Hard Drive Recommendation

[Ron Reaugh]

On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 20:46:14 -0500, in
comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage , "Jim Macklin"
<p51mustang[threeX12]@xxxhotmail.calm> in

To keep it simple, what do you do with the computer and what
will you plan on doing in the future?
You can buy a SATA drive or drives and install them, leaving
the OS on the original EIDE drive. Then move the MY
Document folders and data to the SATA drives. That will
open up 20 to 30 GB on the boot drive. If your Dell has
SATA built-in it must be a 4700 or newer computer. How long
do you intend to keep it may be a factor in how much you
want to spend.

It is our general purpose home/business computer. I think I would like
two more years out of it, other than the drive it meets all of our
current needs. I had not thought of keeping the current drive. And
just moving the data. That would probably do great. With a few
exceptions, there is little "data" in Program Files. I would like the
increased speed from the SATA drive

SATA drives are not faster because of SATA. Late model fast SATA drives are
fast because they are 7200 RPM and have fast seeks.

For fast get WDC Raptors or Hitachi 7K500. though. I suppose it depends on

how much work I want to do. Divide a days work over the next two years
in delays.

What do you think of this drive?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822148034

It's ok but get a Raptor or 7K500.

 

[Odie Ferrous]

And lower performance. Use WD, Hitachi or Maxtor.

WD? Not too bad. Not the best.

Hitachi? You jest, surely?

Maxtor? Ditto above.

As was mentioned earlier in this thread, no-one is going to notice a
speed difference between *most* of the current mix of drives.

However, you have recommended the two ***worst*** drives on the market,
in terms of reliability. (Hitachi and Maxtor.)

Give me a Samsung above all those you recommended. When a Samsung
fails, it does it in style and is very difficult to recover, but lately
their quality has picked up substantially.

Seagate is what you want, although I did get in a couple last week for
recovery (the first Seagates for months.)


Odie

 

[Ron Reaugh]

WD? Not too bad. Not the best.

Hitachi? You jest, surely?

Maxtor? Ditto above.

As was mentioned earlier in this thread, no-one is going to notice a
speed difference between *most* of the current mix of drives.

However, you have recommended the two ***worst*** drives on the market,
in terms of reliability. (Hitachi and Maxtor.)

Wacko.

Give me a Samsung above all those you recommended. When a Samsung
fails, it does it in style and is very difficult to recover, but lately
their quality has picked up substantially.

Enough said.

 

[Odie Ferrous]

Enough said.

You clearly have little real-world experience, then.

When you leave school and get out there in the big, bad world of IT,
you'll learn soon enough.


Odie

 

[Ron Reaugh]

You clearly have little real-world experience, then.

When you leave school and get out there in the big, bad world of IT,
you'll learn soon enough.

Who is the wacko newbie?

 

[Odie Ferrous]

Who is the wacko newbie?

If you have an identity problem, Ron, I suggest you sort it out
yourself.


Odie

 

[Neill Massello]

2) Is there any technical reason to go larger or smaller? That is, is
there some "sweet spot" of performance or something that I am missing.
I just figured that 160 was sufficiently large and at a reasonable
price. But if 200 or 250 gig drives are better I will go with them.

Within the same brand/generation/family of drives, there is generally no
difference in performance between models with different capacities.
These days, the (increasingly incremental) speed improvements come
mostly from increases in the "areal density" of data on the platters.
That goes up with each generation of drives; but within a single
generation, capacity differences come from the number of platters used,
not from the areal density of each platter.

The price per Gigabyte "sweet spot" usually comes just before the
highest capacity model in the same drive family. Most of the 160GB
models being sold now belong to the preceding generation of drives, so
you might be able to get one at a lower cost per gig than more recent
larger models.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

If you have an identity problem, Ron, I suggest you sort it out
yourself.

They always soon expose themselves.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

Within the same brand/generation/family of drives, there is generally no
difference in performance between models with different capacities.

A small advantage goes to the larger ones as head switches cost less time
than adjacent track seeks.

 

[Rod Speed]

And lower performance.

Wrong. As always.

Use WD, Hitachi or Maxtor.

No thanks.

40g -> 160g is his direction/goal and that images is feasible.

A real clone makes a lot more sense. There are free cloners around.

