Hard Disk recommendation please

Dr.Rock

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Can someone please recommend me a good performance S-ATA 8MB cache hard disk to buy for the new computer I'm building?

The HD will be used as my main hard disk, for running the operating system and doing digital-video capture and MPEG-2 conversions, etc. The drive has to be reliable as well, something that doesn't fail quickly. The bigger, the better. I have looked at Wester Digital, Seagate Baracuda, Maxtor, etc, all saying theirs is the best, etc, but we don't know who to believe.

Thanks.
 
Well, I only ever buy (and run) Maxtor or WD these days. I find the Maxtor Diamond Plus range (fluid bearings and 8MB cache) very fast and very quiet (unlike the WD which are quite noisy with the head seeks)
 
Thanks for the tip, Messiah. But I read the specs, and the Maxtor DiamondMax has a 9.3ms seek-time, slower than the competing HD's. Does this make a negative impact on the HD's performance?

Thanks.
 
Not that you will be able to notice. If you were a large Insurance company or maybe the C.I.A. and had to search through a 100 million record database then maybe but a home user not worth the effort.
 
I use the Maxtor DiamondMax as well, very happy so far, just got to get another so I can do Raid 0 :)
 
Two choices in my eyes.. Maxtor DiamondMax 9 plus as suggested already, or the Seagate Barra 7200.7. Both good SATA drives, quiet and nice performance.

There's always the Raptors if your feeling upto some serious investing. The 36 gig versions are not fluide bearing and are pretty loud, the new 72 gigs are (I think) so are also a good option if a little expensive for the space you get. Performance however cannot be matched in the SATA interface.
 
I have had a Western Digital JB in for going on 2 years and found it the most reliable drive I have ever, and have not had faliue with it yet.
 
I'd stick with Seagate. Far more reliable than WDs IMO (& experience). Have just recently RMA'd 4x WD SEs, 3 noisy & 1 totally dead. Not the first time I've returned WDs either :(

The 36gig Raptors are however proving extremely reliable (Raid 0) & as quiet as the regular WD SEs. Amazing speed when raided :eek:

:smoke:
 
Kramer

Can you point me to a link for the WD returns process. My 160GB is massively noisy and was thinking of changing (and cloning). If I can then get this one replaced will be good. It is about 6 months old.

Thanks.
 
I've stuck with Seagate barracuda for some time now, not the fastest around, but the quietest by a significant margin, and disc performance is not an issue for a media PC. No failures over 3 years and 5 (or maybe 6) discs

good reviews on this site
 
Thanks for the advices. I've been setting my sights on the Hitachi 7K250 S-ATA hard disks. They've been getting knockout reviews. Has anyone heard any issues about those?

Thanks.
 
Originally posted by Kramer
I'd stick with Seagate. Far more reliable than WDs IMO (& experience). Have just recently RMA'd 4x WD SEs, 3 noisy & 1 totally dead. Not the first time I've returned WDs either :(

The 36gig Raptors are however proving extremely reliable (Raid 0) & as quiet as the regular WD SEs. Amazing speed when raided :eek:

:smoke:

I had about 3 or 4 Seagate go belly up on me before I got the WD although I must say there after sales service was very good.
 
Messiah,

I RMA'd to the retailer (well, e-tailer actually) so can't help with WD returns directly. I know their site is geared more towards US customers but there might be something there.

:smoke:
 
Oh wait.. let me add Samsung to the list.. very good drives for the price. Got two SATA here without any problems..:)
 
Originally posted by Kramer
Messiah,

I RMA'd to the retailer (well, e-tailer actually) so can't help with WD returns directly. I know their site is geared more towards US customers but there might be something there.

:smoke:

Thanks Kramer. Mine came from ebuyer so I think I'll give up on that route straight away. I'll go take a look at WD's site. Thanks.
 

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