I know 2 people that have had Western Digital drives "crash and burn". One was defective out of the box. The other is making noises and doesn't pass tests.

Who's got an opinion about the best HD to buy?

I never had problems with Quantums and IBMs. It's said the Seagates, and especially the Fujitsus are sloooow... but this can be just outdated infos I got.

Check www.storagereview.com . This site has lots of updated tests, benchmarks and drive specs comparations.

I use Maxtors, good speed, pretty quiet -they have their new drives out which are ATA133. Out of the ATA100 drives the IBM deskstar's are the fastest.
PS Maxtor and Quantum are now the same company so you could expect their newer drives to perform similarly.

Go here: http://www.storagereview.com check their *LeaderBoard* . They pick best 5400rpm, 7200rpm, etc. Very objective in depth articles on hard drives,cd-rom drives.
It appears the new 100GB WD 7200rpm drive is holding the top as far as things stood last time I looked.
IBM has had some problems as of late. I run Maxtor drives and they run well,sturdy and fast so far [1.5yrs],and the price is good for the plain *white box*-drive only-. Check out mwave.com,a very good and fair reseller in my opinion.

Thanks for the dope, guys.


Gues What? My 30GB Fujitsu crashed today. It's 11.5 months old. Should be able to get it replaced........ ;)

The best drives today (and the fastest at 15K RPM)
are Seagate and IBM SCSIs.
The price is higher too.
Seagate is 10% more expensive, than IBM.
And physically heavier and bulkier...
Tha gap between the first tier and the second - Maxtor, Fujitsu, Western Digital is very significant.
So is performance...
Ultra DMA IDE is a good safe choice, then choose 10K RPM drives.
Stay away from 7200 and, especially, 5400 RPM.
They are significantly slower, especially where I/Os are of importance to you.
Also go for 2 identical drives.
Put OS on one, all applications on another.
So, in case of a crash, or OS reinstall, all of your programs are safe.

Good luck.

Hey felixml, what drives are IDE UDMA and 10K I thought the highest speed non scsi was 7200RPM (ATA100 now 133).

Is SCSI faster? yes. Is it worth the money for its real world advantage? Not really for at least 3X the price (you will not see 3X the performance) plus controller it's pretty hardcore especially your suggestion of running 2 of them. I ran SCSI for a while but in my latest 'puter I opted just for 7200rpm ATA100 drives.

I guess my suggestions are not for the beginners.
You either try to save a penny, or spend a buck and get something for it back.
My clients and I, personally, use machines built by SAG - sagelec.com.
They use the best parts, great service and advice.
Machines of every price range, but NOT for beginnners, all away to MOST expensive servers!
As far as justifying spending extra, it is, of course, up to you, but, I believe, if you want your machines really to do the job, fly at the same time and last forever - do not be cheap!!!

Drives, not exclusively, of course) make your machine, that what separates the boys from the men.

Right now there are not that many manufatures of drives. WD and IBM crosslicense and make for eachother. Maxtor and Quantum are the same. Toshiba and Samsung make drives along with Fujistu. Never had problems with Maxtor WD or IBM. Its take your choice now a days go for the most for the money.

from my experience, maxtor hds tend to develop bad sectors quickly and IBMs crash completely. i dunno if this is true for others tho, could just be my bad luck

I've owned and sold all differant brands of Hard drives, for 8-9 years now, and the ONLY drives I have had trouble with are fujitsu. They are LOW end junk, and only last a few hundred hours before trouble. The fastest, most low trouble drives for me have been the IBM deskstar drives. They are the fastest, most quiet drives I have used. Western Digital is almost identical, slightly slower, and noisier, but still a very good drive. Then come Maxtor, Quantum etc. Most of it is personal preferance, and what you use your puter for.
IBM, WD, and Maxter have ALL had a few bad drives get out, but ALL have been really good at Warranty and replacement, for me anyway, and that means alot to me.
If your running a REAL Server, then go for SCSI, 10,000 BRANDNAME drives and do it right, you can't afford to be down, but for "weekend warriors". and people that just game or "play around" with PCs, then IDE is fine and less money.
I have heard of people having some greef with the new 75 gig IBM drives, so you may not want one of these until they get this sorted out. I have just bought a 60 Gig IBM 7200 deskstar a couple of months ago and I LOVE this drive! It is NOTICEABLY faster than my previous 43 Gig IBM, and even Quieter.
Anyway, I hope some of this helps
SeeYa
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