New HDD SATAII 16MB cache, what you recommend?

Hey guys and gals, i've just counted up my change pot and found it to total £53, add to that the selling of 4 20 gig hd's which should net me around £40 i should have a fair wedge to spend on getting me a nice big hd for my main rig. I use this primarily for all gaming, vid editing and CAE work but also it stores all my music and films etc that i strem through my media pc.

I'm looking for something pretty fast and with all the latest standards (SATAII NCQ) and to have a 16MB cache. My main rig is pretty much silent with my current maxtor hd being the loudest component in there by miles (much louder than the other seagate 7200,7 thats also in there, and so i want another very quiet drive so once i finish uni i can confine my loud maxtors (i have on in my media pc) into an old fileserver in a cupboard somewhere!! I'm looking for either a 250 or 300 gig model, so what do you guys recommend?

I've had experience with pretty much every drive manufacturer on the market, but its the latest drives that im looking for opinions on. The only model i will not touch is a seagate 7200.8 as a mates has just died after less than 4 months!!

Cheers

Andy

P.S if anyone wants a 20gig 5400rpm seagate drive i'm looking for a tenner + postage, drop me a pm (ill find out the serial number and post it in here when i get back to uni)

 

Personally im gonna get 2 250Gig Samsung spinpoints.....

 

Don't forget you can quiet down your Maxtor (and Hitachi) HDs by using the Acoustic Management software, it will slow it down a little but should make it virtually silent. Unfortunately SATA Maxtors don't seem to be found by any tool so you can't Acoustic Man them.

In terms of what I personally recommend, Seagate. A superb 5 year warranty and I've used quite a few and never had a single one die on me. Next in line would be Samsung, they've really built up a great rep over the last 2 years or so. IMHO WD tend to be noisier than most and Hitachi tend to be unreliable so I'd personally dismiss both of them. As ever everyone has their own experiences and prefs, that's just mine.

Don't worry about the latest standards like SATA-II or NCQ, they do virtually nothing for the consumers. 16MB cache is nice but way over-rated, it's good for that tiny little extra boost but again don't get carried away thinking it's the bee's knees. When it comes to 7200rpm HDs the diffs between the slowest and fastest is next to nothing anyway, maybe 1 second or so on bootup if you're lucky.

 

Cheers Austin, The maxtors i have are IDE so will give that sotware a try in my media system as i can't afford to be messing around with my main rig now as i have a few intensive days FEA work to be doing once i recieve a model through in the next couple of days. I had an old deathstar die so i will always be dubious about IBM/Hitachi drives now.

 

I'd have to disagree with what Austin says about Hitachi. Yes, the (IBM) Deskstars of old were awful drives and quality might have been a bit patchy during the changeover - but now you won't find many drives that are better, in my opinion. Seagate, on the other hand, have gone downhill in my mind.

Their 7200.7 series drives are very slow now but highly reliable, with StorageReview.com's survey putting them as more reliable than 85 percent of the other drive families surveyed. I can vouch for this, having had three running almost continuously for 2 years now with no problems at all.

Conversely, the 7200.8 series - while quiet - were slow and not particularly reliable. Having installed one in a friend's computer a few months ago, I was surprised to find that it failed within a few weeks of purchase; he experienced random corruption and boot failure and so I had to get the data off and send it back (to Seagate's credit, RMA was painless and fairly fast). StorageReview.com puts these as more reliable than a mere 11% of other drives out there.

The 7200.9 drives are slow compared to other offerings and take up more power at peak and around the same at idle/load as others, too. The reliability of these is undetermined, but they look to be somewhere between the .8s and .7s.

As you can see from the graphs posted (here's the full review), there are plenty of 250GB drives available, but each has their own set of problems.

For the reasons I outlined above, I wouldn't recommend a Seagate .8 or .9 for their respective low reliability and low performance. The Maxtor's high level of heat dissipation and (as I hear, anyway) low reliability rule that one out, so we're left with the Hitachi and the WD. Just looking at the noise from the WD chart is enough to put me off as someone who likes a quiet PC - your opinion may differ, but that's pretty loud.

I'd therefore recommend the Hitachi T7K250 if you're going for a desktop SATA drive; I have one myself and it's very fast with no problems (yet) - picked it up from Scan for about £75 a while ago. It's pretty quiet, too, but the seeks have a "crunchy" quality similar to that of the Seagates that I own.

