Maxtor/WD ?

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XerXes

Icrontic Regular

29 Posts

10 Jun 2003, 6:50am

Hey guys...

I was just looking for a little input.

Would you rather go for the WD200SE, or MDM9+ 200/8mb ?

I'm happy with the maxtors I have for now.
I'm going for reliability, not speed.

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imported_dieter

New to the neighborhood

3 Posts

10 Jun 2003, 6:58am

x-bitlabs did a review of new 250GB drive from WD, those two drives you mentioned are included as comparison.

good review.

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Rob

Icrontic Posting Maniac

339 Posts

10 Jun 2003, 7:06am

We just had 5 WD failures. One 120 gig and 4 80 gig all JB (JB are the special edition, BB is are standard) series. Best we can determine from contacts i have in the industry is its _probably_ handling and enviroment of the distributor we used, I'm still leary of a bad 'batch' so I'm racking maxtors for the time being.

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Enverex

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5,852 Posts

10 Jun 2003, 9:36am

I have equally good experience with Seagate/WD/Maxtor, so I would say whichever was cheapest really.

NS

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CCW

Icrontic Duke of Haxor

221 Posts

10 Jun 2003, 4:42pm

Maxtor, Ive had 5 Maxtors in the last year and al lhave been perfect. I build PCs for my friends and family and they all have Maxtors in them and no problems what so ever.

Craig

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Enisada

Ascending

212 Posts

10 Jun 2003, 5:05pm

I'm running two WD Raptors and two WD1200JB. Only had the Raptors for about three weeks now so I can't really say anything about realibility but they got a five year warrenty. My 2xWD1200JB have worked flawlessly for just under a year since I got them. I've worked with Maxtor drives in the past and ran into six or so that were defective. I guess in just a bit luckier with WD drives. I would recommend them....

Enisada

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Clutch

I'm the man in the box

4,805 Posts

10 Jun 2003, 5:10pm

I've had no problems with Maxtor, WD, or Segate in my personal experience, I would go with the cheapest myself like NS suggested, noise really doesn't bother me when it comes down to hdd's also.

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Enverex

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5,852 Posts

10 Jun 2003, 6:13pm

I have both a WDJB 80GB and a MX Diamondmax 80GB and I swear there is no difference in sound level.

NS

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jdccb

Icrontic Convert

18 Posts

10 Jun 2003, 6:37pm

I had a Maxtor 40 GB drive give me some troubles. Never have a problem with my Western Digital drives. Just got a new Maxtor 160 and it's run fine so far, save for some slight issues getting it running at first (my own stupid fault). The Maxtor seems to spin far more quietly, but it writes more loudly (or noticeably perhaps) than my WD. I think for most people, it's hit and miss, half the world swears by one company and has had all of supplier B die on them, while the rest of the world swears by supplier B and only had supplier A die on them.

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danball1976

Veteran Icrontian

2,634 Posts

11 Jun 2003, 4:41am

Maxtor is probably better because of the ATA133 and you can upgrade the drive's BIOS (after a certain year)

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Omega65

EPoX Evangelist!

2,891 Posts

11 Jun 2003, 1:11pm

Originally posted by danball1976
Maxtor is probably better because of the ATA133 and you can upgrade the drive's BIOS (after a certain year)

ATA133 has been shown to be a marketing gimmick mostly.

It's like raising the highway speed limit from 100mph to 133mph and your car tops out at 50mph.

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Matt

Icrontic Duke of Haxor

183 Posts

11 Jun 2003, 5:19pm

Originally posted by Omega65

It's like raising the highway speed limit from 100mph to 133mph and your car tops out at 50mph.

HA I got that one.

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muddocktor

Wandering about

6,250 Posts

11 Jun 2003, 7:48pm

Both those drives have 8 mb cache and both have 3 year warrantees, so I would just pick the one with the best price. The bad thing about Maxtor is that their drives below 120 gig are only 1 year warrantee, even the 8mb versions whereas WD's 8 mb drives all have a 3 year warrantee.

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drowd

Veteran Icrontian

1,521 Posts

11 Jun 2003, 7:58pm

i have been running two maxtor 60 gigs at raid 0 for about a year now, and they have been flawless. I also have two WD 80 and 120 8 mb cache running as extra storage/backup, and they have been fine. they arent getting quite the intensity that the raid 0 setup has been getting because my OS is on the maxtors. i DID have a WD 13 gig go bad on me way back in the day, but thats practically a non-issue. I would go with the best price you can find . . .

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DoM-aL

Banned

136 Posts

11 Jun 2003, 8:07pm

Originally posted by danball1976
Maxtor is probably better because of the ATA133 and you can upgrade the drive's BIOS (after a certain year)

You'll never notice the ata133 vs ata100. Most drives operate way below their reported ata speeds. The real difference is in cache and rpm speeds.

This is how i see it. You buy a maxtor for reliability. It may not be the fastest but its not gonna break on you. You buy a WD for performance and reliability. It may not be as reliable as the maxtor drives but its close. You buy a hitachi deskstart 180GXP for sheer performance. You buy a seagate for temps, noise level, and reliability.

So it's basicly whatever fits you.

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Matt

Icrontic Duke of Haxor

183 Posts

11 Jun 2003, 8:23pm

im a maxtor person iv got
80g 8mg cache 7200rpm
60g 8mg cache 7200rpm
60g 8mg cache 7200rpm
40g 2mg cashe 7200rpm
all of them maxtor's.

