and 10,000 rpm units are now available. Western Digital is reportedly releasing their new 10,000 rpm 74Gb Raptor this week. Then there's SCSI which has been around a while and is supposed to be the fastest, but costs a bunch more money. Stay away from the 5400 rpm units and if you're building a new system with the latest high speed chipsets, dual channel ram and SATA capability, then look to the 8mb cache units or the SATA drives. Just one guy's opinion.

[afoctober2]

I'm also going to say to stay away from IBM I have a Deskstar it noisy and always warm. I also have a Western and Maxtor which are very quite and don't get hot.

I want to say Seagate is good but I've never had one so I don't know. Anybody here have an opinion about Seagate.

[lil Jimmie]

I use Western Digital 8mb cache drives and Western Digital SATA drives but also hear good things about Maxtor drives as well. I have one IBM drive that I got long before the Deathstar problem and it's still running.

[davour]

Maxor (80GB 8MB cache 7200RPM).

This seems to be the general consensus... is it worth going with something like this and upping the space to 100-200 cash providing?

What does the 8mb and 7200RPM parts of the specs do?

[Antistupid]

Originally posted by davour
Maxor (80GB 8MB cache 7200RPM).

This seems to be the general consensus... is it worth going with something like this and upping the space to 100-200 cash providing?

What does the 8mb and 7200RPM parts of the specs do?
the 8mb cache temperarily stores info to be retrieved (i think). the 7200rpm is 7200 rotations per minute. 8mb cache and 7200rpm is the fastest IDE.

[lil Jimmie]

The cache stores the most recent used data and adds a performance boost with the HDD. I can see an increase of performance with the 8mb over the 2mb cache when booting or apps loading, but others say they can't. There is also a noticeable increase in performance with a 7200RPM drive over a 5400RPM drive.

HDD size seems to be a personal preference to the users, but I would recommend no less than an 80Gb on a new build.

[mikey_dude]

Adding to the IBM warnings, I have installed a few of these Deskstar drives in my machines and they are all slowly breaking down with bad sectors and mechanical failures.

Now I think they have cut the warranty period down to one year instead of three, you'd be wasting your money getting one of these.

[Brown Hornet]

i agree with mikey_dude,my IBM only lasted 4 months piece of s**t.my seagate runs very nice no problems

[mikey_dude]

Well funny enough the drive in this PC 40gb Deskstar has been replaced once due to bad sectors and has been running fine.

I have a 60gb Deskstar drive which has bad sectors but I ran IBM's disk checking utility and it found no errors. The warranty is running out and I would like this drive to properly break down so I can get and sell a replacement.

Any ideas? lol :)

[davour]

I have a 40gig deskstar but it runs only at about 30gigs after formatting - which cant be good


Generaly what % am looking at loosing from advertised speed to formatted speed?

[Brown Hornet]

;) to IBM

[glc]

If you have a 40 gig drive that's only formatting out to around 30, you either have a bios with a 32 gig limit or you have the capacity clip installed on the drive. That's not normal - it should format out to around 38 gigs.

[davour]

When i said about 30 i was being vague

I meant around 35... so i am looking at loosing 5% loss on formatting any new drive?

[doctorgonzo]

Yes, you are going to get less space when you format a drive. The difference is that HD manufacturers list capacity in decimal numbers, so 40 GB on the package means 40,000,000,000 to them. The real size shown by Windows is in base-2 numbers: 40,000,000,000 bytes is shown as 37.253 GB.

[davour]

Sweet - just wanna know what to expect with an 80gig drive

I plan on running 2 80gig drives for my (at the momeent fantasy but soon to be reality) new build

One for running games, main operating system, internet and watching movies with the other purely for storage

Way i see it

Mian drive will accumulate a lot of trash, when it reaches 80gigs i just need to decide if that movie i downloaded 6 months ago is worth keeping - if so store it on drive 2 ...

