Maxtor or Western Digital 200GB IDE?

Tirian

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Hopefully this is a simple question, but I couldn't find the answer in this forum: Is the Maxtor 6Y200P0 or the Western Digital WD2000JB a better drive? The Maxtor is ATA-133 (which doesn't seem to matter much by reports) but the WD has a 0.4ms faster seek time.

Also, I could drop down to a 120GB or 160GB if I needed to, but only really want to if they were more reliable. (I'm aware that I'd have to go down to 120GB if I didn't want XP SP1, but I don't see that being an issue.) Using an ASUS A7V8X-X if it matters.

Thanks for any and all advice given!

Rob
 

sjonnie

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Maxtor tend to make better drives.

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blah

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It is funny to read that you are concerned about speed and at the same time asking it to be "reliable". They all are FAST these days, it is benchmarks that trick our mind. Any slowest HD these days is 2-3 times faster than anything 3-4 years ago. They all are "reliable" just like everything in the world, buy two of them from the same store, same size, same configuration and in a week or two you might notice one to be dead and the other will live in several generations of PCs and still be alive after several years of hard working.

If you did not want SP1 get 120Gz, or get anything with big Gz but you'll need an external enclosure or special PCI card with respectable chipset, that will do the trick (I have squealing beast WD180Gz in an external box, WinME sees it alright).

It all depends on what you like, I like quiet stuff, so I use Seagate (silent) and Hitachi (ok quiet, but fast) mostly and leaning more to Seagate caz they sell them with rebates, so I can get them around $.50 per G.


..this is very useful and helpful place for information...
 

Tirian

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I'm actually not terribly concerned about speed, and I realize that both drives are reliable, I probably phrased my first post incorrectly. Basically I have to choose one brand or the other, and I didn't really see a clear winner.

I also didn't know if a particular brand/size combo has had a lot of problems recently that anyone here might be aware of, like I've seen on the motherboard forum. (Was hoping for a comment like "Don't get the WD, it's really loud and offers no advantages over the Maxtor." or "I have the Maxtor, my friend purchased the WD and he gets much faster transfer rates for large amounts of data.")
 

sjonnie

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Toss a coin, heads Maxtor, tails WD, in the event that you don't catch it buy a Seagate, if it lands on its side get a Hitachi.

Anecdotal reports from particular users is absolutely no use in assessing the quality of a product. The best thing you can do is check storagereview and then choose on price.

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