Storage Drive

[lil_freak]

After many hours of online comparing and researching, I have decided that I need advice/help in picking a new storage drive.

Right now my current storage drive is a 80GB Seagate Barracuda.

However I need to up-grade and I am torn between these two hard drives: 160GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 or the 74GB Western Raptor Serial ATA.

Which one would be recommended for my current system:

My computer system consists of the following:
AMD Athlon 64 FX-51 Processor
ASUS SK8V-VIA K8T800 Motherboard
(2) 2GB Corsair XMS DDR SDRAM PC-3200
Alienware GeForce FX 5950 Ultra 256MB 8x AGP w DVI&S-Video
148GB Western Digital Raptor Serial ATA RAID (System Drive)
80GB Seagate Barracuda (Storage Drive)
Alienware USB 2.0 256MB Flash Drive

Main OS: Unix
2nd OS: Windows XP Pro.

Thanks, Lil_freak

[noid]

I've had bad luck with Western Digital. They used to make good stuff, but in the last few years I've had problems with their drives dying. I have a few good ones though, so I think their quality control is going to shit.

[skroo]

I've had bad luck with Western Digital.

Ditto that. I used to buy their stuff solely because I knew that it would fail before the 3-year warranty was up, and I'd get a free upgrade as a result.

Right now, I'm runnning a Maxtor 200GB in my main fileserver that's been up for around six months straight with no known issues. It's quick, quiet, and holds a lot.

Late edit: I forgot to mention that the drive I bought came with an ATA-133 card in the box (which I used since it's currently in a Pentium II with no ATA-133 support). Works great through it; haven't tried it on a standard IDE interface. If you do need an ATA-133 card, figure on spending another $20 or so on top of the cost of the drive.

[murakami]

I've had a third Hitachi/IBM Deskstar fail recently, so I would avoid them. I've been buying Samsungs now, mainly because of their 3 year warranty (the only hard drives with s 3 year warranty). They are reasonably speedy and quiet.

I don't use scsi drives anymore in PC hardware, because of the cost per megabyte for IDE drives is very low and their current speed is sufficient for most applications.

[astcell]

Seagate. The only thing better than a Seagate drive is a Seagate drive loaded with jpg's.

[ck3k]

I use all seagates, in all systems, for the exception of a 10 gig I got from my oldest computer.

[Gadsden]

Ditto that. I used to buy their stuff solely because I knew that it would fail before the 3-year warranty was up, and I'd get a free upgrade as a result.

Right now, I'm runnning a Maxtor 200GB in my main fileserver that's been up for around six months straight with no known issues. It's quick, quiet, and holds a lot.

Late edit: I forgot to mention that the drive I bought came with an ATA-133 card in the box (which I used since it's currently in a Pentium II with no ATA-133 support). Works great through it; haven't tried it on a standard IDE interface. If you do need an ATA-133 card, figure on spending another $20 or so on top of the cost of the drive.

I used to like WD years ago, but after they broke the 4GB barrier they started to suck bad. I got burned by many a WD drives.. but I am afraid of maxtor as well, I have had many of them croak on me as well. I usually buy seagate anymore..

Speaking of WD drives.. anyone had any good/bad luck with the Raptors?

[KeLviN]

I use all seagates, in all systems, for the exception of a 10 gig I got from my oldest computer.

your OLDEST computer had a 10 GIG HD?!

[astcell]

your OLDEST computer had a 10 GIG HD?!

I know, make you wanna punch his lights out. My first PC had two 5.25" drives and no HD, then I spent $1,500 on a 286-12 PC with 30MB of HD space...it's so nice to not have to go through this today!

[ck3k]

your OLDEST computer had a 10 GIG HD?!

oldest computer I still had at my house at the time of replacing it with a larger drive....first computer that I had ran only dos, dont remember how much hdd space it had.

[jesse]

your first computer had a hard drive? wow

[murakami]

Does anyone have anything to say about IBM thinkpad hard drives? are they reliable?

I have had 2 IBM 2.5" drives fail in the past 3 years. One was the main drive in my TP and the other was a secondary drive. Given the amount of abuse (commuting by plane for +40 weeks/year over 2 years), they held up reasonably well.

[lil_freak]

Thanks for the help/input, I'm going to go with the Seagate.

[lil_freak]

Speaking of WD drives.. anyone had any good/bad luck with the Raptors?

The Raptor that came with my computer, seems to work just fine, but I've only had it for about six months. Give me another six
months with it and I can you give you my real opinion.

[ck3k]

your first computer had a hard drive? wow

Yeah, can't say I was old enough to know that much about computers prior to my 10th birthday.