 

[Rod Speed]

Jim Macklin <p51mustang[threeX12]@xxxhotmail.calm> wrote

To keep it simple, what do you do with the computer
and what will you plan on doing in the future?

You can buy a SATA drive or drives and install them, leaving
the OS on the original EIDE drive. Then move the MY
Document folders and data to the SATA drives. That will
open up 20 to 30 GB on the boot drive. If your Dell has SATA
built-in it must be a 4700 or newer computer. How long do you
intend to keep it may be a factor in how much you want to spend.

It is our general purpose home/business computer. I think I would like
two more years out of it, other than the drive it meets all of our
current needs. I had not thought of keeping the current drive. And
just moving the data. That would probably do great. With a few
exceptions, there is little "data" in Program Files. I would like the
increased speed from the SATA drive though.

Yeah, its generally best to make the new drive the
boot drive, because its normally noticeaby faster.

I suppose it depends on how much work I want to do.
Divide a days work over the next two years in delays.

What do you think of this drive?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822148034

Seagate Barracuda. Too noisy and gets too hot for my taste.

They do work fine tho and have the best warranty available currently.

I liked that warranty and the specs seem good. Noise I don't mind,
but heat is not a good thing. Well, at least I am in the right area.

I should have said that the heat wont be a
problem with the way you cool your case.

I prefer to have no fans apart from the power supply
and cpu fans and deliberately choose those to be silent.

Thanks to all.

No problem.

 

[Rod Speed]

That list is pure bull.

You'd be the expert on pure bull.

Never did realise that the IBM 75GXPs had a problem.

 

[Matt Silberstein]

On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 20:46:14 -0500, in
comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage , "Jim Macklin"
<p51mustang[threeX12]@xxxhotmail.calm> in

To keep it simple, what do you do with the computer and what
will you plan on doing in the future?
You can buy a SATA drive or drives and install them, leaving
the OS on the original EIDE drive. Then move the MY
Document folders and data to the SATA drives. That will
open up 20 to 30 GB on the boot drive. If your Dell has
SATA built-in it must be a 4700 or newer computer. How long
do you intend to keep it may be a factor in how much you
want to spend.

It is our general purpose home/business computer. I think I would like
two more years out of it, other than the drive it meets all of our
current needs. I had not thought of keeping the current drive. And
just moving the data. That would probably do great. With a few
exceptions, there is little "data" in Program Files. I would like the
increased speed from the SATA drive

SATA drives are not faster because of SATA. Late model fast SATA drives are
fast because they are 7200 RPM and have fast seeks.

For fast get WDC Raptors or Hitachi 7K500. though. I suppose it depends on

how much work I want to do. Divide a days work over the next two years
in delays.

What do you think of this drive?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822148034

It's ok but get a Raptor

Does not seem to be optimized for my needs.

or 7K500.

I think I am going to stay with a somewhat smaller drive.


--
Matt Silberstein

All in all, if I could be any animal, I would want to be
a duck or a goose. They can fly, walk, and swim. Plus,
there there is a certain satisfaction knowing that at the
end of your life you will taste good with an orange sauce
or, in the case of a goose, a chestnut stuffing.

 

[Peter]

It is our general purpose home/business computer. I think I would like

I think I am going to stay with a somewhat smaller drive.

Whatever drive you choose, don't forget that they tend to
fail. Think about backup. Or, do never put anything important
on that hard drive.

 

[Matt Silberstein]

Whatever drive you choose, don't forget that they tend to
fail. Think about backup. Or, do never put anything important
on that hard drive.

I plan on using my current drive as the backup for now. Then, when the
10K drives come down a bit in price move to that as my primary and use
the old new drive as my backup.


--
Matt Silberstein

All in all, if I could be any animal, I would want to be
a duck or a goose. They can fly, walk, and swim. Plus,
there there is a certain satisfaction knowing that at the
end of your life you will taste good with an orange sauce
or, in the case of a goose, a chestnut stuffing.

 

[Eric Gisin]

They always soon expose themselves.

So Ron, were do you expose yourself?

