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Pulsar

Gawd
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Jan 16, 2001
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Nice guide. Thats how I would rank them as well. Should help a lot of people with their buying decisions.
 
I am going to buy a 200GB or 250GB hard drive today. Are the Hitachi drives really that much improved over the IBM Deathstars? I was looking at the 7200.8 drives before I stumbled accross this thread. Speed is the feature I value most. My primary use is to record FRAPS game videos and one minute can easily be 1-1.5GBs.
 
Every Hitachi 7K250 unit I've installed or used has been flawless. I have a 250GB PATA here at home, and have recommended their SATA drives to all of my build clients. I have never heard any hard drive complaints from any of these customers, and they all marvel at how much faster they really are over the WD/Maxtor drives they had before. The Seagate 'Cuda 7200.8 drive is going to be good as well, and for a slight price premium you get two extra years of warranty. But I have no reservations about recommending Hitachi. Reliability, performance, and integration have all been excellent with 7K250.
 
I've used Hitachi 7k250s on every PC I've built since they were released, including mine. No problems whatsoever.
 
I'm running SATA RAID-0 with two HItachi 7K400s and I am very pleased so far. The drives are quiet compared to the WD Raptors and most SCSI hardware I've used in past workstations. I render 3D models and edit video content frequently (many very large files), and I am pleased with load and save times to/from the Hitachi disks...
 
Well, I guess I will be buying another Deskstar ever since the 60GXPs. I have had several WDs and Maxtors since and I have never had a problem with them. I never thought their reputation would have come back this fast.
 
I like the concept, but a lot (most?) of the recommendations have no hard data to back them up, at least posted here. Get the data, take out the cutsie grouping names, and you might have a sticky on it's way!
 
Edited largely as desired! I included links to StorageReview reviews of just about every drive I recommend - I hope their webserver can handle the [H]orde :) All of the reviews linked were conducted on the same testbed. If you do drop by SR, please give them a click or two on their ads to support their efforts. Also, I have provided links to official manufacturer warranty policies to backup my warranty statements. Unfortuanately, I could not find a statement on Samsung's website :confused: , but you can rest assured that they do in fact ship with a 3 year warranty on all of their drives. Every merchant I've seen carry them has published data on a 3 year warranty for all Samsung HDD products.
 
Yep, that's how I would rank them too. I also choose the Hitachi 7k250 for my machine because it has best of class access times, above average speed, it's quiet, and very reliable. IMO, the raptor has it's place, but only if you really don't have a better place for the money.

I second the sticky.
 
I am utterly s[H]ocked... I can't believe the Hitachi's have begun to shed their rep... ;)

After all, the so-called "deathstars" are from 2001 and thats sooo very recent in hardware advances. I liked the sticky, and I have to agree with the OP on just about everything he said. My research came to much the same conclusions. I opted for Seagate for the warranty .

Then again, I've owned 2 60GXP's and a 75GXP. 1 60GXP went south 3 years 1 month, the other 2 are going strong. My next purchase will be an array of the 250gig hitachi's much like the ones OP points linkage to.
 
good guide... thats how i see them. I have 4 Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 running in my editing system in Raid 5 and 2 running in Raid 0. I went with the seagates cause hard drive noise drives me insane... and the warenty has saved my bacon three times in the past.

The Samsungs have been suprising me recently.
 
Added the accouncement of Samsung's new 200 and 250GB drives to the first post - it's an excuse for a bump. ;)

I guess I've committed myself to maintaining this. No big deal, I follow the storage scene fairly close anyway. :cool:
 
I am currently building an ASUS A8n/AMD 3500+ system. I would like to install WINDOWS MEDIA CENTER on this machine. Is it wise to have 4 drives in RAID configuration for the media end of it and then have some fast drives for gaming ? Is this possible. I would like to start off with two hard drives in SATA RAID. However, I have never done this before in terms of RAID.

I have read the above posts but they are very confusing. I want the best drive with the most storage.
 
Yea, I'm really surprised Hitatchi deathstars got picked as all around... I'm a Seagate guy myself. I still cant get over the IBMs I lost.
 
DougLite said:
Comments/corrections please! I put this together because the sticky 'Answers' thread lacked a consolidated buyer's guide of sorts.
Click to expand...

Ah yes, but then Id need to keep it updated
tag your it :p

hmmm wonder if I should change the "Answers" title back to "Naked Girls" :p
 
I have the raptor and love how i beat everyone in loading large maps.

Could you add a catagory "Bargin" AKA, for the college student strapped for cash or good enough for my parents web surfing PC? If not, thats cool the list is a good eye opener on some models i havent considered.
 
