Hard drive recomendations...

[UltraJounin]

For the last 2.5 years I've been using IBM desktar hardrives for all my personal computers and for my clients. Ive stayed away from western digital because every single last one Ive had, has gone sour on me. Anyway my trusty IBM just pooped on me last night and now I need to consider another brand and I was curious on what you guys recommend or what to stay away from?

[Kingster]

Originally Posted by [NEGRO]ultra

For the last 2.5 years I've been using IBM desktar hardrives for all my personal computers and for my clients. Ive stayed away from western digital because every single last one Ive had, has gone sour on me. Anyway my trusty IBM just pooped on me last night and now I need to consider another brand and I was curious on what you guys recommend or what to stay away from?

I've been having great luck with WD's "limited edition" drives that have the 8MB buffer... Put that in on RAID, and stand back - it's blazingly fast!

[Play]

I agree with Kingster. I have the WD Special Edition 120G and a Seagate 120G with 8MB buffer as well. They're configured in a RAID 0 configuration and it's blazing fast.

[Salyavin]

Originally Posted by [NEGRO]ultra

For the last 2.5 years I've been using IBM desktar hardrives for all my personal computers and for my clients. Ive stayed away from western digital because every single last one Ive had, has gone sour on me. Anyway my trusty IBM just pooped on me last night and now I need to consider another brand and I was curious on what you guys recommend or what to stay away from?

If your Deathstar was a 75GXP, it was only a matter of time. Had one in my last system and started getting the clicking of doom... replaced it with a Maxtor and it's worked out fine. I also used a Maxtor as the second drive in my TiVo. With the amset utility it's fairly quiet. If you want it really quiet, the Seagate Barracudas are the way to go.

For raw performance over quiet and capacity, I'm very pleased with my two WD Raptors in a RAID0. Great for loading the OS, game levels and save files very quickly. 10,000RPM S-ATA for <$150 but only 36GB each. I've had them for less than a month so I couldn't comment on long term reliability. Also, they are kinda loud, but much less so if you mount them with rubber grommets.

The best place to go on the web for hard drive info, including performance reviews and reliability, is http://www.storagereview.com.

Cheers,
Salyavin

[Turkish]

I've been a big fan of Maxtor HDs for a long time since 98 (purchased a 10gigger when they were like 300 dollars) and I've been happy with the quality and the service I've seen them give to their customers.

At the moment I own three 8mb cache HDs (two 100gig and on 160) I still own the 10gig and I store nothing but driver, software, hardware updates.

If you notice WD just turned over to their new packaging style and I really don't like'em (the packaging that is) on the other hand Maxtor and Seagate package their drives in foam and come with cables and brackets (haven't looked at the new WD recently). As for quiet ... Barracudas have to be the top dog in that catagory.

Note that the WD Special Editions are fast but they run at ATA100 and not 133, but the price also reflects that by selling them at about 20 dollars cheaper.

Their's also a utility to disable the quiet mode for the maxtors but I can't recall the name of it or the name that maxtor calls when they refer to the quieting of the drive. BUT it does increase performance when you disable it.

my two cents

[UltraJounin]

Im liking the information given so far, but now you have me asking more questions...

1. What do I need to run/configure RAID, hardware and software wise and does my MOBO need to support it?

2. If going with RAID can I add an already formatted HD with files already on it without any problems?

3. Being as though the WD drives (most) have ata100 is there going to be a gain or loss of perfomance if I get an ATA100 with 8MB cache as opposed to a ATA133 with 2 MB cache?

4. What the easiest most user friendly software for copying hard drive info, my IBM that went bad was the one with my OS and boot files on it so it would be nice to just copy it over, but I'd like to do it accurate and convenient as possible.

[Salyavin]

Originally Posted by [NEGRO]ultra

Im liking the information given so far, but now you have me asking more questions...

1. What do I need to run/configure RAID, hardware and software wise and does my MOBO need to support it?

You need RAID support on the motherboard or you'll need to install a PCI RAID card. Different solutions have different levels of RAID. RAID0 gives you performance but no safety (it's not really RAID because there's no redundance). RAID1, RAID5, etc. will give you safety (with redundant copies of data or parity) at a cost of performance. I googled for a FAQ and found this http://www.recoverdata.com/raidfaq.htm, which should give you an overview of the different types and links to more details.

