Need a new HD. Any recommendations?
 

I am running ouf of space on my current drive and it looks like I'll need to add another one. I want to get some manufacturer recommendations from the good peoples of the TFP before I shell out money for a new hard drive. So based on your experience, which drives are good, which ones are junk?

Thanks.

I've had two seagates for as long as I can remember, and I have never had a single problem. I've heard nothing but good things about Western Digital drives, and I believe Maxtor is made by the same company, although that may not be true. What kind of drive are you looking for, and for what purpose?

Id steer clear of maxtors from personal experience and shop experience. Western Digitals are good, Seagates are good as well.

Western Digital
8MB buffer

If you want lots of space a WD 200GB 8MB Buffer is good and a Raptor 74GB is good for performance at about the same price of the 200GB.

A lot of times you can find 200gb drives for around $100, Staples just had a sale, 200gb drive for $89.99, my friend got one. I got my 200gb seagate for $110 several months ago. WD 74gb Raptors are SATA drives, 10k rpm, which is good for benchmarks, and running games and stuff, but they cost around $180 last time I checked. If it's just going to be for storage then it would be smarter to get a 7200rpm 200gb 8mb buffer drive.

I had a westerd Dig, that i bought at compusa.. it was cheap.. .and after 6 months, it died... i now use seagate. maybe it was a fluke..

Bill

Seagate is the way to go, I've had a few over the last 3 years with no problem, but a few with a western digital HD including an issue that was solved only by wiping it. There is a reason that Seagate has a five year warranty while most of the others (WD and Maxtors) have only one to three. Plus, I've found that Seagate HD's run nearly silent and much cooler than their counterparts.

The comments on NewEgg's site about Seagate's 200 Gig version are very positive, its recieved 5 of 5 (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...148-032&depa=0)

Seagate SCSI's...AWESOME DRIVES

wait, I think you need something other than solid state storage. =)

I have mostly Seagates and WD's. But I've had both fail as well, but over all they have a good track record. Really today I get what ever is cheapest or as the best rebate..

I have used nothing but Maxtors in all my computers. I have nothing but good things to say about them as well, the setup is easier than installing a printer. I really love these drives, and I think you would too :).

Let's face the raw fact here people...a hard disk is essentially the most likely major component of a computer to fail. Make backups! Bad things happen!

I own or have owned *takes a breath*...Quantum Maxtor Seagate Conner IBM Fujitsu Toshiba Sony Western Digital Miniscribe NEC Hitachi Digital Hewlett-Packard Micropolis Samsung and at least a couple others that I can't think of now.

Generally when someone asks me what brand of disk to buy...I have told them to just buy one with at least a 3-year warranty. As components become increasingly commoditized and increasingly disposable, this advice is less applicable...time for something new.

Get a matched pair of disks and a RAID controller, or else buy the cheapest drive you can find a rebate deal on. :)

Been using Maxtor, Western Digital, Quantum Fireball, and Toshiba hard drives. All of them have been performing flawlessly. I actually prefer the Maxtor or Seagates as they are quieter. But that's just a personal preference.

If you're looking to save a few bucks, get a barebones OEM drive.

Brandwise, I prefer Seagate due to their low noise level.

I have 3 maxtors, 2-120's and 1 160, the 160 is a little loud, can't figure it out. but they all work really well and no problems.

Seagate SATA is a good reliable drive that for 120gig version is around 100 dollars with a 5yr warranty

Not many votes for Hitachi here - but I have used them almost exclusively for a while now. Very fast drives but seem to be reliable (except for the old GXPs with the 'click of death' syndrome). The 7k250 is very well reviewed lately. Plus the one drive I've had to return was dealt with fairly quickly and has just been replaced.

Like some said, no brand is a big no-no. They all perform fairly equal.

But to get some info on the top performers check out what the experts says:

http://storagereview.com/php/tiki/ti...ge=LeaderBoard

That page has alot of good information on HD technology, and a good forum too.

I have used Maxtors for quite some time now. I don't know if Samsung still make drives, but IMHO, they're something to avoind like the plague. I had two and both failed within 6 months of each other.

I have an IBM drive. It's okay but runs damned hot.

I used the Maxtor MaxBlast software to migrate my W2K system from the smaller IBM drive to the larger Maxtor. It performed flawlessly, albeit slowly. It offers to partition the new drive by percentage based on old drive's partitions and let's you adjust the sizes if you want.

I'll be buying another maxtor soon, but just to have more space.

Seagate and Western Digital are the two brands to go for when looking for a hard drive. Unless of course you have the money for two 74GB 10000rpm dual raptors.

I have only owned Western Digital and Seagate. I prefer Seagate just because it is so much quieter than the Western Digital drives that I've had.

Buy the cheapest damn one you can find on sale.

Seriously, despite people saying "maxtor sucks" or "WD sucks" or "seagate sucks", we all know that hard drives will fail, and randomly at that (the notable exception being the IBM DeathStars). Dont worry about brand, buy the cheapest one you can that has enough space for you and keep backups.

If you dont have a backup, it must not be important to you.

Get a 200 gig drive for like 60 bucks after a rebate at fry's, circuit city, best buy, or wherever. Just look in the paper. Every 2 weeks at these stores there is a huge rebate on one of these--either a seagate, WD, maxtor--who cares.

A hard drive is a hard drive--I"ve got four running on an underpowerd box with a crappy 300 watt pos ps and it has performed flawlessly, without perfect cooling, in sunny so cal.

We allowed to post deals here? Anyway I hope so! :) Tigerdirect has a 200 gig WD HD for 90 bucks after rebate.. Not the best deal I've ever seen, but still a good price. And this one has a 3 year warranty..

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...3018&CatId=525

You might also look at fatwallet.com and see what they show as deals this week.

Seagate rocks. Quiet and very reliable. As stated above though, most brands are good. If I'm not mistaking, Hitachi took over IBMs harddrive manufacturing, and since IBM Deskstar also had the nickname Deathstar (I had two 120 gig Deskstars, both crashed on me) maybe it would be a good thing to stay clear of those if possible. Of course things have probably improved since then.

I have to say I'm a fan of Seagate's drives. I've got 5 160G Barracuda's in my fileserver in a RAID-5 array (4 data/parity, one spare), and they have all performed flawlessly since I got them.

If your data is important to you (and I assume it is), I'd suggest looking for drives with 5 year warranties (I believe most if not all Seagate drives do these days). If the manufacturer is only willing to support your drive for 1-3 years, what kind of garuntee is that?

Between me and my friends, we have bought about 12 hard drives in the past two months. The only thing we buy is Western Digital 120GB 7200rpm Caviar editions for anything big. Or for extra space we normally just add on a 40 or 60 gig HDD of the same brand.

I don't really know what you use the storage for, but a thing I have used lately and will continue to use from now on to put my hard drives in is a locking hard drive insert tray made by kingwin. It fits in a 5.25" slot on the front of your case, then you mount your harddrive in the included tray. Slide the tray in and lock it with a key. You can just buy the insert trays without the casing too so you can keep like 4 Hard Drives with different things on them, then just insert them into your comp when you need that specific data. The model number for that is KF-21-IPF and it runs about 20-25 bucks from most websites like newegg or zipzoomfly. That's not really what you asked about, but it's something that makes my life so much easier, as you can essentially have your information anywhere with you in bulk form. So, I thought I'd share that since I <3 it so much :thumbsup:

Thanks for all the replies. Ended up getting a Seagate 200 MB from newegg. It was the cheapest and has a 5 yr warranty.