Hard Drive Recommendation

[J. Clarke]

You are first to report 15k rpm SATA. Do you know the brand name?
Or you were thinking about SAS drive?

15,000 RPM SCSI drives, which are not SAS but can be installed in SAS, are
commonplace. You can find small ones on ebay for 30 bucks.

One is not constrained to use consumer drives in personal machines you know.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

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?

Obviously none. For starters he'd need to know the sales volume in units to
his customer base. If you believe what he says then the reasonable
conclusion is that his customers are heavy Hitachi and Maxtor users.

 

[Bob]

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.

Please do not top post - it is the sign of an amateur.

It has been a while since the last rebate fiasco, so maybe the govt
clamped down.


--

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"

 

[Bob]

15,000 RPM SCSI drives, which are not SAS but can be installed in SAS, are
commonplace. You can find small ones on ebay for 30 bucks.

One is not constrained to use consumer drives in personal machines you know.

When are we gonna get afforable GB ram disks?


--

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"

 

[Rod Speed]

Go and **** yourself, net nazi.

Please do not top post - it is the sign of an amateur.

It has been a while since the last rebate fiasco, so maybe the govt
clamped down.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

15,000 RPM SCSI drives, which are not SAS

But a SAS drive may be mistaken for being a SATA drive, either by name
or by appearance.

but can be installed in SAS,

Nonsense.
Not without some kind of bridge, which certainly won't be a very common
consumer issue.
SAS backplanes however may have the capability of accepting SATA
drives but these too won't likely be consumer items.

are commonplace. You can find small ones on ebay for 30 bucks.

Which are old and SLOOOOOOW!!!!!

One is not constrained to use consumer drives in personal machines you know.

Most SCSI controllers are actually designed for 'personal machines'.

 

[Odie Ferrous]

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?

I freely admit I am working from a skewed sample; I see a fraction of
the volume of drives seen by companies such as OnTrack, Vogon, etc, so
all my data will be taken from a smaller pool, and hence less accurate.

Unfortunately, I cannot take the above steps to determine the randomness
of my sample; however, I can see no reason why I should be sent more of
one type of drive than another.

And it's not as if I service only the UK market - almost 50% of my
recovery work comes in from the USA and Europe.

I do see a lot of drives and for a while now, Seagate has been the one I
have seen least of.

About 18 months ago, I was seeing a lot of Samsung drives; I have had
very few of these in recently.

I still get Hitachi drives in, although because they are arriving in
ever decreasing volumes, I get the feeling that the majority of those
destined to fail have done so. Brand new Hitachi drives are appearing
to be substantially more reliable than those manufactured a couple of
years ago, although I would still be reluctant to touch one yet for my
own use.

Maxtors - and particularly those in drive enclosures (OneTouch
specifically) are still falling over. They appear to suffer more from
heat-induced problems than any other drive on the market.

The above are my own observations only, drawing from my own experience,
and not from any other source whatsoever.


Odie

 

[Bob I]

All in due time.

When are we gonna get afforable GB ram disks?

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 23:37:18 GMT, Matt Silberstein

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'd look for 3+ year warranty, and go Seagate as they're 5 yrs

2) Is there any technical reason to go larger or smaller?

Yes; if your motherboard BIOS or if you run an OS that can't "see"
over 137G, then 120G is as high as you should go - else the "sweet
spot" is 200G and I'd go there.

The following OSs are 137G-OK:
- XP SP1
- XP SP2

The following OSs fail over 137G:
- MS-DOS
- Win9x, including DOS modes thereof
- NT up to and including XP Gold (i.e. pre-SP1)

I'm not sure if any versions of Win2000 are OK over 137G; I'd guess
some SP levels might be (current level is SP4), so you'd have to
confirm that via the MS web site.

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.

200G is currently sweet; over that, pricing gets hairy. It's cheaper
and faster to do a RAID 0 of 2 x 200G than 1 x 400G.

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?

Or BING from www.bootitng.com, or possibly the HD vendor's tools, if
they provide any for such purpose. I'm an OEM, so I get my HDs "raw";
if buying retail (fancy box, fancy price) you may have value added.

------------------------ ---- --- -- - - - -

Forget http://cquirke.blogspot.com and check out a
better one at http://topicdrift.blogspot.com instead!

 

[Bob Davis]

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.)

No, and except for the Raptors (already mentioned here) the SATA's don't
perform any or much better than the older PATA drives, and although are
reportedly less expensive to produce are still generally more expensive.
From time to time a bargain surfaces on drives (usually PATA's), and you can
keep track of the sales on www.dealnews.com, among other deal sites. I've
seen drives <250gb, usually PATA, priced at around 30¢/gb, although most
involve mail-in rebates, a hassle some don't want to fool with.

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?

I haven't heard of DrvImagerXP, but most (all?) drive mfr's offer cloning
software for that purpose that is on accompanying CD's (retail) or by
download from their sites. I would go with that option.