2. If going with RAID can I add an already formatted HD with files already on it without any problems?

No. The drives need to be combined into a single volume and repartitioned to be used in a RAID. You can use a backup utility to save everything off to CD-Rs and restore them after you've created the array.

3. Being as though the WD drives (most) have ata100 is there going to be a gain or loss of perfomance if I get an ATA100 with 8MB cache as opposed to a ATA133 with 2 MB cache?

A larger cache is almost always better than a higher speed interface. ATA133/2MB is faster between the drive cache and memory but you'll need to access the platters more often. Accessing the platters is slow. You won't see a continuous 100MB/sec or 133MB/sec from the drive in either case.

4. What the easiest most user friendly software for copying hard drive info, my IBM that went bad was the one with my OS and boot files on it so it would be nice to just copy it over, but I'd like to do it accurate and convenient as possible.

If your hard drive went bad, the safer way is to get the new drive and make a clean install of your OS and programs. Then install the old drive and only copy data from it.

If you do want the accurate and convenient approach, the standard for that is Norton Ghost, which allows you to make an exact copy of one drive to another or to CD-Rs that you can then restore to the new drive.

Cheers,
Salyavin

[Turkish]

Originally Posted by [NEGRO]ultra

Im liking the information given so far, but now you have me asking more questions...

1. What do I need to run/configure RAID, hardware and software wise and does my MOBO need to support it?

A = What's kind of mobo are you running? If it doesn't have the word RAID in it you probably need to purchase a PCI = IDE/RAID card (make sure the card supports RAID cause some are just extra IDEs)

2. If going with RAID can I add an already formatted HD with files already on it without any problems?

A = RAID requires that you need 2 HDs in order to perform RAID-0 and 4 HDs for RAID 0+1 (that's 2 for the OS and 2 for a mirror or backup) You'd have to reinstall the whole operating system in order to get the RAID-0 to work as a Bootable OS RAID setup. I don't think you could copy from HD to RAID array with commercially availble software (ie. last question), but to be honest I've never tried.

3. Being as though the WD drives (most) have ata100 is there going to be a gain or loss of perfomance if I get an ATA100 with 8MB cache as opposed to a ATA133 with 2 MB cache?

A = You'll get a better performance gain from the 8mb cache vs the 2mb ATA133.

4. What the easiest most user friendly software for copying hard drive info, my IBM that went bad was the one with my OS and boot files on it so it would be nice to just copy it over, but I'd like to do it accurate and convenient as possible.

A = WD comes with great HD to HD copy software that copies the entire OS and Master Boot Record. I actually use that more often then Maxtor's disk to disk copy software.

[[x_X]]

ive always had good luck with maxtor drives, but im not up to the level of some of the folks that have posted already.

if price is any factor, i just picked up a maxtor diamondmax plus 80G/7200/ata133/8M cache for $58 after manufacturer rebate (frys). comparable WD drives were much more $$ with dodgy packaging.

[Nitestalker]

I recomend you don't let me get near it, cause yesterday I just trashed my two month old maxtor 80G, with all music and pics, have them copied on my two other systems though. Do I win the "bonehead of the week" award?

[Ghost_Recon]

Originally Posted by Salyavin

If your Deathstar was a 75GXP, it was only a matter of time. Had one in my last system and started getting the clicking of doom... replaced it with a Maxtor and it's worked out fine.

Mine still hasn't died yet!!! For 3 years!!! it's 45GB!

[UltraJounin]

Oh joy, 59$ after rebates, On my way!

http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...730&pfp=BROWSE

[Ghost_Recon]

i might sound noobish but what are rebates?

[Zinia]

Originally Posted by Ghost_Recon

i might sound noobish but what are rebates?

It's what you do if your lure is missing.

[Blackshado]

Originally Posted by Zinia

It's what you do if your lure is missing.

Bah doom CHING!

Give that man a ceeegar!