<div class="IPBDescription">Reccomendations?</div> My 20 gig is full. What would you guys recommend for a second hard drive? I've got a P3 running WinXP, if that matters.
The drives can be IBM (hah) Maxtor, Seagate or Western Digital.
Personally all my hard drives have always been Western Digital,but that's just me.
And for capacity, the higher you go the smaller the price/Gb is low, unless you go too high. 180 drive perhaps? (the price of my latest 120 Gig drive was a bit more than 1 Euro for 1 gig.)
Ditto what Cereal said. You definately want 7200rpm and that 8mb of cache no matter what. It really does make a huge world of difference!
This is all based on my personal experience, but I'd get the Western Digital if I was you. I've had this 160gb awhile with no problems whatsoever, and before that I had an 80gb that also worked flawlessly. I have no experience with Seagate, but stay away from Maxtor. I used to have some maxtor drives. I say drives because The stupid thing died about every 6 months and I had to get it RMA'ed for a new one from the company. Didn't cost me anything since it was under warranty, but having your drive die 4 times is a very big pain in the arse, and there's absolutely no excuse for it happening. So stay away from Maxtor.
I realize other people have used Maxtor drivers w/o these problems and are gonna post how their drive works great, but as I said this is based on personal experience. I won't ever buy a Maxtor again, unless its for someone I don't like. :P
[edit] <a href='http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10339052&loc=101' target='_blank'>Here is my drive</a> One word of caution since you're using WinXP. XP won't format a >40gb partition in FAT32 (the file system can handle it, but MS forces you to use NTFS ). Meaning MS-DOS based os's (including win9x) won't be able to read the drive at all, and linux can read it but not write to it. You may want to invest in a 3rd party partition utility or something if you want the large partition to be FAT32.
Also, if you do end up getting the faster drive, you'll want to make it your primary drive as it'll be much faster than whatever you have now. Meaning you'd have to reinstall your OS and whatnot. If you keep your current drive as primary though, you can just add this in and you won't have to reinstall or anything, windows will just detect it and give it a drive letter (once you format that is). [/edit]
Okay. I was pretty sure I was buying Western Digital before you guys replied, and 7200 RPM seemed like a nice choice. Thanks a bundle, keep suggestions coming! Unless they're the same.
yeah you'll need the cache and the rotation speeds - they both make everything smoother and faster.
don't buy anything faster than 7200 rpm tho, chances are you're not buying IDE. You wouldn't want to buy an SCSI drive and then wonder how to plug it in (because you can't without a scsi aquisition thing card)
I've got a WD 80 gig 7200r/m with an 8 meg cache and it's mighty good.
If you want to copy your existing hard drive to your new one, you should go out and buy a single license for Norton ghost, it's a mighty cool program. You just make a boot disc with it, you can even have the command built into the autoexec.bat if you want. You just turn your comp off, stick in the new drive then insert the floppy and turn it back on! Come back a while later and your new HD will have everything your old one did.
It takes a little knowledge of DOS to get the command right but it's pretty simple. The program itself is only about 20 meg on a CD, seems like a waste to me...
<!--QuoteBegin--Jobabob+May 10 2003, 10:24 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Jobabob @ May 10 2003, 10:24 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> WD is a noisy hot beast, despite its shortcomings in performance (its not one of the best), im thinking about getting a seagate drive simply because of the cheap price, SATA interface, and lack of noise! <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> I'm currently in the process of making a list of components to buy when I start upgrading my system in a few weeks, and the Seagate 80gb S-ATA w/8mb cache is on the list as the possible hard drive, since it goes so well with the Asus A7N8X mboard.
I guess an addendum to the thread is my question of "are Seagate drives reliable?". I've always used Western Digital drives and have never had even the slightest problem with any. I'm kind of reluctant to change something that has always worked great for me, but AFAIK, WD doesn't have any S-ATA drives yet. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
As for staying on topic, I'll add basically the same thing everyone else has said - 7200rpm, 8mb cache, and Western Digital kicks arse. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
KungFuSquirrelBasher of MuttonsJoin Date: 2002-01-26Member: 103Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
edited May 2003
After my HD crash, I replaced both of my 7200 RPM IBM Deskstar 60 gigs with a pair of Seagate Barracuda 7200/8 meg cache/etc. 120 gig drives. Space'll last me a hell of a long time and I notice my system is even a tad quieter.