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danball1976

Veteran Icrontian

2,634 Posts

12 Jun 2003, 3:46am

The Maxtor hard drive I got is the 120Gb 8MB cache, 7200 RPM drive

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Warrior

Icrontic Regular

32 Posts

14 Jun 2003, 2:40am

RE: The ATA100 V ATA133, there are a lot of mobos out there that do not support 133, hell even XP had no support for a while and current support shows little improvement.

Where you will see a boost in performance is if you use onboard RAID, this supports 133 native.

As for noise, remember the IBM Deskstar click of death problems? After months of messin around with fans etc. bios updates all no use. I solved the problem by running this util;

Automatic Acoustic Management
Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) is available on all IBM Deskstar hard disk drives starting with the IBM DTLA (Deskstar 40GV and Deskstar 75GXP). Changing the acoustic mode setting of the drive allows the user to make the acoustic level of the drive more suited for their working environment.
The acoustic management level of the drive can be changed from the lowest setting (Quite Seek Mode) to the maximum performance level (Normal Seek Mode). The drive performance and acoustic level may increase with increasing acoustic management level setting.
As can be seen from the screen below you have three options for automatic acoustic management, it can be disabled, set to the recommended value (normal) or user defined.

I assume all drives can be altered.

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dydx

Icrontic Posting Maniac

329 Posts

14 Jun 2003, 3:03am

Ive had 2 Maxtors fail on me, and 1 IBM. One of the Maxtors was a 6gb disk that had been running 24/7 for 5 years non stop.

Havent had a WD fail on me yet tho.

I have a 1.7gb IBM disk from my P133 that was purchased in 1995, for the cool sum of ~�2000. Been running on/off for the first year, and 24/7 since then, with very little downtime on that system, and it's still going strong.

Reliability really depends on the batch the disk comes from, rather than the disk itself, although some disks are a bit dodgey by design.

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Mt_Goat

Relentless Pursuit

4,920 Posts

19 Jun 2003, 11:37pm

I have used all the major brands in recent times and have found them all to be good. Just get what you want or whats on sale!

Maxtor....*****
Seagate..*****
W / D......*****
IBM.........*****

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XerXes

Icrontic Regular

29 Posts

17 Jul 2003, 12:45pm

hah, this is both funny and sad...

I was waiting for an e-mail after I intially posted that question, and none ever came. Be it because I forgot to set the settings for that or the fact that the forum was born again with whatever small problems it might have had, I don't know. Fact remains that as time passed on I didn't think about it anymore and the post slipped into the dark placed in my mind which I like to call "never-never-mind-land".

Anyways, just noticed it again now, and thanx a lot for all your answers guys.

Fact is I haven't bought me either one yet, and good stuff keeps getting cheaper and cheaper. Thus widening the range of what I deem worthy of my computer.

Latest fancy I have is investing in dual MaxLineII 250 GB S-ATA drives for my 3112A controller, but that might prove to be an expensive wet dream still.

Anyways, I really need to get me a new drive or two now, seeing as my 60 gb IBM is starting to complain (yes, it's the damn mp3 drive, can't lose the contents) so better switch it with something new and be safe rather than sorry.

So, either I fork up for half a terra in the form of MaxLineII, or I can save some pennies and go for dual 160 gb SG 7200.7 S-ATAs, or I can strain my rocketraid 404 further by placing two more regular IDE drives on them (Maxtors I guess)...

Man I hate making these decisions with me being such a cheap ass, overthinking and greedy guy and all... hehe

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Leonardo

F@H Reign of Terror is back!

14,701 Posts

17 Jul 2003, 1:23pm

With my two rebuilds (no, not completed yet) - one gets two Maxtor Ultra 80GB (8MB cache, fluid bearings) and the other gets two WD800JB (8MB). I've already installed the Maxtors in one of my existing computers. Reliability? Who knows - only installed for a few days. They are very quiet though. Just excellent. Yes, the 8MB cache makes a BIG difference in speed with both the Maxtors and the WDs. I've played with the WDs in formatting and testing. They are very fast, but have a slight high-pitched whine to them. In the past, I've owned almost exclusively WD drives, with never a failure. Usage included 24/7 operations, countless drive images, and other torture. We'll see how the Maxtors perform over time. Yes, I've got one IBM GXP installed now for a year. No problems so far. Very quiet, and very fast considering it's only got a 2MB cache. It's a GXP 60 - series.

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XerXes

Icrontic Regular

29 Posts

17 Jul 2003, 4:35pm

hah! ain't that a bitch!

looks like it wasn't my IBM that's failing, but one of the cuda 120s...

that blows...

wonder if I'll be able to save all those "movies without any copywrite infringements at all"...

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TheBaron

Veteran Icrontian

2,777 Posts

17 Jul 2003, 4:46pm

well if you need to do a straight drive copy the maxtor comes with a very nice full transfer utility that'll take every byte of data off that drive. also i have a wd2000jb, and this thing is a beast.

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XerXes

Icrontic Regular

29 Posts

17 Jul 2003, 8:40pm

well, I guess I'm gonna get another cuda back when sending in the old one... for now just gonna place it in my old machine and try to suck as many movies off it as possible.

Not the biggest problem.

Now if only maxtor could fix their maxblast or whatever it's called so it'll work on boards with nforce chipsets I can start testing those drives too, just in case.

btw, the cudas run pretty cold... my maxtors are a bit warmer, and I gather from reviews that the WDs aren't much better. Correct?

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Maxtor/WD ?

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