 

We always disagree on HDs hitman012, perhaps Samsung could be the happy middle ground between both of our views? I've never used them myself though.

 

Oddly enough, neither have I... hear good things about them, though.

 

Cheers for all the info hitman, thats really useful. What are your opinions of the samsung drives as i have heard lots of good things about them, but not much bad stuff. I'll get reading on that storagereview article.

EDIT: Hitman, have you got a very quiet system? and if so is it clearly audible (i just tested my 7200.7 and can't really hear it at all) so if it's the same as that i may well go for the hitachi

 

Just a little comment here... why not just get a drivecasing for a 5.25 slot?
That should silence any drive.

 

I don't have the space in my current case, and don't like the increased drive temps they cause.

 

I do, and I can just about distinguish the idle whine of the Hitachi from the rest of it - practically inaudible, though. However, the seeking noise is definitely fairly sharp and loud; not unpleasantly so, but still not great. With good isolation this shouldn't be a problem, but if you're going for ultra silence then I think the Spinpoint might be a better choice.

 

Seagate is lucky to be still riding on its reputation of reliability from the 7200.7 and previous model drives. The 7200.8 is quite unreliable and the newest 7200.9 drives, while I would not call them unreliable (I wouldn't call any current generation drive unreliable luckily), are nowhere near the bullet-proof reliability of seagate drives greater than 5 years old.

Another weapon in the Seagate fanboy's arsenal: noise.
It is true that the older seagate models were extremely quiet, with the Barracuda IV being the quietest drive on the planet bar none. These days, noise levels on modern Seagate drives are nothing special.

Seagate drives are slow, they have always been slow. The desktop drives are slow, the enterprise drives are slow. They have been forever (for a great deal of time anyway).

The new spinpoints are astonishing drives, I would rate them very highly indeed. Unforauntely they're not availible in the higher capacities or with nearline testing and firmware.

This still holds relatively true, but much less so than used to be the case. Another example of reputations sticking.

Complete and utter BS
Another case of a drive manufacturers reputation from years ago getting in the way of the facts (its not even technically the same manufacturer!)
The Deskstar series of drives when the brand was owned by IBM, around the 60GXP and 75GXP models, were utter tripe and prone to failure.

Hitachi's drives are now top knotch (I would rate the 7k250 and 7k500 in the top 3 models of current generation dekstop drives, along with the new samsung)

false, the difference in performance between 7200rpm drives can be quite large. Even if youre just talking about current-gen drives only (if you compare a current fast 7200rpm drive to an old seagate, differences are even more extreme)

You could have come to this conclusion as a result of only using seagate drives. Pop a Hitachi 7k500 in a properly configured system that was previously using a seagate drives for drastic gains in boot-time, program load time and general responsiveness (that is, if you can deal with its hideuous unreliability )

As for my experiences...
Drives die.
I've had maxtors die
I've had seagates die
I've had IBMs die
I've had Hitachis die
I've had WDs die
I've only had 2 samsung drives (not long) and they've not yet died
I've had fujitsu drives for years and none have died, but they will (though thats unfair, as theyre enterprise SCSI drives.)

There are 2 types of drive:
Drives that have died
Drives that will die


As for this "personal preference" many people seem to express with hard drives (and oh so commonly with Seagates):

Do you dismiss nVidia cards because the FX series was terrible? no
Do you rush out and buy an intel processor for games because they used to be on top? no
So why would one exclusively use drives from a particular manufacutrer just because they made some really good drives years ago, yet produce sub-par drives today (and vice versa with manufacturers who messed up years back)

 

Generally, I replace my HD's once the warranty expires, or I trust them less and I do risky things with them. I'll move all my important stuff to the newer disks, and mod the old ones, or RAID them in striping.

I used to be a big WD fan, since their drive deaths were very predictable. Usually within months of warranty expiration, the drive WILL die. But I abuse the hell out of my drives, computer's on 24/7 and bittorrenting when I'm not gaming or doing work, so the HD's are always going. Lately however, I've been using more and more seagates, and so far I've found them to last their 5 years or more (also take into account these are old drives, I haven't had the new drives long enough to testify whether this is true to all seagates).

I did however have one of the newer seagates seemingly die (7200.8 SATA, got the click of death). I unplugged it, let it cool down, and on a whim I placed the HD in a cooler area of the case (this was in a shuttle sff), and HD worked fine and has been working fine every since (this was some few months ago). Though I don't trust it 100% and always keep an eye on it, it's been well behaved. I've never had this happen to any other disk I've used (WD, IBM, Samsung, Maxtor). Usually, drive gets the click of death, it means it's dead, period.

