which HDD should i get?

[mc-dexter]

ok for £45 i can get either:

Western Digital 500Gb 16Mb Cache

or

Maxtor 500Gb 32Mb Cache

i've never owned a WD always maxtor/seagate, and i've had a few fail on me, but they have been fairly old, 10 - 40Gb.

 

[spearman914]

WD 500GB IMO is better. Maxtor kinda sucks. But that's my opinion.

 

[reverze]

I'd always pick Western Digital over any competitior..

 

[mc-dexter]

its the 32Mb Cache what cought my eye to be honest. (Maxtor)

 

[zithe]

Out of all the brands I've tried (Hitachi, Seagate, and WD) I'd say WD was the loudest. It's a very loud drive, but I'm using a new IDE drive. Dunno if it's a whole lot different, but I hear many WD drives are loud. XD

Other than that, I've had no problems. My Hitachi lasted 5 years. Haven't had the other two long enough for them to die. Seagate runs incredibly quiet, imho. I'm a freak about silence. XD I'll shutup now.

 

[BrooksyX]

Maxtor is really Seagate. They purchased them a few years back. I have usually gone with Western Digitial, never had a single problem with them. I have a 10 yeard old 20gb WD still running strong in my little brothers WOW machine. I have a 160gb Maxtor drive that i used for my modded Xbox 1, its still running strong after 2 years. The only seagate drive I have ever owned died on me after a few months.

I would go with the Western Digital.

 

[mc-dexter]

Maxtor is really Seagate. They purchased them a few years back. I have usually gone with Western Digitial, never had a single problem with them. I have a 10 yeard old 20gb WD still running strong in my little brothers WOW machine. I have a 160gb Maxtor drive that i used for my modded Xbox 1, its still running strong after 2 years. The only seagate drive I have ever owned died on me after a few months.

I would go with the Western Digital.

how come you clearly state that Maxtor is Seagate, but yet your talking as they are diffrent drives. but anyways my Maxtor is 2yr 2month old now, the only thing it doesnt like is being partitioned. besides that its fine

 

[BrooksyX]

how come you clearly state that Maxtor is Seagate, but yet your talking as they are diffrent drives. but anyways my Maxtor is 2yr 2month old now, the only thing it doesnt like is being partitioned. besides that its fine

Sorry I forgot to mention but I am pretty sure that i bought the Maxtor drive before they were purchased and taken over by Seagate. But now that I think about it I had a friend who had a Maxtor drive that failed (know for sure that it was made before the takeover).

 

[AsRock]

WD all the way...

 

[J-Man]

Never had problems with Maxtor drives.

 

[NamesDontMatter]

go with whichever you like, its generally a matter of luck. All hd companies make "noisy drives." The best way to do it is go with the fewest platters per hd. Brand dosent matter too much now most of them have fixed their major flaws. Most people who "don't like" a brand generally had one drive fail from them, and never bought from that company again. On the flip side they could have just had many good drives from a brand "they like." If you ask me its luck of the draw and how well UPS handles your package. But generally less platters = lower chance of failure. And a quiter drive.

 

[kysg]

meh, if you want something quiet get a server class hdd, thats just the bottom line lower platters don't solve anything. anyways doesn't matter because maxtor was purchased by seagate. Heck I have to make a decision on either a 640gb hdd or an ssd drive.

 

[mc-dexter]

noise isnt too much of an issue, my fans drowns the sound of my HDD's as it is, so ya no.

 

[mc-dexter]

go with whichever you like, its generally a matter of luck. All hd companies make "noisy drives." The best way to do it is go with the fewest platters per hd. Brand dosent matter too much now most of them have fixed their major flaws. Most people who "don't like" a brand generally had one drive fail from them, and never bought from that company again. On the flip side they could have just had many good drives from a brand "they like." If you ask me its luck of the draw and how well UPS handles your package. But generally less platters = lower chance of failure. And a quiter drive.

Maxtor as i've seen is the only company making their HDD's with less platters as standard... like i said, as i've seen.

EDIT, my maxtors do run pretty hot, 35 degrees on average, with room temp 24 - 27 degrees. so i guess thats not that bad come to think of it?

still... my brothers samsung spinpoints run cooler in the same room but with a diffrent fan.

 

[AsRock]

Maxtor as i've seen is the only company making their HDD's with less platters as standard... like i said, as i've seen.

