looking for new hard drive

A

AlNom

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Hi there, one of my 80GB drives just kicked the bucket. I'm looking for a 250GB+ SATAII replacement, and I was wondering which drive would be reasonably priced but still have good performance (relative to similar sized drives). My budget is about $200-250 CDN.

It'll mainly be a storage drive.
 
Blazkowicz_ said:
I usually buy Hitachi (formely IBM)
you might consider two 250GB HDD in RAID1
Click to expand...

Yeah, this way you wouldnt have to worry about your data unless both went out at once.

Just do not go RAID 0.
 
I run a pair of Maxtor DiamondMax 10s now (one SATA, one SATA2), never had a problem with either. Never had a problem with numerous other Maxtor disks I've owned in the past, too. Neither have my other DM10-owning friends who have them based on my recommendation.

Just to chuck cats amongst pigeons.
 
Rys said:
I run a pair of Maxtor DiamondMax 10s now (one SATA, one SATA2), never had a problem with either. Never had a problem with numerous other Maxtor disks I've owned in the past, too. Neither have my other DM10-owning friends who have them based on my recommendation.

Just to chuck cats amongst pigeons.
Click to expand...

I've heard a lot of good things about the newer Maxtors, and with the acquisition by Seagate I'm in a wait-and-see mode. However, they have a lot to overcome after my years as a PC repairman. Their failure rate struck me as abnormally high, and the fact that this is a rather "trendy" claim against that specific company seems damning. Of course, I'm so stodgy I'll only buy Seagates. ;) I've owned a number of WDs and been happy with them, but SG has a great reputation, long-standing, and a great warranty to back it up. I realize they're falling behind in performance, and if I were disappointed with my HDD performance, I would switch, but I'm not, and in the end the #1 criterion for me when it comes to HDDs is reliability.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Rys said:
I run a pair of Maxtor DiamondMax 10s now (one SATA, one SATA2), never had a problem with either. Never had a problem with numerous other Maxtor disks I've owned in the past, too. Neither have my other DM10-owning friends who have them based on my recommendation.

Just to chuck cats amongst pigeons.
Click to expand...

The ones I and other people had problems with were Diamond Max 9 ATAPI. These aimed for high performance, but produced loads of heat and vibrations, which led to the failure rather fast. I haven't tried the 10 series (nor will I ever do so, obviously).
 
Hitachi.

Only manufacturer that uses headramps for parking in their desktop drives, the spin-up power draw is 25-50% LESS than competitors even when spinning up a stack of five disks versus only 3 for other brands (not unlikely at least partly due to the headramps I might add), typically fastest or nearly fastest overall desktop performance, typically near or at the top for access times. And so on. :D

Oh, and feckin samsung sucks. Just wanted to mention that! ;)
 
poopypoo said:
I've heard a lot of good things about the newer Maxtors,
Click to expand...
The Maxtor I bought in December '05 failed after 1.5 months.... which was about a week or two after I'd wiped the disk which I'd copied onto the Maxtor :cry: :cry: :cry:
 
Simon F said:
The Maxtor I bought in December '05 failed after 1.5 months.... which was about a week or two after I'd wiped the disk which I'd copied onto the Maxtor :cry: :cry: :cry:
Click to expand...

sucks. :( there's just nothing worse than drive failure. I've lost a couple of sticks of RAM this year and it's amazing how irrelevant that is in the grand scheme of things (plus RAM has lifetime warranty muhahaha). But no matter how well you prepare, HDD failure always leaves you reeling. I suppose RAID would help with that, but my (limited) experience with RAID leaves me thinking it's more trouble than it's worth. So, I pay the small premium for peace of mind.
 
fwiw, the drive that died was a maxtor DiamondPlus 9 (2MB cache). I've had it since 2003 I think... might be 2004. I've been abusing it with lots of data storage/deletion/backup more than anything else I own, so I wasn't surprised it was going to die out.

Is the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 series pretty much what I should be looking for?

Thank you all for your opinions. :)
 
Hitachi for my main drive, I dont have the money to spend on a WD Raptor and Hitachi gives me the storage I need for programs but the speed I want, they produce amazing HDs while sticking to 7200RPM.

For storage I go with Seagate, every time. Out of all the HDs I've seen fail Seagate is by far the lowest, and when they do fail its extremely easy to get them replaced. Great warranty, great service, and very quiet. Not top notch performance, but I dont need that in my storage drives.
 
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