Meh, I'd just go for the best deal out there. I've seen some nice deals on Seagates, crazy rebates, 250GB for $80USD. WD has some nice deals sometimes too.

OT but didn't Seagate buy Maxtor?

 

Cheers for all the really useful posts guys, i think i've narrowed it down to either the hitachi or the samsung now, just depends what is cheaper on the day i guess

 

Highly recomend the newer Samsung drives, got one in my system and it's flawless.

 

Well me and Hitman012 respectfully disagree but it unfortunately seems Mister_Tad disrespectfully disagrees, or maybe that's just the way I read it? There's no point in getting into a tit for tat chat as that helps noone yet I do feel l'll have to address a few points.

Firstly I made it very clear those were my views and experiences and not gospel, so why you seem to have taken offence is beyond me. Secondly you assume I "only use Seagate drives" which is not the case. I'm currently running 2 Seagates, a Maxtor and a Hitachi in my home PCs. I also buy for many others as well as myself and have bought around 6 Seagates in the last 6-8 months and not had any fail, only 2 were bought from the same supplier at the same time. I switched to Seagate from Hitachi about a year ago after I switched to Hitachi from Maxtor. I bought around 6 Hitachi HDs within a 6 month(ish) period and had 4 of them die, 3 within a few months of purchase. These were bought from different suppliers at different times so that rules out a 'bad batch'.

I used to predominantly buy Maxtor, then Hitachi and more recently Seagate and in all that time I've only had 1 Maxtor fail (a 2.9year old 60GB HD IIRC), 4/6 Hitachi and no Seagates. Of course that's a pitiful sample size of a massive parent population but then there isn't anyone out there who can claim to have had direct experience with 5-10% of all HDs out there, hence we can all only go on our own views and experiences (as I made clear from the start).

Anyway over the years I've come across practically all makes (not models) of HDs, so even if I don't directly buy them I still have experience with them and just like any other forum member I reserve the right to share those experiences. If I have mis-interpreted your post then I apologise, if you don't like me that's fine but it doesn't need to get in the way of helping forum members which is what most of us are here to do.

BTW tank_rider HDs are easily audible in my air-cooled quiet system and the Seagate have easily been the quietest (7200.7 & 7200.8 200-300GB). Different models and sizes do vary though and from what I hear the latest 7200.9 aren't the best, I'd currently go with Samsung regardless of pricing.

 

Cheers Austin, I also used to be a Maxtor man, and have never had any of the 5 drives i either bought for myself or others fail, however they do seem to be slipping and such the last few drives i have bought have been seagates, My 7200.7 has been perfect, but as i said a mates 7200.8 died within 4 months so that has put me off seagate for the time being. The failures of hitachi's you've had bring back the memories of deathstars and the unreliability you have seen isn't something i want to expereince, so it looks like it will be a samsung, as out of all the brands mentioned in here, they seem to be the only one without any real failure record, and the performance seems to be pretty good with little noise to boot. Reliability is the name of the game for me at the moment until i can afford to get a second drive for raid.

Cheers for all the opinions guys, you've all be really helpful as always.

 

If you find the sammy drive cheap let us know as i want to get a pair at the end of the month.

 

atanum, just found one on microdirect for under £60 inc VAT here It's on special offer though so if you've got the money i'd go for it now, as that seems a pretty good price having looked around, everywhere else is at least £4 more, and the MD postage isn't too bad at a fiver either.

 

You have indeed misinterpreted my post. I was simply clearing up a few bits of misinformation that you have posted. You can have a great deal of influence in people's buying decisions on forums and when you post false information people can quite easily end up making the wrong decision. Yes, you did post something along the lines of "this is just my experiences", however, most of your post came across sounding like you we're stating points as fact, rather than opinion.

I'm not sure where you got that idea. I did pick apart your post as it is frustrating when people post (mis)information when it really sounds like fact. It's not a problem when someone posts "OMG seagate PWN all drives" as everyone would simply dismiss it, but your post was thorough and well written. Helping forum members was exactly what I was doing.

I do apologise if I've come accross as disrespectful, it was certainly not my intention. I simply wouldn't want to see someone make a purchasing decision based on false statements.