Serial-ATA hard drive

[skydigger123]

I've narrowed down my search for a SATA drive to the following:
(80GB, 7200rpm, 8MB cache serial-ATA)

Western Digital WD800JD
Samsung SP0812C
Seagate ST380023AS

Anyone recommend against a certain brand? I couldn't care about a 1%
performance increase/decrease, just reliability for my data. I've
heard that the Samsung drives have pretty good reliably for a relative
newcomer to the game too...

TIA everyone!
S.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

I've narrowed down my search for a SATA drive to the following:
(80GB, 7200rpm, 8MB cache serial-ATA)

Western Digital WD800JD
Samsung SP0812C
Seagate ST380023AS

You missed the best one:
WDC Raptor
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=65

Anyone recommend against a certain brand? I couldn't care about a 1%
performance increase/decrease, just reliability for my data.

How about the 30% performance increase the Raptor will give over the others.

 

[skydigger123]

Not really concerneda bout performance... but if the Raptor seems to
be a reliable unit, then I'd buy based on that factor. I"m by no
means a power user at all, just a ... hmmm paranoid user!

 

[Impmon]

I've narrowed down my search for a SATA drive to the following:
(80GB, 7200rpm, 8MB cache serial-ATA)

Western Digital WD800JD
Samsung SP0812C
Seagate ST380023AS

I'd steer clear of WD for now, there seems to be a few bad drives
lately and I've had major problem with their support when I tried to
get RMA for 200GB that died after only 3 months.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

I'd steer clear of WD for now, there seems to be a few bad drives
lately

Nonsense, cite a reference.

and I've had major problem with their support when I tried to
get RMA for 200GB that died after only 3 months.

Other aren't reporting such.

 

[J. Clarke]

I've narrowed down my search for a SATA drive to the following:
(80GB, 7200rpm, 8MB cache serial-ATA)

Western Digital WD800JD
Samsung SP0812C
Seagate ST380023AS

Anyone recommend against a certain brand? I couldn't care about a 1%
performance increase/decrease, just reliability for my data. I've
heard that the Samsung drives have pretty good reliably for a relative
newcomer to the game too...

If you want reliability then use a RAID and a backup strategy. The
difference in reliability between brands of drives is negligible compared
to the difference in reliability between a single drive and a redundant
array. And when you're talking about a single drive you may get the brand
and model that is statistically the most reliable on the planet and still
get a bad one.

 

[Impmon]

Nonsense, cite a reference.

My favorite message forum (about 100 regulars, most of them in
Michigan), 8 of them had bad things to say about WD 120/160/200/250 GB
drives. It may be a bad batch in MI but that seems rather high number
for a small group.

I do know their newer "quiet" drives (with the black top cover) are
actually very noisy when they spin up. But once it gets going, you
won't hear anything.

Other aren't reporting such.

Maybe it's just me then or the support staff I got were in India and
can't understand the problem at all. The HD I had problem with, it
worked fine with the first 100GB but if I try to add more files, the
files starts getting corrupted and even caused the partition to be
lost. I have 2 other 200GB WD drives and they both work fine so it's
not my PC. WD basically told me if their diagnostic software doesn't
find problem, it's not a problem with the HD.

I think thgeir diagnostic software doesn't throughly test the drive,
only check for a few things. If I use scandisk, half of the disk
shows in bad sector. WD won't accept that and insisted my drive is OK
because their diagnostic software didn't find any problem.

When I repartitioned to 2x 100GB, the first partition works fine but
when I add files to the second partition, nothing survives in the
second partition *and* corrupts the first partition! Since then I
left the second one unpartitioned and unformatted.

 

[Mark M]

My favorite message forum (about 100 regulars, most of them in
Michigan), 8 of them had bad things to say about WD
120/160/200/250 GB drives. It may be a bad batch in MI but
that seems rather high number for a small group.

I do know their newer "quiet" drives (with the black top
cover) are actually very noisy when they spin up. But once it
gets going, you won't hear anything.

What is the temperature like of the Raptors?

 

[J. Clarke]

My favorite message forum (about 100 regulars, most of them in
Michigan), 8 of them had bad things to say about WD 120/160/200/250 GB
drives. It may be a bad batch in MI but that seems rather high number
for a small group.

I do know their newer "quiet" drives (with the black top cover) are
actually very noisy when they spin up. But once it gets going, you
won't hear anything.


Maybe it's just me then or the support staff I got were in India and
can't understand the problem at all. The HD I had problem with, it
worked fine with the first 100GB but if I try to add more files, the
files starts getting corrupted and even caused the partition to be
lost. I have 2 other 200GB WD drives and they both work fine so it's
not my PC. WD basically told me if their diagnostic software doesn't
find problem, it's not a problem with the HD.

I think thgeir diagnostic software doesn't throughly test the drive,
only check for a few things. If I use scandisk, half of the disk
shows in bad sector. WD won't accept that and insisted my drive is OK
because their diagnostic software didn't find any problem.

When I repartitioned to 2x 100GB, the first partition works fine but
when I add files to the second partition, nothing survives in the
second partition *and* corrupts the first partition! Since then I
left the second one unpartitioned and unformatted.

Are all the drives on the same host adapter? This is a known problem with
the the Windows XP default ATAPI driver but may not be present with
third-party drivers.

 

[Impmon]

Are all the drives on the same host adapter? This is a known problem with
the the Windows XP default ATAPI driver but may not be present with
third-party drivers.

I tried that bad drive as the only HD in the system, the problem still
persisted. So unless it's an issue with Win XP and one hard drive,
I'm pretty sure that's not it. :/ FWIW I'm not using default XP driver
because a few program are picky and refused to work with XP default
ATAPI driver anyway.