What should I look for in a hard drive?

[Jasonkhowell]

About to buy the last part to my new computer, which will be a hard drive. Before I say anything, here are the specs for it:

-OCZ OCZ2G8002GK 2GB Kit DDR2-800 PC2-6400 Gold Gamer eXtreme XTC Edition Dual Channel Memory

-Asus M2N4-SLI nForce4 SLI Sempron/Athlon 64(FX)(X2) SktAM2 DDR2 ATX Motherboard w/Audio, Gigabit LAN, RAID/Serial ATA

-AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 6000+ Socket AM2

-The Case is a mid tower that supports ATX and has a 500w Power Supply.

-Graphics card is a 7800GT, the same one from my old computer.

Anywho, my budget at the moment is about $60. I am buying one online, and looking for something in the 200 GB+ range. Something that will last a long time, and won't crap out on me easily. Anyone have any recomendations?

[port187]

most disks in the lower price range can die on you, it's something we all have to live with.. and a replacement drive doesnt help much if lost all your data huh :P I am not sure what the best disks are at the moment but I can tell you I recently had a hitachi 500gb disk die on me so don't go for hitachi ;) maxtor had a bad rep a while ago, but not sure if they still do now that they are taken over. maybe a western digital will do?

[1080Peter]

- SATA connection (Serial ATA), and not IDE/Parallel. SATA cables are smaller, easier to manage, and don't require daisy chaining. Something about them being faster as well.

- 7200 RPM minimum. 1K RPM if you afford it (which isn't the case at your HDD budget), but then you need another fan to keep heat down...

- 8MB cache minimum, 16MB cache ideal



http://tinyurl.com/2gb5j5
Newegg link with hard drives that meet these requirements. SATA, 7200 RPM, 16MB cache, at least 200GB

[Jasonkhowell]

- SATA connection (Serial ATA), and not IDE/Parallel. SATA cables are smaller, easier to manage, and don't require daisy chaining. Something about them being faster as well.

- 7200 RPM minimum. 1K RPM if you afford it (which isn't the case at your HDD budget), but then you need another fan to keep heat down...

- 8MB cache minimum, 16MB cache ideal



http://tinyurl.com/2gb5j5
Newegg link with hard drives that meet these requirements. SATA, 7200 RPM, 16MB cache, at least 200GB

Do you have a picture of what a SATA cable looks like?

[3do]

i have a pic i can take for you of a sata cable

[3do]

[madhatter256]

Just buy 1 or two 160gig Western Digital SATA hdds. If you buy two, set them up as RAID 1. They are like $50 a piece now.

[Jasonkhowell]

I see. I just looked at my motherboard specifications, and it comes with a SATA cable. Oh well, thats nice to know.

[ASSEMbler]

Warranty. 5 years. Performance is negligable if it's bulk storage.
SATA 2.

Seagate, fuck wd = 1 year, fuck toshiba (who buys those bombs),
samsung... rsiky doa usually.

[madhatter256]

Warranty. 5 years. Performance is negligable if it's bulk storage.
SATA 2.

Seagate, fuck wd = 1 year, fuck toshiba (who buys those bombs),
samsung... rsiky doa usually.

Have old samsungs still going strong. Bought a 400gig Samsung, they all have 5 year warranties.

WD also has 3 year warranties and up. Hitachi has 5+years, too.

[ASSEMbler]

WD is 3 years on only select products.
Samsungs have a terrible record for quality.
Hitatchi has a terrible history.

you can slap a 5 year warranty on dog shit, but
getting a refurb rma hdd versus having your data alive....

You should be running raid anyway these days, a pci-e raid card is
super cheap. Then you can get those super cheap, but pos
korean drives and not have to worry.

Single drive solution? I'd go with WD 5year or Seagate.

[Jasonkhowell]

WD is 3 years on only select products.
Samsungs have a terrible record for quality.
Hitatchi has a terrible history.

you can slap a 5 year warranty on dog shit, but
getting a refurb rma hdd versus having your data alive....

You should be running raid anyway these days, a pci-e raid card is
super cheap. Then you can get those super cheap, but pos
korean drives and not have to worry.

Single drive solution? I'd go with WD 5year or Seagate.

Fortunately, I do have a spare hard drive I can use to back up my most important data, so I don't have to worry too much about losing anything. I am also looking for something that will last me at least 4 or so years. So Segate or Western Digital I am guessing?

[Codeman]

In reliability I can say from personal experience WD are the best.
everyone I know who had Seagate's had bad sectors or complete disk failure.
The only WD I ever saw with problems were some very old 90's models

WD>Maxtor>Seagate>other brands>Fujitsu

[Taemos]

I bought a Samsung hard drive for my laptop, and I'm getting all sorts of weird errors whenever I try to install certain things. It never happened before I put the hard drive in.

All of my Seagates have worked fine. I bought a 320 gigabyte Seagate from Newegg for somewhere around $65 not more than a month ago, which is what I'm running in this computer. I don't see the same deal up there, though, so I guess it was on sale or something.

Just saw the post above me: Do NOT buy a Fujitsu hard drive. If K-mart manufactured hard drives, I'd probably buy one of those over a Fujitsu.

[Yakumo]

Seagate, fuck wd = 1 year, fuck toshiba (who buys those bombs),
samsung... rsiky doa usually.

I don't know about that mate. I've had a Segate 50 Gig drive in use 24/7 for the last 5 years without a single problem. Still going strong. And as for Samsung, I thought the same but I bought a Buffalo 320 Gig drive a year and a half ago only to find that it was a re-badged Samsung drive. that also has never gave a problem with 24/7 operation. Oh and then there's the 9 year old 8 Gig Fujitsu drive (now in an USB external case) that has also never given me a days worth of trouble. However I have another 8 Gig Fujitsu drive that was fucked within 1 day ! So......

Yakumo

[limey]

I'd take a peek at online places like newegg.com / outpost.com. Here's some linkage for starters:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...=%2450+-+%2475
http://shop4.outpost.com/product/459...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Depending on where you live, you may/may not pay tax & some of their drives usually have cheap/free shipping deals.

SATA may offer a bit of a performance boost over IDE, though unless you're doing real disc intensive stuff (like video recording), you'll probably be good with either. SATA drives are often now as cheap/cheaper than IDE ones. Having said that, I've a preference for IDE, purely since I can use those drives in more of my current compy stuff.

As for reliability, I've been using/installing HDDs for over 2 decades now & have rarely had any fail in less than 3 or 4 years & thats with some kit (like my NAS music/video server boxes) that run 24/7/365, some for months without shutdown. Just make sure you keep em relatively cool/well ventilated & make sure they don't get banged around. If you can enable spindown on idle, that'll extend the life of the drive too. The main killer these days is heat. Most of the major manufacturers go through bad phases with a particular model/batch of drives - the best thing to do is google for recent reviews of the drive you're interested in & see what others say. I've been/am running Seagates, IBM (now Hitachi), Maxtor (now Seagate) & Samsung drives of all sizes upto 500Gb with no real pattern of failures. I should also mention that I stuck a 20Gb 2.5" Fujitsu in my little Compaq M300 laptop & that has survived many years of being carted around all over the globe without a hint of trouble (other than me periodically filling it up!).