Having trouble deciding... need advice!

[captnkill]

Im upgrading my comp's hard drive from a 20gig Quantum Fireball AS. Its a great drive, but im selling an older comp and it needs a HD.... so why not buy a new one?

The WD800JB had me drooling until I read that a lot of people get whiny broken motors after a few days or weeks of use. I dont care how fast it is, if its been known to break prematurely, im not going to bother(I consider having to constantly worry about my HD breaking a "con").
I dont know what other drives are really fast, and are VERY reliable.

Mostly what im looking for is reliability(above anything else), then speed. I play games like Battlefield 1942, Morrowind and a bazillion Half-Life mods, so I need a fast hard drive to load the levels and keep things smooth. I also do some graphics and some sound\music editing, and I have a big MP3 collection: so, I NEED RELIABILITY!!!!!!

I dont see myself actually NEEDING more than 40gigs, but 60 would be nice to have. 80 would be awesome, but if I have a choice between a great 60 gig and a good 80gig, i'll take the 60.

Maxtor DMPlus 9 60gig at newegg for $89 bucks sounds really good to me, but how fast\reliable is it?

How about the IBM 180GXP? 60gig 180GXP at newegg for $97.

How about the other WD drives? The BB series doesnt seem to have as many problems, but they are more expensive(and still seem to have a few complaints here and there).

What about Seagate? Prices arent half bad (not half good either...), and people seem to think they are very reliable, but are they fast?


Sorry for asking so many questions, but appearently no review sites (especially this one) pay attention to any hard drives under 120gigs now adays. Therefore, I have yet to see any decent reviews about anything I can actually afford Storagereview.com has some, but they dont cover reliability very much, only synthetic benchmarks.

please help..... thanx ahead of time

 

[4Ryan6]

Everyones got their own personal preferences, I'm a MAXTOR user, so far no bad drives I've got about 5 drives in three machines, you can get a lemon in anything, the true question is how fast the company straightens out the problem.




Details, Details, Its all in the Details, If you need help, Don't leave out the Details.

 

[captnkill]

ive decided on the maxtor.

89 bucks for a 60gig is an awesome deal. I was considering the 800JB again, but when I thought about the $30 price difference and the fact that ive never owned a western Digital, I made my mind up right there (i need to buy an $85 stick of DDR333 too, I need every dollar I can get).

Ive used 3 Quantum drives and 2 new maxtor drives. All worked great and are still running. One older maxtor crashed, but that was an ancient 1.2gig... I sure hope things have changed since 1996

One question, I keep reading about the D740 from Maxtor, but Ive never seen that model\name on any online stores. Is the Dimondmax Plus 9 the same thing or is it newer\older?

Thanx

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Well you have to remember that you are looking at a rather squewed sample set. The majority of people complaining are the small percentage of unlucky ones. You never get happy customers complaining do you? LOL

But i have the maxtor d740x and the 800jb. Both are excellent units, but the 800JB gives me higher performance and quieter seek noises. The seek noises on the D740X are somewhat scratchy... Not too bad though.

<b>All CDs will be protected and you are a filthy pirate! - <i>Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG)</i>
Serving THGC for over 2 years.</b>

 

[TKH]

Diamond Max 9 Plus is different from D740. To my knowlodge D740 is ATA133 while Diamond Max 9 plus supports a SATA jumper, it can be found somewhere on the maxtor website. For WD HDD, I think JB serie should be more expensive then BB series since JB is equipped with 8MB cache.

Plug & Play? How about Plug & Pray!

 

[Rubberbband]

I run a Maxtor 40Gb but my nest drive will be a WD 80Gb with 8M cache.

The Men Behind the GUNS!

<A HREF="http://www.btvillarin.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=327" target="_new"><b>MY SYSTEM</b></A>

 

[HN001]

Yes, WD 80GB JB series are definitely fast and quiet!

 

[rower30]

I've got the WD800JB ($110.00) and it is quiet and fast enough. I'm also using my two Seagate cheetah 10K RPM SCSI drives for game drives (still faster than the IDE, but not by much anymore). The WD has XP SP1 home loaded, office apps and quicken. So if it crashes I lose my OP and a few word / quicken files (I back these up anyway).

The WD still shows a three year warranty. Most all else are dropping to 1.0 years. A bad thing in my opinion. WD and Seagate have been at this IDE thing a long time. IBM was mostly SCSI drives (good ones, too) until recently. Still, a good history can't erase a present problem with a new technology. Too bad a mistake to improve the art often kills the company responsible for moving things forward. Based on this I'm sure the new IBM drives will be reliable! For IBM to keep its market share they better be. But, a one year warranty when you're trying to tell the public your new desk "star" drives are reliable and not desk "SUPERNOVA" drives? I'll take the WD with a three year warranty thank you.

 

[DOOM]

I have two WD800JB's and they are very, very nice. Fast, and reliable, they are also stunningly quiet, quieter than my fan. I have to actually look at the disk LED to tell whether it's running. I have yet to hear about a better drive.

-DOOM

 

[lhgpoobaa]

I too love my 800JB. very fast zippy and quiet.
Another good alternative is the nex Maxtor line; the diamondmax9 series also with 8mb cache.

<b><i>The Very Hungry Caterpillar</i> - George W. Bush's favorite childhood book.
Note: This book was first published a year after Mr Bush graduated from College.</b>

 

[voidedwarrenty]

I have that hard drive, I wish it had more cache, I bought it about 6 months ago. It has 2mb of cache and it spins at 7200 rpm. I am overall impressed with the hard drive. Maxtor has good documentation on their website.