Good Job. If I'm ever going to build another PC, I'll refer to this guide. But IMHO, I would like to see more organization to it. For example, the PSU sticky there is very easy to read and understand. I know there are more to hard drives but perhaps lay them out as:

80 GB Class
Best Value: XXX
Best Performance: XXX
Best Quietest: XXX
Best Reliable: XXX

120 GB Class
Best Value: XXX
Best Performance: XXX
Best Quietest: XXX
Best Reliable: XXX

160 GB Class
Best Value: XXX
Best Performance: XXX
Best Quietest: XXX
Best Reliable: XXX
Click to expand...

And finally at the bottom, you start the explanation along with links to back up info. Or maybe divide the list by:

PATA Class HDD's.
SATA Class HDD's.
SCSI Class HDD's.
Click to expand...

This is just merely an idea. You don't have to follow it. Actually, I just re-read your OP and well, it looks fine in your own intention. But it's up to you. :)

-J.
 
Grouping by size, IMO, doesn't make sense, as all of the drives except the MaxLine and Raptor are available at the three most popular capacity points of 80, 120, and 160GB. Samsung is drawing even with others on capacity at 200 and 250GB. MaxLines are only 250+, and the good version of the Raptor is only available at the 80GB point. Also, all of the ATA drives are available in both parallel and serial flavors, except for Raptor, and SCSI is well, SCSI.

However, the question about the budget drive is a good one. *starts shopping* *grumbles that Seagate 40GB drives are too expensive* *curses 1 year warranty on Hitachi 2MB drives* *Why doesn't Samsung make a 40GB 7200RPM drive?*

It's a few bucks more, but I like Seagate for 'parents web surfing' budget. Many people who buy drives in the budget class don't upgrade very often, and may expect a box to last the 5 years of a Seagate warranty. 40GB PATA 'Cuda 7200.7 for $57, and although it's quite bit more expensive than say a WD400BB for $49, there are just not many budget choices with a warranty better than one year (the only other one I could find was a 40GB Samsung 5400RPM unit.) For the budget gamer, you can't go wrong with an 80GB Hitachi SATA for $59, but that's only a good deal on systems that are SATA ready. Intel's new 9xx chipsets have started to drive SATA into budget systems, but PATA is still king of the budget market. I'll add the budget picks to the OP. Thanks for the suggestions!
 
excellent. I currently only own a 74 gb Raptor, and well, I'm flat out of space.

I've taken the old 40gb WD400 that I pulled because of super loud noise and plugged it in to transfer some pr0n (I mean documents) that I don't want to trash but don't have room for anymore.

I am deciding on whether I should just buy 2 large drives and install them into my main system, or build a terrabyte server for my future media center/home theater. I like the idea of storing DVD's uncompressed on a server in another room ;)

we'll see. Thanks for the thread, it helps me a lot in the decision process. Newegg just has too many choices. I knew I could count on the [H]ard ones among us to shed some light on the process!!!

woo-hoo
 
yeah, I know. I can fit about 225 DVDs in single-layer compression (that's what I meant really) on a terrabyte. I figure, I'd stick the best 100 on there and save the rest of the space for mp3s etc.

Maybe some day if I learn how to rip to DivX, and can stand the quality, I'll do that instead.
 
XviD, better for various reasons if you care enough to research it, and Gordian Knot, which comes in several versions depending on how much control you want / care to deal with.
 
The longer warranties assume that you'll be buying a "bare drive" or a "bulk/OEM" drive.

For 7200rpm ATA drives, WD warranties their "bulk" drives with a 3-year warranty - but their retail-packaged drives come with only a 1-year warranty. Same thing with Maxtor.

Hitachi's retail-packaged drives carry either a 1-year warranty or a 3-year warranty, depending on the capacity of the drive. And Seagate's drives are warranteed for a full 5 years.

For the record, I am using a 74GB Raptor - and I still have an early 120GB WD Caviar SE (WD1200JB) drive.
 
For the most part, correct, and I link to that info direct from the manufacturer's website. Hitachi bases their warranty on buffer sizes - 2MB drives are one year, 8MB buffer drives are three year.

The reduced warranty is one of the reasons why Maxtor/WD retail kits are such frequent rebate specials.
 
Im always leery of drives in the brick&mortar distribution chain
and perfer OEM bare had real good luck so far that way
 
I believe that another reason why the retial kits have reduced warranties is that they often end up in consumer systems where little to no attention is paid to PSU requirements, which kills many drives before their time, and it is of course WD or Maxtor's fault - "What do you mean it's the power supply's fault? It still works and this piece of junk hard drive doesn't and took all of my data with it! Omfg, WD is teh suck! I'll never buy their crap hard drives again." See it all the time.
 
