I need a new Hard Drive, ive been looking at these http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=633092 http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=616582 Which ones the best, the smaller one is more money yet they look pretty similar? or whats the best HDD I can get for around 50 pounds? I do not need lots of space, 250-300GB should do, thanks
The more expensive one looks to be an enterprise class drive. That usually means it's made for companies who want to buy dozens of disks and build them into RAID arrays that sit in servers and get the snot beaten out of them 24/7 for three years. The premium price is supposedly for premium reliability, which is probably overkill for a £50 home drive. If you're not fussed about performance, just go into Scan's section for HDDs 250-320gb, sort by price and pick either the very cheapest one (£35.83 for a 250gb maxtor) or the cheapest one thats 320gb (another maxtor at £42.88). Job done, they all work pretty well nowadays. Or there's a 300gb seagate for £39.70 if you want to split the difference. Because I'm very very sad I divided price/capacity to calculate that this 300gb seagate gives you best value for money of the three at 13.23p per gig, but I plead extreme boredom at work.
Have to second the vote for Samsung. Good value. Good warranty. Excellent ACOUSTIC performance (and even quieter if you are prepared to trade off some performance). After years of Samsung'ing (for Tivo and PC), I took recommendation to get a Hitachi and while performance is okay, its noisier than Samsungs had been. Scan regularly feature a brand of hard-disk in their 'Today only' offers so best to watch out for a little while to grab a few pounds extra saving anyway.
I'm partial to Western Digital. I will never get another Maxtor. I have a Samsung too though and it's ok.
Western Digital - for me too, but make sure you get a WDnnnnAAKS series drive - latest and quitest range from WD with good performance. Not sure how you identify the latest Samsung drives
The second one is an ES model - which are "enterprise" drives, primarily intended for "business-critical applications" / servers The first one is a Seagate 7200.10... one of the best HDD's available (IMO), and far more suitable for a standard desktop PC
Samsung, Western Digital and Seagate (in that order!) - The Samsung (T166 models) I have not tried but all the reviews rave about their lack of noise. I have an old 80GB 'jb' WD which is very quiet and I have a 160GB and 320Gb seagates both of which are louder than the the WD. I have had a few Maxtors in the past and have had some sort of trouble with all of them - eventually. I know its a survey of one but I don't like them anymore - although they have tended to be the cheapest - if only by a few £s sometimes. My personal suggestion would be to go for either a Samsung or Western Digital if you're after quietness and/ or coolness/ low power consumption or go with a Seagate for overall roundness (!): good performance with reasonable noise levels. Hope this helps.
Seagate = 5 year warranty Samsung = 3 year warranty Western Digital = 3 year warranty Never had a problem with Seagate, have experienced early death from WD, Samsung, Maxtor. My moneys on Seagate.
Hard drives are a bit like cars, everyone has a favorite make. IIRC, Seagate bought Maxtor, take that as you will. Hitachi took over IBM's HD business, and their enterprise class stuff is good, but my experience with consumer grade stuff has been hit or miss. Some is good, but there is also a lot of cheap stuff that performs terribly. I have hardly used any Samsung stuff, I don't have any input there. WD has always treated me right when it comes to customer service. Maxtors line was a roulette game up until the Diamond Max 10 line where they seemed to figure out how to make a decent drive. Of the two drives, I'll also vote for the Barracuda.
i hear the wd's are nice and quiet, my seagate drives are easily the noisiest component in my case right now