As for reliability, I haven't had a drive failure in years (KOW), and most
of my drives are WD's. I have five WD's (two are Raptors), one IBM, and one
Maxtor running on this machine (all but three in mobil racks, USB, or
firewire and used only sporadically). Cooling is important, and I always
have a fan blowing on the HD housing, which in addition to luck may be a
factor in my good fortune with drives.

 

[Bob Davis]

The following OSs fail over 137G:
- MS-DOS
- Win9x, including DOS modes thereof
- NT up to and including XP Gold (i.e. pre-SP1)

I ran two 100gb drives in a hardware RAID0 array in Win98SE for a year or
more without problems. SE saw the drive as 200gb and never burped. I never
came even close to filling it with data, nor was even 137gb approached, but
the full 200gb was recognized by the OS.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

I ran two 100gb drives in a hardware RAID0 array in Win98SE for a year or
more without problems. SE saw the drive as 200gb and never burped. I never
came even close to filling it with data, nor was even 137gb approached, but
the full 200gb was recognized by the OS.

Recognized in a single partition/drive letter?

 

[J. Clarke]

I ran two 100gb drives in a hardware RAID0 array in Win98SE for a year or
more without problems. SE saw the drive as 200gb and never burped. I
never came even close to filling it with data, nor was even 137gb
approached, but the full 200gb was recognized by the OS.

That's an array. The 137 gig limit applies to single IDE drives and is the
result of the drivers not being able to handle the addressing mode used by
IDE drives larger than 137 gig.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 23:37:18 GMT, Matt Silberstein



I'd look for 3+ year warranty, and go Seagate as they're 5 yrs


Yes; if your motherboard BIOS or if you run an OS that can't "see"
over 137G, then 120G is as high as you should go - else the "sweet
spot" is 200G and I'd go there.

The following OSs are 137G-OK:
- XP SP1
- XP SP2

The following OSs fail over 137G:

- MS-DOS

Doubtful.
As long as BIOS is 48-bit LBA compatible it should work.

- Win9x, including DOS modes thereof

Not if you can get a 48-bit LBA compatible driver.

- NT up to and including XP Gold (i.e. pre-SP1)

Probably the same as for Win9x.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

That's an array. The 137 gig limit applies to single IDE drives and is the
result of the drivers not being able to handle the addressing mode used by
IDE drives larger than 137 gig.

Well, I'll bet that a single 200GB drive in W98se still works on that array
controller. So where exactly does that 137GB limit lie in W98SE.
Apparent;y it's not in the core of OS's FAT32 file system as a previous
poster claimed. Can one use a single 200GB drive on an Intel ICH5 or ICH6
with the latest Intel drivers in W98se?

 

[Bob I]

Well, I'll bet that a single 200GB drive in W98se still works on that array
controller. So where exactly does that 137GB limit lie in W98SE.
Apparent;y it's not in the core of OS's FAT32 file system as a previous
poster claimed. Can one use a single 200GB drive on an Intel ICH5 or ICH6
with the latest Intel drivers in W98se?

Dunno but 8 TB is a lot of space for a Win98 box!

The maximum possible number of clusters on a volume using the FAT32 file
system is 268,435,445. With a maximum of 32 KB per cluster with space
for the file allocation table (FAT), this equates to a maximum disk size
of approximately 8 terabytes (TB).

 

[mgmawji]

After the last few exchanges l am not sure to post here for this
particular thread.
Anyways, here goes

For the last 4 months having tested numerous SATA drives we found the
WD drives to come out on top, and we use these on our NAS appliances -
Model is WD2500SD this is the 250GB version. performance and
reliability has been good.
Hope this helps
Our NAS applaince is the NexonNAS 1000

Dawoodm
www.thenexon.com

 

[mgmawji]

After the last few exchanges l am not sure to post here for this
particular thread.
Anyways, here goes

For the last 4 months having tested numerous SATA drives we found the
WD drives to come out on top, and we use these on our NAS appliances -
Model is WD2500SD this is the 250GB version. performance and
reliability has been good.
Hope this helps
Our NAS applaince is the NexonNAS 1000

Dawoodm
www.thenexon.com

 

[mgmawji]

After the last few exchanges l am not sure to post here for this
particular thread.
Anyways, here goes

For the last 4 months having tested numerous SATA drives we found the
WD drives to come out on top, and we use these on our NAS appliances -
Model is WD2500SD this is the 250GB version. performance and
reliability has been good.
Hope this helps
Our NAS applaince is the NexonNAS 1000

Dawoodm
www.thenexon.com

 

[Ron Reaugh]

After the last few exchanges l am not sure to post here for this
particular thread.
Anyways, here goes

For the last 4 months having tested numerous SATA drives we found the
WD drives to come out on top,

Describe "top" in detail please.