New hard disk

At the moment I have a Seagate 7200 rpm 40 gig. I'm thinking of
seriously getting a new hard disk.. I haven't had any real problems
with hard drives in general before, but I was just asking which brands
are considered better and why. I've heard Western Digital are good, and
at least where I live they're reasonably priced. Any help or
suggestions would be appreciated.

i've always went for the best price. apart from once, when i paid an extra fiver for the same hd only with 8mb cache. dunno what it does really, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. :smile:

and never been disappointed. 'cept maybe when i see an even bigger drive a month later for the same price.

Hmmm, speaking of size ... I think I'll get a 120 gig with 8 mb cache ... That's $150 AU

Grrr, It was only just over 2 years ago when I paid $220 AU for this 40 gig :sad:

Its always worth splashing out the extra ?5 for an 8mb cache. This
means that more frequently loaded data can be put in the cache and so
accessed quicker, rather than having to load it from the disk. I don't
know how much of a performance boost there is, but for the small price
increase its worth it.

I kinda stick with maxtor, as they seem reasonably priced, but Western
Digital are meant to be good, albeit a little noisy. I heard that
Seagate Barracudas are meant to be quite quiet, if thats a deciding
factor for you.

Hmmm, my computer is quite noisey already as it is... In fact, it's too
noisy to sleep in the same room with, so I switch it off when I go to
bed ... No night time downloading for me lol.

I think the main contributing factors for that are the cpu, case, and
psu fans. Anyway, sound really isn't a problem because it's noisy
already so a bit more won't hurt :biggrin:

The advantage of hard drives is you don't have to get rid of the older components - just add them on. I've currently got a total of 120GB, composed of a 40 and the newer 80. Will purchase more when/if I run out of space, and since I'm not too much into video editing, that may take a while.

2dmin said:
Western Digital are good,

I don't think that there are hardrives that are any more reliable or better than other, frankly, because I've had 2 Western Digitals, all of which failed in under 1 year. First failed within 3 days, the second took a year to die.

I always thought it was wise to get the biggest hardrive your version of Windows can handle (before it partitions it I mean). :smile:

Get what you need - there is no point in getting a 200gb hard drive if
you typically only have one or two games installed at once, and are
likely to only need 40-80gb for instance.

I know very little about hard drives, but I have read that Western
Digital are good apart from being quite noisy. Sounds like you have
been very unlucky however, so I think I'll stick with maxtor since they
have been good for me :smile:

I like maxtor cos I have had no problems with them and have had about 3
of there hard drives I have also had a SCSI Seagate and had no problems
with it apart from it being noisier that the maxtors that I have had.

I have never had a Western Digital though.

I've got a Western Digital Caviar at the moment, and I think it may be
on it's way out. WD drives are known for failing, but the caviar lines
certainly are not noisy. Seagate barracuda's are generally recommended
by hardware guru's. They're not meant to be as fast as Western Digital
caviar's, but are much quieter and more reliable.

I've got a 100GB Caviar currently, I had one that died within a month or so, but this current one is at 2 years and counting. I would probably recommend a good 80 or 120GB drive as those are what are most common and would be reasonably priced. And as stated before, chip in the extra money for an 8MB cache too.

Western Digital is ... decent. They shouldn't really spaz out on you, unless they'er a rather new model (WD has a tendacy to put messed up drives out quickly just to be the first with that size). I've had a couple WD drives screw up, but they were really old.

Personally, I've got IBM drives, which are Hitachi now (same drives, hitachi merged thier production with IBMs HDD area) They've never failed, nor has anyone elses that I know personally (friends). Also, Hitachi is CHEAPER. WD are completly overpriced by at least 20 to 40 bucks, here anyway.

Get was seems like a good deal, 2d.

Just, I'd suggest to not buy anything other then Hitcahi/IBM, WD, Maxtor, and maybe Segate. Everything else is ... not very good. :smile:

Last I checked, WD were best and cheapest. All decent makes come with 3-year warranty, and will normally give you a bit of time of half-working before totally crapping out, so you get a chance to save your files.

Typically the 'click of doom', which is easily identifiable as an odd noise being made by the hard disk - if you start saving your stuff after you first hear this, you should manage it before the disk is dead. Similarly if you start getting loads of windows boot errors, put the drive as secondary in someone elses PC to recover your files before sending the malfunctioning drive off for RMA.

Not that drives crap out all that often to be honest, I'm just trying to reasure you that a disk failure isn't as much of a disaster as you would think, as you get a free replacement, and normally the chance to save your files.

Have a look at www.anandtech.com, they have some good storage reviews, and are pretty well known for being objective. If you want to find out about reliability, a good way is to search a few forums (like the anandtech one) for threads containing 'WD failed' or 'Seagate failed', etc. You should soon see which drives are the (relatively) unreliable ones.

The click of doom scares me s**tless. I've had it happen once or twice when it was just powering up from a brownout but I've had a drive harsh kick the bucket in that way and it wasn't cool.

I've got a 40gb seagate, I think its a barracuda...

My last 2 drives were seagates. This one is so quiet, I cant hear it over the fans (which arent particularly noisy). Ive never had a drive die on me, except a 4gb Fujitsu that was at the end of its lifespan anyway.

No matter how big a drive you buy, youll fill it. Its inevitable.

Yeah ... I'm working on CS movies, and editing takes a lot of space. I
think I'll just choose either WD or Maxtor by the price at the moment.
It may be a few months before I end up buying anyway, so yeah.

Thanks for the help guys,.

WD, Maxtor, Seagate anbd Hitachi are all good makes, now go and fine the cheapest!

except a 4gb Fujitsu that was at the end of its lifespan anyway.

Yeah, that four hours is a real bitch...

Also, I just suggested the cheapest and whatever, and here WD is nowhere near cheap ... its a beast which isn't worth $120 for an 80gig. When every other brand is closer to $70 for the same size.

G.Ballblue said:
I don't think that there are hardrives that are any more reliable or better than other, frankly, because I've had 2 Western Digitals, all of which failed in under 1 year. First failed within 3 days, the second took a year to die.

All of my computers I have used Western Digitals and I have never had one die, I even dropped one without much damage, although it failed 2 months later and made funny noises. Still, if I done the same to a Maxtor, it wouldve probly killed it on the spot, my friend uses maxtors and has nothing but problems. My lovely WD Raptors give me good performance but they are pricy and small at that. 74gig is the biggest availible. But the spin rate is highest availible for an ATA based disk (10k rpm).