EDIT, my maxtors do run pretty hot, 35 degrees on average, with room temp 24 - 27 degrees. so i guess thats not that bad come to think of it?

still... my brothers samsung spinpoints run cooler in the same room but with a diffrent fan.

OOh i hear my WD's all 6 of them even more so when the system shuts down lol. But they work like a charm so i am happy they don't even lose sync either at all.

All though i like to hear the HDD i know it's actually doing some thing then.

 

[NamesDontMatter]

meh, if you want something quiet get a server class hdd, thats just the bottom line lower platters don't solve anything. anyways doesn't matter because maxtor was purchased by seagate. Heck I have to make a decision on either a 640gb hdd or an ssd drive.

. . . nope your wrong. . . Its just a fact of the way the world works, less parts = less chance of failure. Why do you think electric cars are so appealing, high efficiency from less moving parts, thus less stuff to fix when something breaks! For those who still don't understand this you might want to read an article on how hard drives work something like this http://icrontic.com/articles/how_hard_drives_work. More platters means lower tolerances between platters. Lower the platters the lower the chance of failure and generally less noise(because of less moving parts).

From an engineering perspective their are many factors related to how many platters are used in a disk drive. Drives with more platters are more difficult to engineer due to the increased mass of the spindle unit. The require perfect alignment of all the drives, and if they are not your drive wont last long. More platters means greater difficulty keeping noise and vibration down. More platter the greater the rotational mass which also means slower response to start and stop the drive (like a flywheel). Manufacturers reduce platter count to improve seek time and has been the trend until we see SSD drives, which are impractical for mainstream users at this point because of the cost/space ratio.

And my rant is over, if you seek more knowledge on how HD's work see a la google.

 

[Asylum]

These seagate 250's i run are really fast!!

 

[mc-dexter]

These seagate 250's i run are really fast!!

i want 500Gb, and its a fair bit cheaper buying 1x 500gb than it is 2x 250gb's

 

[psyko12]

I had tried Seagate, and Maxtor (before Seagate got em) I had also tried em but it failed on me after some months, that was an 80 gb drive from maxtor. Now I'm still running a 15 gb Seagate drive from 1997, up to now and it hasn't failed me yet. And also I'm now running on WD, they're pretty solid for me, so far still alive and kicking.

 

[reverze]

Missed the 32MB cache part.

In that case, definitely go for the Maxtor...

 

[kysg]

. . . nope your wrong. . . Its just a fact of the way the world works, less parts = less chance of failure. Why do you think electric cars are so appealing, high efficiency from less moving parts, thus less stuff to fix when something breaks! For those who still don't understand this you might want to read an article on how hard drives work something like this http://icrontic.com/articles/how_hard_drives_work. More platters means lower tolerances between platters. Lower the platters the lower the chance of failure and generally less noise(because of less moving parts).

From an engineering perspective their are many factors related to how many platters are used in a disk drive. Drives with more platters are more difficult to engineer due to the increased mass of the spindle unit. The require perfect alignment of all the drives, and if they are not your drive wont last long. More platters means greater difficulty keeping noise and vibration down. More platter the greater the rotational mass which also means slower response to start and stop the drive (like a flywheel). Manufacturers reduce platter count to improve seek time and has been the trend until we see SSD drives, which are impractical for mainstream users at this point because of the cost/space ratio.

And my rant is over, if you seek more knowledge on how HD's work see a la google.

Man please I'm not trying to hear this bs about less parts. And I'm not gonna go there about cars. And lastly like it doesn't matter because it's just an RMA for the hdd. And I'm like I'm not bringing up cars because an analogy for that is lame seeing being that I hate electric cars anyways even if it is for the environment and all that jazz...

 

[crazy pyro]

I'm running that maxtor HDD, no problems partitioning as far as I can see, noise is drowned out by my CPU cooler. It's pretty fast for load times in-game etc.

 

[OnBoard]

See if there is Samsung F1 series available for the price, these things are fast. 94.2MB/s avarage read with HD Tach, I can highly recommend. First half of my disk is over 100MB/s, Raptor is slower and SSDs barely faster at 120-130MB/s

http://www.guru3d.com/article/gskill-ssd-solid-state-disk-64-gb-review/8

 

[mc-dexter]

i agree those Samsungs are fast

but the shop doesnt stock them and i'd rather not order an HDD from anywhere online, more hassle if i need to return.

 

[ShadowFold]

Go with that Western Digital. I really wouldn't trust a Maxtor in my rig, I don't care who owns them. The 32mb cache doesn't do much in terms of performance concerning 16mb drives.