Hard Drives!

cadboll

I have been looking to buy an additional hard drive. I have been recommended 4 different ones - anyone out there who can advise? The four are:
(i) Maxtor MaxLine 3
(ii) Hitachi Deskstar 7k400
(iii) Samsung Spinpint P80
(iv) Seagate Barracuda.8

Thanks.

CIS

Apart from the hard drive size and the type of Hard drive, ie. IDE or SATA, it won't (unless you do a lot of photo/video editing etc) make too much difference which hard drive you buy.

You can get a faster spinning drive or one with a 8mb buffer instaed of 2mb, but in real everyday terms you most probably wont notice anything different. Buy the best value drive.

bwoyrough

I reccomend the Maxtor Diamondmax most of the Maxtor drives carry a 5 year warranty if they break down on you regardless of where u purchased the drive, also i find hat Maxtor are one of the cheapest and best manufacturers.
You can either get a ATA or SATA
ATA works with a standard ribbon cable and plugs into your IDE slot, the SATA (Which are supposed to be superior to the ATA) work with a special SATA cable which you should have a special socket on your motherboard for this, but not all computers have them only the newer ones so check b4 u buy, u can always get a adapter.
When u get your hard drive you need to choose what file indexing system u want, either FAT32 or NTSC i'd go with the NTSC everytime, it's supposed to have a superior system but may be a little slower than FAT32 but aparently makes up for this with its superior file indexing system. One problem with FAT32 is that if u use your compter for watching alot of movies or burning movies, FAT32 doesn't allow large files to be edited and messed with(2GB+) so don't useFAT32 if u intend on doing alot of DVD editing and burning.
You can get a 250GB drive on ebay for £64 and a 350GB for £84 which is the cheapest i have found anywhere plus about £4 postage.

zacspeed_2

Maxtor all the way friend.

wolfman

If possible I'd get a SATA drive, as it's newer technology and has a slight performance increase over UltraATA. Make sure your motherboard can support SATA though.

With regards to size, 250gb should be enough. You mentioned the Hitachi Deskstar 7k400 which is a 400gb drive. You probably won't need this much and it won't be such good value. At the moment 200-250gb drives offer the best value for money.

Most drives with have a 7,200rpm spin rate. You won't need a 10,000rpm spin rate, unless you want the best performance, and even then it'll cost. 8mb of cache is also obviously preferable over 2mb.

In light of the above, I'd go for the Hitachi Deskstar T7K250. The SATA and UltraATA models perform better than the others in benchmarks, and it offers great value at £77.

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/ProductInfo.aspx?ProductID=10377&GroupID=596

I've got a Maxtor Diamond Max 9 and 10, but the Hitachi would be my choice should I buy another.

wolfman

bwoyrough wrote:

I reccomend the Maxtor Diamondmax most of the Maxtor drives carry a 5 year warranty if they break down on you regardless of where u purchased the drive, also i find hat Maxtor are one of the cheapest and best manufacturers.

Most of the drives do have a 5 year warranty, but the drives the would apply to the OP (maybe the DiamondMax range) have a 3 year warranty. Still very good though.

COVKID

Just bought a Western Digital 250gig for £59.99 from Aldi in Coventry understand they have them in Rugby as well. See shop but don't drop today 12.18am

smcicr

is the hitachi deskstar the rebranded, bought out, infamous for dying horribly, old IBM drive - i'm sure they used to be called deskstar but ended up being called the deathstar due to the amount of destruction it wrought on peoples data...

ah yes - so it is: http://www.neoseeker.com/news/story/3127/ (just google IBM Deathstar for a few more of these )

Never had any problems with Maxtor / Seagate.

Number_6_3

Maxtor

The new Maxtor diamondmax 10 have 16mb cache...about £70 for a 250gb internal.

Do you need SATA or IDE?

If not external drives aren't that much more expensive about £95 for a 250gb with usb2.

HTH

R

wolfman

smcicr wrote:

is the hitachi deskstar the rebranded, bought out, infamous for dying horribly, old IBM drive - i'm sure they used to be called deskstar but ended up being called the deathstar due to the amount of destruction it wrought on peoples data...

ah yes - so it is: http://www.neoseeker.com/news/story/3127/ (just google IBM Deathstar for a few more of these )

Yeah, that was the 65/75GXP range, none of which failed on me though. IBM were the best for a period and that was about 3 years ago and has since been taken over by Hitachi. Would be like saying AMD's aren't very good as they run too hot.

The recent Hitachi range is the best performing drive, and I've not come across any huge problems with it.

Number_6_3

pcindex Pcindex is normally pretty good for finding the best prices for computer kit. Good forum as well. Used in conjuction with pricerunner, kelkoo etc should save you a few quid.

R