 

[Gale]

Matt, cut through all the bull and go to Best Buys, they had a Western
Digital 120gb ide disk for $39.99 after rebates. Can't beat the price, it's
3 times what you have now and will do you just fine.

message I have a Dell computer, running XP Pro SP2. It came with a 40 gig EIDE
drive which is almost filled. It also has a SATA interface on board.
So I figured I would jump to a 160 gig SATA drive. Here are my
questions:

1) What brand should I get? Is anyone making particularly
better/faster drives today? (I know there is going to be smoke from
that. Sorry.)

2) Is there any technical reason to go larger or smaller? That is, is
there some "sweet spot" of performance or something that I am missing.
I just figured that 160 was sufficiently large and at a reasonable
price. But if 200 or 250 gig drives are better I will go with them.

3) I figured I would use DrvImagerXP
(http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/DrvImagerXP-Download-1629.html)
to move everything from my old drive, then tell the system to boot
from the new drive. Is that correct?

TIA.



--
Matt Silberstein

All in all, if I could be any animal, I would want to be
a duck or a goose. They can fly, walk, and swim. Plus,
there there is a certain satisfaction knowing that at the
end of your life you will taste good with an orange sauce
or, in the case of a goose, a chestnut stuffing.

 

[Bob]

Matt, cut through all the bull and go to Best Buys, they had a Western
Digital 120gb ide disk for $39.99 after rebates. Can't beat the price

Assuming you actually do collect the rebate.

Last time I trusted a rebate was with McAfee in 1999. The rebate
company ran off with all the rebate money, so I never got the rebate
from them. McAfee condescendingly rebated me half the rebate amount
but only after I threatened to call the state AG.

As a follow up, I discovered the unposted site where I could get free
SuperDATs so I never paid the pricks another penny yet got about 5
years free upgrade/updates. Serves them right.

Before that I spent about 1 year trying to collect the rebate from HP
for a printer I bought. HP was nice about it eventually - they not
only gave me the full rebate 1 year late, but sent a very nice
bullshit letter to rationalize their ****up.

Then there's the multitudinous stories a few years back about the
infamous Zone Alarm rebate. I had enough sense to stay as far away
from those crooks as humanly possible, but many others fell for their
con act. I do not believe they ever got their rebate money.

So, good luck.

--

Map of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
http://home.houston.rr.com/rkba/vrwc.html

"Whatever crushes individuality is despotism."
--John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty"

 

[Gale]

I've done literally hundreds of rebates and have never had any problems. I
would never use "having to send in a rebate" as a reason not to purchase
something on sale.

Matt, cut through all the bull and go to Best Buys, they had a Western
Digital 120gb ide disk for $39.99 after rebates. Can't beat the price

Assuming you actually do collect the rebate.

Last time I trusted a rebate was with McAfee in 1999. The rebate
company ran off with all the rebate money, so I never got the rebate
from them. McAfee condescendingly rebated me half the rebate amount
but only after I threatened to call the state AG.

As a follow up, I discovered the unposted site where I could get free
SuperDATs so I never paid the pricks another penny yet got about 5
years free upgrade/updates. Serves them right.

Before that I spent about 1 year trying to collect the rebate from HP
for a printer I bought. HP was nice about it eventually - they not
only gave me the full rebate 1 year late, but sent a very nice
bullshit letter to rationalize their ****up.

Then there's the multitudinous stories a few years back about the
infamous Zone Alarm rebate. I had enough sense to stay as far away
from those crooks as humanly possible, but many others fell for their
con act. I do not believe they ever got their rebate money.

So, good luck.

--

Map of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
http://home.houston.rr.com/rkba/vrwc.html

"Whatever crushes individuality is despotism."
--John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty"

 

[J. Clarke]

WD? Not too bad. Not the best.

Hitachi? You jest, surely?

Maxtor? Ditto above.

As was mentioned earlier in this thread, no-one is going to notice a
speed difference between *most* of the current mix of drives.

However, you have recommended the two ***worst*** drives on the market,
in terms of reliability. (Hitachi and Maxtor.)

Give me a Samsung above all those you recommended. When a Samsung
fails, it does it in style and is very difficult to recover, but lately
their quality has picked up substantially.

Seagate is what you want, although I did get in a couple last week for
recovery (the first Seagates for months.)

I still think that you might be working from a skewed sample. What steps
have you taken to ensure that the sample you are seeing is random and
representative?