DougLite said:
For the most part, correct, and I link to that info direct from the manufacturer's website. Hitachi bases their warranty on buffer sizes - 2MB drives are one year, 8MB buffer drives are three year.
Click to expand...
I found that the capacity of the drive also has an impact on how large of a buffer size that Hitachi put in their drives. 80-120GB drives have only a 2MB buffer, while 160+ GB drives have an 8MB buffer.
DougLite said:
I believe that another reason why the retial kits have reduced warranties is that they often end up in consumer systems where little to no attention is paid to PSU requirements, which kills many drives before their time, and it is of course WD or Maxtor's fault - "What do you mean it's the power supply's fault? It still works and this piece of junk hard drive doesn't and took all of my data with it! Omfg, WD is teh suck! I'll never buy their crap hard drives again." See it all the time.
Click to expand...
Yep, WD and Maxtor are partly to blame - for not explicitly recommending a specific minimum for PSU wattages.
And not all HD manufacturers reduce their warranty on retail kits. Seagate and Hitachi offer the same warranty for a given drive model, whether retail or OEM (bulk). Which leaves Samsung as the odd man out - Samsung does not sell their hard drives in retail kits, to my knowledge. Instead, Samsung leaves the decision to retail-package their hard drives to their OEM partners.
 
not to mention delivery gorrillas,
17 year old slacker stockboys,
the fumblefinger general public pawing through the merchandise
and the end user tossing it around like a soccerball

:p
 
I'm looking for something in the around $100 price range for the retail version. I'm not looking for massive amounts of space because I'm planning on putting most of my files on disk and just leaving the programs on the HD. What suggestions do you guys have? I had a friend tell me to go with WD over the others. Is there that much difference between companies besides personal taste?
 
p_little said:
I'm looking for something in the around $100 price range for the retail version. I'm not looking for massive amounts of space because I'm planning on putting most of my files on disk and just leaving the programs on the HD. What suggestions do you guys have? I had a friend tell me to go with WD over the others. Is there that much difference between companies besides personal taste?
Click to expand...
I don't agree much with that friend of yours. Retail-packaged hard drives from WD and Maxtor are warrantied for a much shorter period than their OEM brandmates - one year versus three years. Furthermore, retail WD and Maxtor drives have a much shorter warranty than the retail-packaged drives from other brands (Hitachi and Seagate). Third, the WD drive in that $100 price range tends to be an older design which makes plenty of whining spinning noise which can be easily heard over the cooling fans - and you may get that noisy ball-bearing version or the quieter FDB version since WD does not distinguish between the versions at all in their packaging. And finally, for all their noise, the WDs' overall speed performance is unexceptional by current standards.

Currently, at retail stores, you can buy only the 120GB drives in that $100 price range. That makes those drives rather costly, at nearly $1.00 per Windows-recognized GB after sales tax. You can do much better than that elsewhere.
 
Well, any suggestions under $120? Doesn't have to be 120GB. Just something reasonable and reliable.
 
p_little said:
Well, any suggestions under $120? Doesn't have to be 120GB. Just something reasonable and reliable.
Click to expand...
If you order online, then you may be able to get a 160GB or 200GB drive in your price range. Maybe even a 250GB drive.

Seagate has a pretty good reputation overall, with their five-year warranty and relatively quiet drives. However, their performance is usually average to slightly below compared to their competition.

Hitachi offers a three-year warranty on models with an 8MB buffer. And their access speeds are among the fastest of their RPM class. But their drives physically get a bit hotter than most.

And Maxtor (yes, one of the two companies which offers only a one-year warranty on retail-packaged drives) offers a 250GB hard drive with a whopping 16MB buffer (versus 8MB on most other drives in your price range) - but at the reduced prices, the Maxtor is often sold out and backordered. If you choose that drive, be prepared for a longer wait just to even receive that drive.
 
Well, I don't require massive amounts of storage because I plan on moving my files to disks, flash memory, and external hard drives. I just want somewhere between 100 to maybe 200 gig at this point because I feel that will be more than enough for most programs.
 
I have had 3 IBM/Hitachi drives in the last 2 years. All have failed after going though the "Click of Death Syndrom" for a month or so. Just bought my WD drive. Hopefully better luck with this one :)
 
Hitachi succeeded IBM. And Hitachi is one of the better ones around right now.
 
ashmedai said:
Hitachi succeeded IBM. And Hitachi is one of the better ones around right now.
Click to expand...

Yes, HItachi bought out IBM, and IBM is laughing all the way to the bank. There is currently a lawsuite on IBM for making and marketing defective drives knowingly. I think I got the drive right around when Hitachi bought IBM, so it was probably manufactured under IBM ownership. With my third RMA drive on its way, I am praying that this one will last longer. ;)
 
It's in there, honorable mention in the >200GB category. Maximum PC was pretty impressed with it, but their "Office productivity index" is also a pretty shaky benchmark. Even if did outperform the WD740GD (which was MaxPC's result when they 'benched' it) it still costs as much as two Raptors, and most users don't need more than 200GB of high-performance storage. Also, it has five platters, so does not enjoy the same level of very cool/quiet operation that other Hitachi disks do, and it costs $100 more than two 250GB T7K250 drives. As such, I can only recommend it for applications where the absolute highest possible capacity must be achieved in the absolute smallest physical volume possible.
 
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