Help me choose a Hardrive.

[Komete]

Hi all, I'm looking for a sata II hardrive with a capacity between 250gigs to 500. It's to replace my two 32gig wd raptors raid 0. I use them as my vista install drive. Eventually I plan to buy a 2nd to raid them later down the road.

I transfer a lot of video between drives to give you an idea of some of the more intensive transfers I do. Also I do a lot of file unzipping.

I hear 3 platters and 32meg cache is the way to go. However, they don't exactly advertise how many platters they have. Do you guys have any recommendations? I'd like to spend around 50 to 75 US.

[Vicar]

Samsung or Western digital do good Hd in the range you want. Take your pick,it's a matter of personal choise, either will serve you well.

[Thrax]

For that price range, you can't really be picky about platter count. I recommend Seagate. The difference between my 2005 7200RPM WD and my 2009 7200RPM Seagate is astounding.

[Leonardo]

Go Seagate and get the newest model they have that's in your price range. Get the retail model and have their marvellous 5 yr warranty.The difference between my 2005 7200RPM WD and my 2009 7200RPM Seagate is astounding. What he said.

Edit: Oh, looks like Seagates warranty on retail drives has now dropped to three years. I'd still go Seagate without hesitation.

[Cliff_Forster]

Go Seagate and get the newest model they have that's in your price range. Get the retail model and have their marvellous 5 yr warranty.What he said.

Edit: Oh, looks like Seagates warranty on retail drives has now dropped to three years. I'd still go Seagate without hesitation.

I have a Western Digital drive in my personal machine, but I have been doing builds lately with Seagate Drives, and honeslty, the Seagate drives seem to have a little extra zip, not night and day, but they just seem to have a little extra going for them, as inexpensive as it is to get a 7200 RPM SATA II drive with 32mb of cache now, you may as well.

Personaly, I can't wait for SSD to become a viable option. I think there are going to be some OS optimizations in the final Windows 7 release combined with improved price per GB that will make nice silent high performing SSD Raid arrays the standard, until then, buy yourself a Seagate drive, they are good performers.

[the_technocrat]

Hi all, I'm looking for a sata II hardrive with a capacity between 250gigs to 500. It's to replace my two 32gig wd raptors raid 0. I use them as my vista install drive. Eventually I plan to buy a 2nd to raid them later down the road.

I transfer a lot of video between drives to give you an idea of some of the more intensive transfers I do. Also I do a lot of file unzipping.

I hear 3 platters and 32meg cache is the way to go. However, they don't exactly advertise how many platters they have. Do you guys have any recommendations? I'd like to spend around 50 to 75 US.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=Property&Subcategory=14&Description=&Type=&N=2010150014&srchInDesc=&MinPrice=&MaxPrice=&PropertyCodeValue=359%3A15133&PropertyCodeValue=353%3A7886&PropertyCodeValue=353%3A13428&PropertyCodeValue=353%3A7797&PropertyCodeValue=353%3A7873

[Komete]

Guys, I'm looking at the reviews on newegg on the Seagate drives. I usually go with WD but your posts and online reviews show Seagate to be a good buy. But it seems to me there has been a recent bad patch of hardrives for them. Plenty of people complaining about them crashing within the 1st month of usuage. A few months ago things looked better. Has anyone heard anything about them?

Googleing around I see plenty of problems too. Hrmm, tough call. I'd hate to end up with a brick.

[Cliff_Forster]

Guys, I'm looking at the reviews on newegg on the Seagate drives. I usually go with WD but your posts and online reviews show Seagate to be a good buy. But it seems to me there has been a recent bad patch of hardrives for them. Plenty of people complaining about them crashing within the 1st month of usuage. A few months ago things looked better. Has anyone heard anything about them?

Googleing around I see plenty of problems too. Hrmm, tough call. I'd hate to end up with a brick.

If your more comfortable with the Western Digital brand, I would say nothing wrong with that.

To me, the Seagate drives I have installed do seem to have a tiny bit more zip, but are we talking a night and day difference over comperatble SATA II drives? Not really.

I have Western Digital drives in my personal machines, not so much because I felt that they were superior to Seagate or anything like that, the WD drives just happened to be on a good sale when I purchased them, and they are performing just fine.

[Thrax]

Seagate suffered a small batch of drives with bum firmware that corrupted data. It was only on their 1.5TB drives.

[Leonardo]

Komete, thanks for bringing that up. Thrax, I was scratching my head trying to remember which drive it was. Thanks, you saved me the look-up time. Komete, the problems, IIRC, were with a single model of drive, not systemic throughout Seagate's offerings.

Cliff, I'm like you. I'll buy Western Digital also, if a bargain pops up. In four desktops I'm running a mix of Seagates, WDs, and a Maxtor-branded Seagate.

[Mt_Goat]

I have purchased several Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148262) in the past few months with zero problems. Two are currently in my main rig right now. Very highly recommended!

[Komete]

Aight, Seagate it is. I gotta say, it's nice just posting in a forum and letting other people do my research for me. lol I used to spend months nit picking over every single part. Just call me the lazy enthusiast.

[Komete]

I think I'll go with this one. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148288

[Zuntar]

Nice choice! I am usualy a WD man, but I like the seagates just about as much.

I have purchased several Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148262) in the past few months with zero problems. Two are currently in my main rig right now. Very highly recommended!
I think i'm going to get 2 of this one^^ for RAID 1 for the OS of my home server, as my 250 WD just died several days ago.

Let us know what you think about the performance

[Mt_Goat]

Nice choice! I am usualy a WD man, but I like the seagates just about as much.


I think i'm going to get 2 of this one^^ for RAID 1 for the OS of my home server, as my 250 WD just died several days ago.

Let us know what you think about the performance

If you put them in RAID just be sure they are the same firmware. If not just update the older version to the same. So many folks don't realize how big of an issue the firmware being the same for HD's in a RAID array is in real life. I am surprised at how many supposedly tech savvy people don't realize that you can upgrade the firmware of a HD.

ALSO:
For non RAID usage, a lot of people don't know that if you have random data loss or drive instability of a new HD a firmware update can cure the problem. Sometime HD manufacturers put out a bad firmware version that is loaded on a drive coming out of the factory. But this is usually fixable and I see many people dissing a HD that has had excellent reviews in the past.