Still keeping the functional 60gb drive, though, going to get that set up in the Nightwatch compile/backup system I'm putting together out of all my old systems.
I also have an old Quantum Fireball 30 gig drive... Don't remember all the specs on it, but another solid brand. Probably the most reliable drive I've had to date as far as age and overall functionality.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Probably the most reliable drive I've had to date as far as age and overall functionality.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I heartily recommend Hewlett Packard SCSI drives. I've got a 230MB one, and it's worked flawlessly for the best part of ten years.
Fine, so it's a bit slow, and capacity is slightly limited, but it's somewhat sturdier than all these crappy IDE things the young people of today seem to prefer...
Comments
You'd need IDE drives with:
7200 rpm
8 Mo cache
quite a bit of capacity.
The drives can be IBM (hah) Maxtor, Seagate or Western Digital.
Personally all my hard drives have always been Western Digital,but that's just me.
And for capacity, the higher you go the smaller the price/Gb is low, unless you go too high. 180 drive perhaps? (the price of my latest 120 Gig drive was a bit more than 1 Euro for 1 gig.)
This is all based on my personal experience, but I'd get the Western Digital if I was you. I've had this 160gb awhile with no problems whatsoever, and before that I had an 80gb that also worked flawlessly. I have no experience with Seagate, but stay away from Maxtor. I used to have some maxtor drives. I say drives because The stupid thing died about every 6 months and I had to get it RMA'ed for a new one from the company. Didn't cost me anything since it was under warranty, but having your drive die 4 times is a very big pain in the arse, and there's absolutely no excuse for it happening. So stay away from Maxtor.
I realize other people have used Maxtor drivers w/o these problems and are gonna post how their drive works great, but as I said this is based on personal experience. I won't ever buy a Maxtor again, unless its for someone I don't like. :P
[edit]
<a href='http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10339052&loc=101' target='_blank'>Here is my drive</a>
One word of caution since you're using WinXP. XP won't format a >40gb partition in FAT32 (the file system can handle it, but MS forces you to use NTFS ). Meaning MS-DOS based os's (including win9x) won't be able to read the drive at all, and linux can read it but not write to it. You may want to invest in a 3rd party partition utility or something if you want the large partition to be FAT32.
Also, if you do end up getting the faster drive, you'll want to make it your primary drive as it'll be much faster than whatever you have now. Meaning you'd have to reinstall your OS and whatnot. If you keep your current drive as primary though, you can just add this in and you won't have to reinstall or anything, windows will just detect it and give it a drive letter (once you format that is).
[/edit]
don't buy anything faster than 7200 rpm tho, chances are you're not buying IDE. You wouldn't want to buy an SCSI drive and then wonder how to plug it in (because you can't without a scsi aquisition thing card)
If you want to copy your existing hard drive to your new one, you should go out and buy a single license for Norton ghost, it's a mighty cool program. You just make a boot disc with it, you can even have the command built into the autoexec.bat if you want. You just turn your comp off, stick in the new drive then insert the floppy and turn it back on! Come back a while later and your new HD will have everything your old one did.
It takes a little knowledge of DOS to get the command right but it's pretty simple. The program itself is only about 20 meg on a CD, seems like a waste to me...
<_<
>_>
--Scythe--
I'm currently in the process of making a list of components to buy when I start upgrading my system in a few weeks, and the Seagate 80gb S-ATA w/8mb cache is on the list as the possible hard drive, since it goes so well with the Asus A7N8X mboard.
I guess an addendum to the thread is my question of "are Seagate drives reliable?". I've always used Western Digital drives and have never had even the slightest problem with any. I'm kind of reluctant to change something that has always worked great for me, but AFAIK, WD doesn't have any S-ATA drives yet. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
As for staying on topic, I'll add basically the same thing everyone else has said - 7200rpm, 8mb cache, and Western Digital kicks arse. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Still keeping the functional 60gb drive, though, going to get that set up in the Nightwatch compile/backup system I'm putting together out of all my old systems.
I also have an old Quantum Fireball 30 gig drive... Don't remember all the specs on it, but another solid brand. Probably the most reliable drive I've had to date as far as age and overall functionality.
I heartily recommend Hewlett Packard SCSI drives. I've got a 230MB one, and it's worked flawlessly for the best part of ten years.
Fine, so it's a bit slow, and capacity is slightly limited, but it's somewhat sturdier than all these crappy IDE things the young people of today seem to prefer...
<!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
Joke, joke joke.
by the way, im singaporean.