Need a new hard drive

[Rae88]

I currently have a Seagate sata hard drive but am running out of room soon.
I wanted to get a new hard drive, with about 750 GB.

I was thinking of one with 1TB by Seagate, but I read a review by someone that it wasn't reliable enough to put their operating system on which discouraged me from going with it.

So can anyone recommend a good reliable hard drive model that is reliable enough for your operating system? (I use Windows xp)

thanks,

Rae

 

[aevm]

LOL, I hope we're not starting a flame war here. The two largest HDD manufacturers are Seagate and WD. Both have lots of fans. If you don't trust Seagate go with WD.

Here are some numbers from Newegg for example:

Seagate 1TB, 52% of reviewers gave it 5 eggs, 20% gave it one egg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148274

WD 1TB, 76% gave it 5 eggs, 4% gave it one egg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284

That is, the WD disk made one reviewer in 25 hate it, while the Seagate disk made one reviewer in 5 hate it. Based on that, I'd say WD seems more reliable.

 

[Rae88]

What I am wondering is does it become less reliable when you get into the larger drives (1TB & on ) ?

I was looking at a 750 GB drive but noticed the model I was looking at was discontinued.

I just want a good reliable SATA hard drive, doesn't need to be 1TB but I would rather not buy a model that has been discontinued. Why do they discontinue some models? Seagate's website is confusing. I gave up on trying to use it.

 

[aevm]

A larger drive will typically have more platters and more heads, i.e. more things that can go wrong. It also has more heat to dissipate somehow. Yeah, I guess bigger drives will be less reliable than smaller drives made by the same company in the same year.

Here's another good drive: WD 640GB, $75.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218

It's probably Newegg's best selling HDD drive, with 1092 reviews (82% great, 5% bad).

 

[Rae88]

Hi again Aevm. btw, I like that signature line, funny.

Do you happen to know if WD installs as easily as Seagate? Or if my computer would give me any grief because my other two drives are both Seagate? (I don't guess that should matter but what do I know?!)

Rae

 

[aevm]

Yeah, just as easily. Two cables to connect, for power and data, then go to Device Manager to make a partition or two, etc. No difference I can think of.

Good point. Why mix software from WD and Seagate if you don't have to. You could get this Seagate 640GB, same price as the WD, same speed. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148335

The bad news is, Newegg is out of stock right now. The WD is out of stock too. That proves they're popular, I guess

 

[aevm]

LOL, I clicked my own link to check it and now the Seagate is in stock, I got "add to cart" instead of "auto-notify".

 

[Rae88]

chuckle....

Well thanks for that. I didn't know that the different software might be an issue. So I guess I will stick with the Seagate. I"m in no hurry if they're out because you got the last one in your cart. LOL>

But I hope I can find a retail version. Its harder and harder to find the retail version of these internal drives for some reason. I like to get the nice pretty box with the CDs and all.

Rae

BTW, my Bloodhound WOULD eat the styrofoam :lol:

 

[aevm]

Don't let him, it's not very nutritious. That warning actually used to be printed on some boxes a long time ago. Scary, isn't it.

You can just download the software on those CDs.

I'm not sure if the retail products include SATA cables these days. I did get burned that way with my retail Plextor DVD drive - I got home and discovered I needed to make a second trip to buy a cable.

Some times OEM disks and retail disks have different warranties. No idea for these HDD models in particular. Some times the OEM has a longer warranty, which I found weird.