Hard Drives

[pyrate83]

I was wondering which brand of hard drive is better...Maxtor or Western Digital. Or niether I suppose but I want to hear everyone's opinions on this. I am thinking about adding another hard drive(internal) maybe 60 or 80GB. The one I have now came with my computer and is a Western Digital but is also a 5400rpm model. The new one I would like to be 7200rpm unless I hear otherwise. I also want to get the best bang for my buck so probably $150 or so would be all I want to spend but to get the best HD.

What does everyone think????

[racer-x]

I think you'll be fine with either one. Go for the best deal you can find on the biggest HDD you can afford. For sure 7200 rpm!

[indolikaa]

I've had a pair of Maxtor 30GB 7200s running (practically nonstop) for 2½ years. They're in my non-video computer, and I've no complaints.

I wouldn't consider anything slower than 7200, period.

[pyrate83]

Thanks, I appreciate the suggestions...however I am still puzzled over why HP would have put a Western Digital HDD at 5400rpm in a computer that was new as of February. Boggles the mind....

[sterno]

I am still puzzled over why HP would have put a Western Digital HDD at 5400rpm in a computer that was new as of February.

A 5400rpm drive will generate less heat and noise, and it will be cheaper. The average home user will find modern high-capacity 5400rpm hard drives to be as fast as or faster than a lot of the older, smaller 7200rpm drives.

Besides, HP is one of the companies that uses a lot of shared memory architecture onboard video controllers, and not too long ago they were still selling systems with PC133 memory. Their consumer models are obviously not targeted at people who want every last bit of performance from their machines.

[pyrate83]

sterno...I have to agree with you somewhat on the performance aspect. However, my system is pretty fast and does quite a bit for me. As for the memory, my system was graced with 512mb of pc2700 which is pretty fast for me but the pc3200 would probably be more to my liking. And I do have to say that my hard drive is really quiet...even when it's being written to a bunch. It is a plus to have a quieter hard drive if you ask me....but what do you think is the most quiet 7200rpm HDD?????

[gmatov]

I can't even hear my 2 Maxtor 160 gig, 7200 RPM, 8 meg cache units I bought within the past month for 80 bucks after 80 buck rebate.
Too late for that deal, but another thread had the same drive, at one of the major stores for 100, possibly after rebate.
I think they're all running at about the same decibel level.
If you have a high performance fan on your CPU cooler, believe me, you won't hear the drive(s).

[jeex]

i'm a firm believer in western digital hard drives.. although a couple have gone out on me, they have a really good replacement policy..

i've never really dealt with maxtor drives.

there are good deals to be had on the 80gb western digital 7200rpm 8mb cache (i think its the special edition)

[rallynavvie]

Maxtor or Western Digital isn't going to be the issue. They're pretty much one and the same when it comes to consumer hard drives. If you're looking for a good drive from them get a 7200rpm with an 8MB cache. I've seen 120GB Maxtors at Costco for $100 no rebates involved. If you don't want to mess with rebates than shop online. If rebates don't bother you than lots of local stores draw in business that way and you can find a pretty good deal on one.

However, I've noticed that when one of my 7200rpm drives gets really fragmented that it runs as slow as a 5400rpm drive. So feasably you could use a 5400rpm drive for good as long as you defrag it often. The biggest bully is going to be transfer rates. Make sure you get ATA133 if your board supports it. If you need faster for video work look into Serial ATA or SCSI. Don't bother looking at fibre-channel yet, I don't think it's ready for the consumer-level, and U320 SCSI is almost as fast anyway. Another advantage of the faster drives is lower seek times, which is good if you're playing games or using programs that have things they need to access from different places on the platter. Having a lot of RAM to hold those in memory isn't a bad idea either, but it doesn't always work that way. And unless your motherboard and CPUs support PC3200 you won't notice a difference in using that RAM as opposed to what you got in it. You may as well buy an extra stick of PC2700 and give yourself a gig of RAM rather than replace it with PC3200.

My experiences with these HDDs: (all are 7200rpm with 8MB cache)
120GB Maxtor: this is my boot drive and contains both WinXP and a Linux partition. It runs both wonderfully.
200GB Western Digital: my storage drive. Seems a little slower when I'm getting into the 150GB+ of data, but otherwise fine.
2x 80GB Maxtors: my ex-RAID set-up now turned into misc. storage and transfer drives. RAID IDE seemed faster until I got my SCSI drives.
2x 18GB Seagates: these are my two 15,000rpm SCSI drives that I use for capture and running game servers. They're the only hard drives I ever hear, and then only really on startup and shutdown.

[pyrate83]

Hey thanks for the input rallynavvie...I will look into the 7200rpm drives and maybe add another 512mb stick of RAM.

Again....Thanks!!!! :P