|
|||||||
 |
|
|
LinkBack | Thread Tools | Search this Thread | Rate Thread | Display Modes |
11-13-2003, 05:10 PM
|
#1 |
|
Member (7 bit)
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Between here and there
Posts: 118
   |
What is good in a HD?
What is good
What is bad What is tollerable What is intollerable Opinions and facts welcome, Thanks |
|
|
|
11-13-2003, 05:11 PM
|
#2 |
|
Professional gadfly
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Posts: 6,364
 |
Could you be a little more specific? Are you looking for brand recommendations, features, or what?
|
|
|
|
|
11-13-2003, 06:17 PM
|
#3 |
|
Registered User
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Yokohama, Japan
Posts: 464
|
If you are looking for brands, I suggest Maxtor, Western Digital, or IBM.
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. |
|
|
|
|
11-13-2003, 06:43 PM
|
#4 |
|
Red-eyed Moderator
Staff
Premium Member
Join Date: Dec 1999
Location: Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
Posts: 17,525
|
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.
__________________
-At Ford, quality is job #1, job #2 is making them explode. ~Norm MacDonald, SNL News -Switching to Glide..Balancing in my head..inside of me... taking the glide path instead. |
|
|
|
|
11-13-2003, 07:15 PM
|
#5 |
|
Member (8 bit)
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Raleigh NC
Posts: 171
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
11-13-2003, 07:57 PM
|
#6 |
|
Certified Audio Nut
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Washington State
Posts: 7,202
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
11-13-2003, 09:36 PM
|
#7 |
|
Registered User
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Yokohama, Japan
Posts: 464
|
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!!! |
|
|
|
|
11-13-2003, 10:53 PM
|
#8 |
|
Certified Audio Nut
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Washington State
Posts: 7,202
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
11-13-2003, 11:04 PM
|
#9 |
|
Served with Pride
Staff
Premium Member
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: near the left coast of Michigan
Posts: 14,536
|
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.
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 02:23 AM
|
#10 |
|
Member (9 bit)
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Illinois
Posts: 260
|
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. Last edited by afoctober2; 11-14-2003 at 02:26 AM. |
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 02:35 AM
|
#11 |
|
HOT ROD
Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: On the Edge
Posts: 4,565
|
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.
__________________
Fast enough 2 get by.....old enough 2 know what not 2 try -You know it was me
|
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 03:06 AM
|
#12 |
|
Member (7 bit)
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Between here and there
Posts: 118
|
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? |
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 03:26 AM
|
#13 | |
|
Registered User
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Yokohama, Japan
Posts: 464
|
Quote:
|
|
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 03:30 AM
|
#14 |
|
HOT ROD
Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: On the Edge
Posts: 4,565
|
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. |
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 03:36 AM
|
#15 |
|
Member (8 bit)
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Ipswich, UK
Posts: 197
|
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. |
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 04:41 AM
|
#16 |
|
Member (10 bit)
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: las vegas
Posts: 875
|
i agree with mikey_dude,my IBM only lasted 4 months piece of s**t.my seagate runs very nice no problems
|
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 04:44 AM
|
#17 |
|
Member (8 bit)
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Ipswich, UK
Posts: 197
|
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
|
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 04:46 AM
|
#18 |
|
Member (7 bit)
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Between here and there
Posts: 118
|
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? |
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 04:48 AM
|
#19 |
|
Member (10 bit)
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: las vegas
Posts: 875
|
 to IBM
|
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 05:01 AM
|
#20 |
|
Forum Administrator
Staff
Premium Member
Join Date: May 2000
Location: Joplin MO
Posts: 36,460
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 05:14 AM
|
#21 |
|
Member (7 bit)
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Between here and there
Posts: 118
|
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? |
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 09:41 AM
|
#22 |
|
Professional gadfly
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Posts: 6,364
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 11:00 AM
|
#23 |
|
Member (7 bit)
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Between here and there
Posts: 118
|
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 |
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 11:43 AM
|
#24 |
|
Member (8 bit)
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Ipswich, UK
Posts: 197
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 12:02 PM
|
#25 |
|
Member (7 bit)
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Between here and there
Posts: 118
|
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? |
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 12:09 PM
|
#26 |
|
Member (8 bit)
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Ipswich, UK
Posts: 197
|
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. |
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 12:14 PM
|
#27 |
|
Member (7 bit)
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Between here and there
Posts: 118
|
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 |
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 12:18 PM
|
#28 |
|
Member (8 bit)
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Ipswich, UK
Posts: 197
|
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!
|
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 12:20 PM
|
#29 |
|
Member (7 bit)
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Between here and there
Posts: 118
|
Format it then sell it...
|
|
|
|
|
11-14-2003, 12:23 PM
|
#30 |
|
Member (8 bit)
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Ipswich, UK
Posts: 197
|
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!!!
|
|
|
|
|
| Bookmarks |
| Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
| Display Modes | Rate This Thread |
|
|
Linear Mode
