Desperate for a new hard drive - recommendations?

[jy88888888]

I've just custom built a PC with an XP1700+ with GF3 ti200 which are both overclocked and I think my 4 year old 6.4Gb hard drive is the bottleneck of my PC. Everything else is brand new. Starting up the PC takes about a minute and starting up applications such as Microsoft Access, Media Player 7.1, games, IE6 and Outlook Express 6 takes too long - about 6 seconds for each. I have a budget of £100 and I am looking for the fastest drive possible for the money. My overall question is - Which factors in a hard drive are important in performance and any recommendations? The Western Digital with its 8Mb cache seems good.

AMD VS INTEL - AMD anyday

 

[Rob423]

Im not a big fan of Western Digital.... In my opinion, i would go with an 80 GB D740X maxtor... i just bought one, it is Excellent!

D740X Maxtor is a great performer and it pretty good in price. you can get a 40, 60 or 80 i wouldn't go lower then that.

I ordered mine for Newegg... If you want supirior speed, have you thought about RAID ? Two D740x's on RAID 0 would really rock....

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[dhlucke]

[rant]It's really too early to tell if the WDJB's are reliable. We keep going through these phases of recommending a drive and then finding out it dies and is unreliable. Stay away from IBM for that reason.

Lately the Maxtor's and WDJB's have been recommended a lot. Whether these people will have problems in 6 months is still up in the air. I've had great experience with Western Digital, but not the JB's. I'm going to wait a bit longer to see what happens. The 8MB of cache is really attractive.

I'm sick of there being hype surrounding a HD only to find out it sucks.

[/rant]

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[jy88888888]

Thanks.

What kind of applications do you have installed and what are their loading times, roughly?

Is there a performance difference between the various sizes available?

AMD VS INTEL - AMD anyday

 

[labdog]

I'm sick of there being hype surrounding a HD only to find out it sucks.

how, this is sad.
bad vocabulary!!


<i>if <b>you know</b> <font color=white>you don't know<font color=black>, the way could be more easy ...<font color=red>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

ive got a 40gb 60gxp and a 80gb maxtor d740x.
the d740x is a good reccomendation, though the seek noises are slightly lounder than the IBM's.

and smaller drives will always be slightly faster than large ones, assuming the data density remains the same and the drives are from the same manufacturer and series, as the number of heads and platters are fewer and it takes less time to index and seek data simply because there is less of it.


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[Lars_Coleman]

I myself would also go with a Maxtor drive. I couldn't tell you if mine are any quieter or more noisy then any IBM drive, because I haven't (nor will I) have an IBM drive in my home machine.

My track record with Maxtor has been really good! I have had four drives that I have been using 24/7 for the last year and a half with no problems.

<font color=red>People and hard drives are like bandwagon fans and sports!</font color=red>

 

[jy88888888]

Thanks.

What kind of applications do you have installed and what are their loading times, roughly?



AMD VS INTEL - AMD anyday

 

[lhgpoobaa]

gawd i dont know.
its moe than just access times for games.
i know work and excell are running in under a second. most games take a couple of seconds, give or take thinking time and splash screens.

but there is a BIG difference between a modern ata100/133 drive and an elderly 5400rpm ata33 drive! i loved it when i changed over.

<font color=purple>Win ME Slayer. And PROUD of it!</font color=purple>

 

[jy88888888]

WOW! Under a second! I'm going to buy the Maxtor D740X 40Gb model. What do you think? I've read everywhere and the overall view of Maxtor's drives are all very good. Should I bother considering buying IBM, Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung etc.

AMD VS INTEL - AMD anyday

 

[dhlucke]

Consider Western Digital. <A HREF="http://www.storagereview.com/" target="_new">http://www.storagereview.com/</A> has some good reading on the Maxtor and WD drives.

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[kief]

Yes, you should consider Western Digital, esp if you can afford the new special edition (8 meg cache) drives. They are the fastest on the market and WD drives have a history of quality!

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[flamethrower205]

Hells no they don't! Everyone I know, and every hard drive I have used from wd has had issues! I WILL NEVER trust this company again.

Sig of the week.

 

[dhlucke]

Everyone has different mileage. Most of us can clearly say that IBM has problems at least, but WD and Maxtor are both probably safe bets...for now.

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[kief]

Hmm strange. The only problem I have had is the recall a few years back, which was handled well. I have somewhere close to 40 WD disks in use right now n this network (plus several more at home and in family's machines) many are out of warranty and still going. I had a 3 gig die recently that was 5 years old. I did have a drive that needed RMAed a while ago, but that is far better then my experience with Maxtor for example. I have a pile of dead Maxtors, although admittedly they are mostly the 1, 2, and 4 gigs that had a rep for going bad at the drop of a hat!

Jesus saves, but Mario scores!!!