BF2S Forums What's a good HD brand nowadays?

raptor ftw.

depends really, it does come out on top over any other drive

western digital domake great drives though..
if you want a fast costly drive then go for a raptor,if not, for storage, then something like western dig. will be more appropriate.

Here's good HD http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10458
I want that

Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi

sixshot wrote:

I personally prefer Seagate... even though I have yet to get one.  I've a WD drive used as a primary drive and for some strange reason, it suddenly started making this sorta high-pitched whining noise.  I could never get rid of it... and often bugs the hell outta me.  The Maxtor drives I have used were all good... I haven't had a drive go ka-put on me yet.  So maybe it's just luck.  Hitachi/IBM Desktars, I dunno... they used to be good back in the days... but after that fall-out with the HDs being flakey... well, you get the picture.

If I was to rank the HDs, I probably would have them in the following order: Seagate, WD, Maxtor, Samsung, Hitachi.  There are other HD brands out there... but those are the ones I'd look at first.  I suggest being picky on warranty, in case a drive decides to go bonkers at the most oddball time.

as of recent Hitachi has greatly improved their drives, in both longevity and in performance.  Because of the problems I have read and have had with Maxtor drives they pretty much fall at the bottom for me now.

i have one hd from philips and it works well

My drive of choise seagate. I have 200GB seagates in two of my systems and they are extremely quiet (as in can't hear them at all), relatively cool and fast enough for me. In my laptop, I'm running an IBM/Hitachi 7200RPM drive that kicks ass, but it's also pretty hot meaning I have to be careful with the laptop to make sure it's getting good airflow from underneath.

In general, I have noticed most failures coming from older IBM Deskstars, but from what I hear, they are awesome now. Maxtor is now owned and manufactured by Seagate. I used to hate Western Digitals, and I still think their bargain consumer stuff is still crap. I don't know, just don't go ultra cheap on your drive and you'll be happy. Seagate does have one of the best warantees in the business at 5 years. Not sure what the other manufacturers have. For reviews on drives, look at Toms Hardware and Anandtech

cyborg_ninja-117 wrote:

well i would love 2 X 250gb Sata 300mbs WD drives in raid 0

There is no such thing as a 300mbs hard drive - period. PATA, SATA and SATA-2 drives are all the same speed. The only difference is the "interface" bandwidth. But drives today max out at around 60-70mbs so they are incapable of saturating the available bandwidth in an ATA100/133 let alone either of the SATA formats.

That's not to say there aren't some benefits to using SATA: each drive is on it's own channel so drives don't have to share bandwidth and there is a very small performance gain due to system overhead. But, most of the benefits of SATA will only be realized in a server setting.

I'm not trying to discourace anyone from getting a SATA drive. In fact, all new drives I buy are/will be SATA. But, do not spend a lot of money for SATA-2 thinking you are going to be getting 300mbs performance.

I'll give you my personal preferences based on my experiences.  For reference, I take care of 500+ desktops as part of my job, and have 15+ assorted drives in operation in my house. I can site failures from any manufacturer, but for the past few years Seagate drives have been the most reliable IDE and SCSI drives hands down.  The only real downside to Seagate IMO is that in order to do the rapid replacement thing, it costs you 20 bucks or so (only done this once with Seagate).  WD, especially the Raptor, are generally the best performing drive.  Every manufacturer has good drives, but on average, WD has the Raptor, so they get top billing on IDE performance.  Maxtor have traditionally been the slower of the big 3, but like I alluded to, they also have some good drives, everyone does.  I've used Maxtor's rapid replacement program numerous times, and it's a fantastic thing.  I can get a replacement drive in 2-3 business days, and have 30 days to backup data from the failing drive before mailing it back to Maxtor.  Factor replacement time into your decision....just in case.  ***edit***   Don't let the last bit throw you.  I've just had lots and lots of Maxtor drives, so it stands to reason I'd have seen more of them die.  Truth be told, I have had a Maxtor drive die under warranty in probably 4 years or so.  Most folks barely use a drive that long.

Just look at the specs and the warranty info, and find what suits you best.  If you're not planning on getting a Raptor, I'd just look at the big 3 and balance price/performance.  If money is not object Raptors+RAID 0 would be uber fast, a little hot (use a fan blowing across the drives if you can).  I can't vouch for the noise level of any drive.  I have numerous PCs and 7 aquariums.  Low level noise isn't something I really notice.

You didn't really mention how much space you want, if you're planning a RAID solution, price point you're looking at etc.  It's hard to recommend a specific drive in this case.  I guess if you've got the cash, buy a small Raptor for games, maybe even OS, and use a more reasonably priced drive for storage.


Regarding the Lacie NAS box.  Those are supposed to be nice.  I have a 1.6TB terastation from Buffalotech.  It's a little slow, but otherwise just fine.  I run RAID5 on it and use it as a lazy man's backup.  Important stuff (photos etc) still get backed up to DVDR and put in a safety deposit box.  Everyone should do that!

Last edited by InnerMonkey (2006-06-04 08:27:27)

Every manufacturer has a bad model from time to time.  The best example being the IBM deathstar drives.  I went through 8 of those under warranty on a single purchase (so what's that....3 years at the time).  I had the same issue with 4-6gb WDs years ago, and I've seen the same thing out of fujitsu 2.5 inch drives.  If I thought more, I'm sure I could come up with more examples.

WDs generally run hot, and maybe that's what is killing yours.  Where I work has some hot areas (over 100 F in the winter), and I burn through drives in those places sometimes.  BTW, Seagate drives seem to do better in those locations.

InnerMonkey wrote:

Every manufacturer has a bad model from time to time.  The best example being the IBM deathstar drives.  I went through 8 of those under warranty on a single purchase (so what's that....3 years at the time).  I had the same issue with 4-6gb WDs years ago, and I've seen the same thing out of fujitsu 2.5 inch drives.  If I thought more, I'm sure I could come up with more examples.

WDs generally run hot, and maybe that's what is killing yours.  Where I work has some hot areas (over 100 F in the winter), and I burn through drives in those places sometimes.  BTW, Seagate drives seem to do better in those locations.

I still have a 40GB deathstar that I salvaged out of a P3 system eons ago lol.

Still works.... gives a few of those wierd ass "eee eee eee eee eee eee eee eee" sounds everyother day or so, but it still works.... Granted it's a file drive, and not a highly accessed main drive now.

I think innermonkey derseves some karma, he pegged it.

I live by seagate.  They are #1 in my book (ichiban if I was japanese, but I'm not)
WD makes nice drives, but I too turned away from them in the sub 10 gig days when they were turning out garbage.
Maxtor were always too loud back in the day.  They are not overly loud now, but I see them dropping like rocks at the 2 year mark.  To qualify that statement, I'm currently a network administrator that also does desktop support.  I have been doing this type work for over 10 years.  I've seen dells and IBMs, both using maxtor drives drop like rocks usually at the 2 year mark.  I lost 4 out of 10 IBMs (an order that came in together) last summer and the other 6 are still running today.  That was 40%, not too good in my book. 

For the DIY or BIY (build it yourselfer) I always advise the same, for my money either stick with a rock solid seagate, or spend the extra and get a rapor.  I hear they are a little loud though.  That's the only thing holding me back from trying one in my current system.  The whole system is super quiet and the Seagate drive is so quiet that I can only tell the HDD is in use by looking for the blue HDD LED on the front.