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Maxtor HD vs Western Digital HD

Last response: in Storage
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I'm looking to increase the size of my Hard a Maxtor ATA133 40G 7200rpm drive.

So my choices are
Western Digital 80GB ATA100 w/ 8MB cache $193
or
Maxtor 80.0GB ATA133 w/ 2MB cache $173

Basically I know that the difference in ATA133 vs ATA100 is not that great. So I need to know how much does the difference in cache make?

Price difference means nothing to me, niether does the warranty that the WD has.

I will be replacing it anyways, in about a year or so with a Serial ATA HD.

The Prices are in CDN!

More about : maxtor western digital

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How bout one of em new Diamondmax Plus 9 hdd's w/ 8mb cache and sata/ata133. You know, you could just get a controller card for sata and use that maxtor.....the reson I reccomend is cause every wd hard drive I've had/ used has failed.

"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."
- Mario Andretti

I forget where I saw it, some website I was at they were addressing problems with Win98 and WD hardrives, I didn't pay that much attention to it, because all I run is Maxtor and so far with 5 drives, no problems. If anybody knows about those issues you might want to enlighten Makaveli on the subject, just to make him aware, but he may not even run Win98 so no problemo.




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i've not had any issues with my maxtor drive as of yet also.
As for Serial ATA I have an Asus A7N8X with serial ATA raid, but until the drives comeout thats a non issue.

So far no one has answered my question does the 8mb cache make that much of a difference?

I've not see or heard about 98 and WD problems. I run Win XP pro so I won't have to worry about it if true. The reason I've kinda stuck to Maxtor drives is they are using Quantum Technology. I really love there drives and since they merged with maxtor I use them.

My previous Quantum Fireball I had was an amazing drive. And it was only for capacity reasons I got rid of it.

I'd recommend the WD hands down. Never had a problem with one of their drives... plus, the 8meg is definitely nice.

"There is no dark or light side, only power and those too weak to seek it."

The 8MB cache DOES make a difference. No doubt about that. It's whether the advantage warrants the increased prise thats heavily debated. The performance increase isn't large, and probably only notisable when accessing many small files or if your drive is heavily fragmented.

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>
<A HREF="http://www.btvillarin.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=655" target="_new">My systems</A>

Closer to what I was looking for in a response to my question. My Hard drive isn't fragmented that much. I try to keep fragmentation under 5-10%. What about loading of games and such will the 8mb cache help with that. Or is that more related to seek time on the drive and access times?

I have no proof of the advantage of the cache and AFAIK there has not been made any comparisons. The problem is, to totally isolate the effect of the cache you need two completely identical drives except for the cache. I don't think such drives exists.
However, as stated earlier the benefit is small. I don't think its significantly noticeable in real world applications.

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>
<A HREF="http://www.btvillarin.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=655" target="_new">My systems</A>
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