PC Hard Drives That Pack More Power for Less Dough

[pschmid]

A line of hard drives from Samsung and Hitachi proves you don't have to spend a lot to get a lot. For an almost amazingly low price, Hitachi offers 160 GB and caters to upgrade users while Samsung throws in a 400-GB behemoth.

 

[wicketr]

Where is the acoustic comparison??? That is very important to me and I wish you would add that to your hard drive chart.

Thx

 

[gm0n3y]

Seagate 320GB SATAII 16MB cache 7200.10 (and any other capacities in the series) is the best drive for the money IMO. Raptors are good if you want even more performance.

 

[sprite]

Argh - my HDD has just died on me (160GB Hitachi Deskstar) and need a new one.

Samsung SpinPoint P80SD or
Hitachi Deskstar 7K160 or
Seagate ?

any other drives you guys would reccomend ?

looking to spend about £40

 

[wsbsteven]

Seagate 320GB SATAII 16MB cache 7200.10 (and any other capacities in the series) is the best drive for the money IMO. Raptors are good if you want even more performance.

My 320g of the model you specified gets 61.6MB average which is also better than what article gives.

 

[gm0n3y]

I would just check out the hard drive charts and compare them with your preferred stores.

 

[yyrkoon]

Clearly, on a pure performance basis, the Hitachi DeskStar 7K160 is a superior disk drive compared to the Samsung SpinPoint T133 HD400LJ.The Samsung SpinPoint T133 HD400LJ is no slouch, though.Both drives offer respectable read/rrite performance values, and both compare well against their peers across the key metrics.

Last page, first paragraph, I'm sure I do not need to tell you how to spell "write", and this is obviously a typo anyhow

 

[gm0n3y]

No doubt, everybody know is spelled "rite" not "rrite", jeez.

 

[Guest]

riiiiiitttteeeee.

Yeah accoustics?

I love the Seagate, apparently they're not the quietest drive But I love hem

 

[gm0n3y]

Agreed. I have 2 Western Digitals and I think they sound about the same, but the WDs run quite a bit warmer (my seagate is pretty much room temp).

 

[yyrkoon]

rite, right, write

Somehow, I doubt TH baptized the drive as part of their benchmarks

And before we get into the "grammar/ spelling Nazi" issue, I think it is important for anyone who writes any article, to learn how to spell in the given language correctly. If not, then I doubt anyone would take them seriously ( "cant spell write, right? maybe they take short cuts in benchmarking as well" )


OH, and yeah, I think I'll stick with my Seagate HDDs as well.

 

[k61824]

I would like the temperature reading to be in Celsius (I know the formula of conversion, don't flame me on that) for the future hard drive reviews.

Just to have the units agree with other reviews like heatsinks

 

[zimberto]

Basically there are 2 types of drive in this artcle: fast WD Raptors, and slower everything else. From the "everything else" group there is nothing outstanding. Besides, I can't make out those charts anyway. I mean... wtf! There is only one conclusion you can gather from the mess of results - if you want a fast drive, go out and buy a Raptor.

BTW I don't have a Raptor, nor do I want one.

 

[gm0n3y]

From the review there weren't any good conclusions for purchasing, but from other sites and reading reviews over the past couple of years, I still say the Seagate 7200.10 series is the best bang for the buck in regards to performance and size.

As for spelling, I kind of agree with you. Any reviewer can make mistakes and that is alright with me, but doesn't THG have an editor?? Every major magazine or review site will have an editor. When I can read an article once through and find at least 3 or more errors (almost all THG articles lately), then if they have an editor, he is not doing a good job.

 

[crrazychicken]

Is this jsut me or are all Hitachi deskstar reviews just pointless until they consistently put out drives that don't die? there's one right up there *points up*

I'm not saying they rest dont die but in my experience every IBM/hitachi desktop drive over 80GB is on a timer just waiting to go

 

[torque79]

can someone help me understand what games benefit from faster hard drives? Thinking of CSS, BF2 for examples, I guess your new maps would load faster if you REALLY want to be the first one to appear for the next round, but it has nothing to do with actual gameplay. I don't see the benefit to actual gaming, unless there are games out there I am not familiar with which have maps so huge your hard drive must continously load them into memory as you move around.

cost/gb is all I care about, and I pretty much buy a new hard drive every time capacity doubles. I had my 250gb hard drive filled 2 months after I bought it, I really need the 500gb to hurry up and enter the best cost/gb segment.

 

[Bob1978]

can someone help me understand what games benefit from faster hard drives? Thinking of CSS, BF2 for examples, I guess your new maps would load faster if you REALLY want to be the first one to appear for the next round, but it has nothing to do with actual gameplay. I don't see the benefit to actual gaming, unless there are games out there I am not familiar with which have maps so huge your hard drive must continously load them into memory as you move around.

MMORPGs like Star Wars Galaxies. Huge maps, plus unexpected objects/models coming into your view suddenly.

 

[gm0n3y]

The only benefit of having a faster hard drive for gaming is faster load times. I basically go for something in the best gb/$ area as well. However, there are normally 10 or so drives that fall in that area and I will usually choose the one that I think is the most reliable and has the best performance.

 

[WilliamT]

I purchased two Deskstar drives back when they were owned by IBM and as fast as they were, I will never purchase another Deskstar drive again.

I purchased them after reading the favorable reviews on their performance. One of my drives also died after two years. The other drive just got louder and louder over the years. Both drives are not compatible with other brands.

If you have a master Deskstar drive and <other> (I've tried maxtor, and seagate) brand drives as slave, the slave drive won't show up. The only other drive that will work with as slave is another Deskstar drive.

Seagates I think are the best. They are quiet, and last forever. I still have a 1GB Seagate 3.5 inch drive that is still working from 10+ years ago.