Problem is when i get to drive 2 being overful and 1 and all the stuff on both is for keeping then im gonna have to hope there are some nice 500gig drives on the market at bargin prices

... Jebus, i can remember when the toffy kid in our school got a 1gig drive.. i was like OH MY GOD... i only have a 100meg drive, which is not even enough to hold most screensavers nowadays!#

Times change

[mikey_dude]

Times do change, thats why its always good to get a drive with more gigs than you think you'll need.

Some other aspects of drive specs interest me more than gigs itself, like the cache size (I recently got a 120gig with 8mb cache - a Maxtor I think) and the speed, although I wouldn't go below 7200rpm, which is pretty much standard these days.

So basically, I think it just depends on your budget and what suits your needs the best.

Anybody know of any good ways to make a 60gb IBM Deskstar break down quicker (so I can get it replaced before the warranty runs out)? Like put it under severe pressure until it cracks? Any suggestions appreciated. :)

[davour]

mikey_dude

Mmmm... not sure it is a good idea to be advising such things but whatever is wearing it down at the moment - escelate the problem.. Surely if there is a problem with it now that comes under the warranty?

What do they define as something to replace?

[mikey_dude]

Well the drive keeps developing bad sectors and the diagnostics utility tells me the only solution is to format, which is very inconvenient when you store a lot on the drive (20gb music etc).

The IBM (or Hitachi) RMA procedure requires a diagnostics result to be granted an RMA, and for me, the utility is not granting me with one. So until it does, I'm stuck with a half worn out drive and a fast approaching warranty expiration date. I have emailed them, so I guess time will tell.

[davour]

Well since a new drive would be a format anyways - best thing id suggest is to backup and format

When it comes down to it you think you need to transport a lot more than you have on your hd... if you can get ahold of a spare drive for storage maybe try to ghost it during the formatting

... or use it as an excuse for a new HD

[mikey_dude]

I already have used it as an excuse to get a new drive (a 120gb Maxtor). But before I can sell this drive, I need it in good working order! :)

[davour]

Format it then sell it...

[mikey_dude]

That would just be cruel on the buyer. It is making scratching noises now while I'm running the diags. Hopefully it will give me a code!!!

[davour]

Yes, it would be cruel... but proffitable :)

Don't often see many brits like me on this forum,

If a format doesnt resolve this problem then call IBM, thats the first thing they'll probably need you to do before you claim on the warranty

... :)

[mikey_dude]

Well, I have to tell you the good news - the drive has just officially failed. I am about to request an RMA. I've got that long awaited code......

Where abouts are you from?

[davour]

<<<< My location is in my profile

:)

Nah, im really from Manchester, not as posh as Ipswich but hey we get better looking women :)

[mikey_dude]

Well yeah I agree on the women bit I had to find my missus from 20 miles outside of Ipswich :)

Ipswich posh??? Unless you class the torched cars, vandalised lamp posts etc posh then you must be joking :)

I have full permission to send my drive to the Netherlands for replacement!!! yay.

[davour]

Well... Ipswich may not be posh but im working at the moment in wythenshawe for NTL (yes the lovely cable tv people) and since it is the biggest council estate in the whole of eurpoe your ispwich aint too bad

However, since i get to go home to my missus in stockport (just outside of manchester) in a nice area and providing shes made me some tea :) then live aint too bad


.... Hopefuly soon my money will come in from a little investment opportunity (£5000) and whilst most will go on bills and stuff i need to do but put off (new glasses, dental work, driving lessons etc) to get done

My girlfriend wants a nice holiday in new york, meanwhile im telling her if there is anything left over after ive done all of the above and built a new PC then its an option

.. However, with my new eyes for modding im not sure ill have much change left!! :)

I want to go with a media centre option but all the TV tuners are hooked into the US market so im almost 99% sure i wont be able to watch it directly through and control it wth a GUI on my computer but if i use one to feed it through the scart id at least be able to change channels with the box

ok off home, enough working and chatting on forums for the moment --