hi guys, I'm looking to buy a new hard drive around 200GB Serial ATA, and the most important thing i'm looking for is speed and reliability. Which one do you recommend, Western Digital or Maxtor?

Also which is more important, buffer size or RPM?

How much difference is there between 8MB and 16MB Buffer. And with 7,200rpm and 10,000rpm.

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

Never ever look past a seagate. Over 15 years I've had the least amount of problems with these drives.

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

Hitachi for performance, Seagate for warranty

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

between both of your options, I'd choose a WD, my last 4 HDs have been WDs and I've not had any probs with them. Also both buffer size and RPM are responsible for performance..... the Buffer is where the most important / most accessed data from the HD is stored so instead of the HD having to search on the entire platter (the bigger the platter the longer the search) for the data, its faster to pull it from the buffer which is lightning fast in comparison. Also the RPM of the platters means the platters are spinning much faster and data is accessed quicker. So you wanna get the largest buffer and fastest RPM.

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

just bought a G-Technology Firewire 800,, its so fast, moves 1 gig in 40 seconds

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

shop hard; you can find one of 'em for around $110 if you look good.

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

[url="http://www.pcmall.com/pcmall/shop/detail.asp?dpno=605777&store=pcmall&source=pwbfroogle&adcampaign=email,pwbfroogle&wt.mc_id=pwbfroogle"]THIS[/url] is a hard drive :lol:

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

a crash waiting to happen imo

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

I would recommend the Western Digital. I bought a 100 gb Maxtor and it died within a month :| The RMA process was awesome, but it was an invconvenience losing lots of data.

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

[QUOTE]just bought a G-Technology Firewire 800,, its so fast, moves 1 gig in 40 seconds [/QUOTE]

sweet Jay.... We got a bunch of those in at work.... They are shiny and metal.... And fast... :)

And we named the "big" one Terri-byte.... its odd having that size of a firewire drive, let alone pretty portable still....

gotta love that firewire 800..... and the ports/cables are so nice and sleek too

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

picked up the maxtar 120g hard drive about 6 months ago. I have not yet have one problem.

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

Western for me if I had to pick between the two. I am really a Seagate fan. They just make remarkable products.

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

just picked up the maxtor one touch 300 GB external hard drive with combo USB/Fireware capability and it works great! i highly recommend it...

i finally have gotten rid of my box full of ancient mp3s and put them into my new toy!

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

My personnal preferences: Seagate Hitachi Western Digital Maxtor

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

Seagate, simply and easy.

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

neither of those two. seagate is what i would go with.

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

Indeed...used to love WD's till one gave me the clicks of death one day just after the warranty expired...:( Shortly thereafter the Maxtor's I had died...THEN the Hitachi replacement I got from another computer (because that one went funky in about 7 months and didn't whir up fast enough to boot a lot) started to bite the dust as well.

Seagate for me now :RockOn: .... but 4 hard drive crashes in less then 2 years I wish upon no one. Luckily, overall data loss was relatively minimal.

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

damn dude, you had problems with your maxtor? i have two of 'em :shock:

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

[url=http://www.storagereview.com/]Storage Review[/url] is a good read.

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

Seagate have a good reputation, as you can see from the other posts. But they typically end up being more spendy.

I have all Western Digital with the 8MB cache. I just had a friend pick up a WD SATA with I think a 16MB cache? He says it just rocks. Windows boots in like 3 seconds.

I have had a good/bad relationship with my Western Digitals. They are decent drives for speed. But, as usual - with any drive - make sure you back up. You never know when a failure's gonna roll around.

But definitely look for cache, at least the 8MB. If you have a P4 with like an 800 Mhz bus, you may also want to look at the USB2/Firewire drives as they can push data over those like crazy. I use an external LaCie 200 GB over USB 2.0 at work - and I gotta say it is excellent.

I've heard that external drives are actually better, because they are designed for heat dissipation. You get longer life out of that. But I use the LaCie as my main data drive at work and I've never had any perf issues. I run a P4 2.6Ghz I think it is.

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

Don't buy a maxtor. WD all the way.

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

i would say go with western digi or seagate. i personally am a WD fan, but have heard nothing but good things about seagate. i've bought prolly 10 WD drives over the past decade or so and not one of them has ever failed... by comparison, i've had to replace every maxtor i ever owned (with a WD drive of course.)

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

[QUOTE=miketpoto]sweet Jay.... We got a bunch of those in at work.... They are shiny and metal.... And fast... :)

And we named the "big" one Terri-byte.... its odd having that size of a firewire drive, let alone pretty portable still....

gotta love that firewire 800..... and the ports/cables are so nice and sleek too[/QUOTE]

mike, they are sick right? super fast and designed to go with your mac....

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

Well, I'd would def go with WD IMO but you know what, I have both of them :lol: The WD is my primary hd tho (its a RAPTOR 10000RPM and 8mb) and works just fine. Long life to my HDs :twisted:

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

I got a 300GB Maxtor Diamiond Max earlier this year and I wouldn't care if all of my drives from now on are Maxtors. I've had WD, Maxtors, IBMs, Seagates...they're all the same on the inside. Look for price/performance over brand name.

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

agreed. seagate. I have 4

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

there is only 2 drives that are 10,000 rpm for sata and that is the western digital raptor drive which are very fast and i like mine but they only come in 36 gigs and 74 gigs.

For 7,200 rpm drives: maxtor maxline 3 seagate

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

so, it sounds like maxtors are good enough, phew! i though i needed to worry about my pair of them

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

Honestly it doesn't really matter what brand name you go with. They manufacture drives on such a large number theres bound to be haters and sackriders for every brand. As long as you stick with WD, Maxtor, Seagate you shouldn't go wrong. Overheating is also the biggest factor in harddrive failures.

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

i've had two western digitals crap out on me in 2 years, and i make sure my comp doesnt get moved around and has adequate ventalation (read 5 fans). wont be buying wd again...

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

wd, seagate, hitachi... all quality drives... drives aren't something that you have to worry much about when u are building a pc...

Re: Western Digital or Maxtor?

OK, how about external HD's. I'm getting ready to move and am thinking of using my laptop as my internet computer but it has a 4 gig HDD in it.

What do you think of Seagate internal laptop HDD? I saw them at Best Buy and they seem to be a pretty good deal.