Hard drive question...

Beginning with events last week, and coming to a climax Saturday, my IBM Deskstar (20G 60GXP) died a horrid death... Now, despite all odds, I have always had good luck with HDs... I have all of mine back to a 95 seagate medalist 2.1G running constantly...

I am going to get an RMA, but at two years old before failing, I really hate to put the replacement back in my main box... I have SATA, RAID, and IDE channels on my P4C-800E Deluxe mobo... what I don't have is $$...

As SETI-ers are amongst the hardest on their HDs I thought I would ask your (y'alls) opinion... I am leaning toward a Diamond Max at this point... and all I will ever need is 20G, but willl go up to 40G just to not play extra for a "small" drive....

Because I am on a roll... after completely rebuilding my system from a clean OS install (in 20 hours)... I just thought I would mention the problems I ran into with Norton Ghost 2001 and dual channel DDR--THEY DON'T PLAY NICELY...

I rely on this system for the majority of my living, and back up with Ghost often.... Ghost destroyed 2 image files before I realized there was a compatability issue... I went back to 5.1d Professional (1998) and it worked great for a backup, but my data was hosed for the most part....

OK, this is now a book... And I am, once again crunching 24/7...

So, what drive do you suggest????

Crunch on!!!

Ahh the infamous DeathStar - just replaced one of those last week. Sorry to hear you suffered a breakdown, but it sounds like you got many more revolutions from yours than some. I've been using ghost 2003 for about a year and haven't had any problems with it. It seems to do just about everything that ghost corporate does, except for multicasting images across a lan.

At any rate I've had good luck with the maxtor line, with one exception that appears to be a freak failure. However for a little more money you could get a wd raptor that would give you better performance and almost surely a longer lifespan.

I will look at the raptor... I am probably going to run a mirror RAID with the IBM and something...

BTW, I just bought a full version of 2003--am waiting for it to arrive...

thanks,

I haven't had the greatest luck with maxtor. I went through 4 maxtor drives in 6 months before i went to seagate. The people where i bought the maxtors from were nice about it. baffled thier computer guy and they gave me a bigger drive for the same price of the maxotrs. thats just my experience with em.

I think the average IDE drives are a mixed bag. I have one friend that swears by the plain WD drives, but I've seen a few of those fail. I told him I've had good luck with the maxtors and he says just the opposite. I have yet another friend that hates Seagate drives. If you get a scsi drive or the raptor you're probably getting a more robust piece of equipment. In fact I can't remember ever seeing a scsi drive that failed.

We run scsi drives at work in mainframes and failures do happen. Of 32 systems (3 drives each) we probably see 2 or 3 scsi drive failures per year. Our server scsi drives (32 with 5 drives each) which are just a few years old are eating 1 or 2 drives per year.

Given the number of drives these sound like great odds for success, but you are still looking at 3 to 5 offices suffering a failure anually from a pool of 32 offices.

I guess that's why we run raid.

I have a WD and Seagate and they are both perfect. Give WD a try if you haven' t previously

Im scared of WD's. Everyone Ive ever had has died just out of warrenty. Have a box of them I just threw away not long ago. Havent went to Raptor's because of this. I have afew of the 20gig IBM's still running and afew 40gig Maxtors. When it comes to harddrives I think its a crap shoot. I do still have afew old Conners drives that work fine at 850meg and 540meg. I wish Harddrives would just disapeare and mass meemory modules of some sort would replace them. Even if it cost twice as much.

IDE drives are definately a mixed bag. Over the years I've used all the major brands here at work and at home. I've had good luck and bad with all of them. I guess I'm still partial to WD but really its come down to price or warranty these days. :/

Cy

The other trend that seems to be happening a lot is the major brands is lowering their warrenty period. But overall Ive always had good luck with both maxtor and WD. I had one seagate die on me but even so I would buy another without hesitating.

OK... I decided to utilize my RAID (mirror) on the P4C-800E mobo. I will put the deskstar on channel and a WD on the other channel. Hopefully this will protect my data!

I went with the following because of the 3 year warranty, cache and price ($62 with free shipping)... Oh, and bought Norton Systemworks 2003 Professional ($7.95 new-in-the-box on eBay)...


WD WESTERN DIGITAL 40GB 7200RPM EIDE HARD DRIVE MODEL # WD400JB.

Size: 40 Gigabytes
Interface: IDE ULTRA ATA100
Seek time: 8.9 ms
RPM:7200
Cache 8MB
OEM: 3 Year Manufacturer Warranty

Thanks all...

Crunch on!!!

It's too late for you, but I'm really interested in the WD Raptors. SCSI performance at ATA prices. WD considers the Raptors to be "enterprise" class drives. They come with a 5 year warranty.

The 73GB Raptors are slated to be introduced in November. I don't need a 100GB drive in every system. I have a file server with plenty of storage for 'stuff'. I prefer a smaller drive with faster access times to improve all around performance of the system.

I'm not thrilled with the IBM/HGST drives any more. I still have a couple that haven't failed yet, but Windows won't even allow me to enable caching with them. All of my latest purchases are Maxtor ATA133 purchases. They've been very good to me so far.

Greg, I was leaning heavily toward the Maxtor myself. But the WD drive I found was comparable, for the most part, and has a 3 year warranty--that really sold me.

I did take a bit of a hit going with a ATA-100 vs. 133, but I figured the IBM replacement will be ATA-100 and I would lose that speed as function of the mirrored RAID.

I too like the looks of the Raptor, but will probably wait until my next system or until I build a file server next year...

Greg M said:

It's too late for you, but I'm really interested in the WD Raptors. SCSI performance at ATA prices. WD considers the Raptors to be "enterprise" class drives. They come with a 5 year warranty.

The 73GB Raptors are slated to be introduced in November. I don't need a 100GB drive in every system. I have a file server with plenty of storage for 'stuff'. I prefer a smaller drive with faster access times to improve all around performance of the system.

I'm not thrilled with the IBM/HGST drives any more. I still have a couple that haven't failed yet, but Windows won't even allow me to enable caching with them. All of my latest purchases are Maxtor ATA133 purchases. They've been very good to me so far.

Click to expand...

I too also leaning towards WD and Maxtor drives. no IBM for me, tks! had 2 died already. but still have 3 running 24/7 fine .......... so far..... for performance & reliable, go for the Raptor which is the fastest drive nowaday and the only IDE drive that comes w/ 5yrs warranty.

also, have been using Ghost 2003 and didn't have any problem at all.

I've been using WD exclusively for the last 6 months, total 34 machine, +-1 or 2. The specific drive that I like is the WD800JB , 80 gig with 8mb cache and a 3 yr warranty, not equal to the raptor 5 yr but still very nice. I have not had a wd fail in the last year, but I have previous to that, in fact I wasn't vvery fond of them for awhile. Prior to my exclusive use of the WD I used maxtor, in one week I had three of them fail. Basically more than I could handle. I'm sure they are still very nice drives,and I have no complaints about the warranty service, maybe on the length of warranty. Seems like all the Harddrive manufactureers are very nice and eager to help with any problem. Unlike some of the MOBO manufacturers.

Sounds encouraging! I hope the WD400JB is similar...

Just shoot said:

I've been using WD exclusively for the last 6 months, total 34 machine, +-1 or 2. The specific drive that I like is the WD800JB , 80 gig with 8mb cache and a 3 yr warranty, not equal to the raptor 5 yr but still very nice. I have not had a wd fail in the last year, but I have previous to that, in fact I wasn't vvery fond of them for awhile. Prior to my exclusive use of the WD I used maxtor, in one week I had three of them fail. Basically more than I could handle. I'm sure they are still very nice drives,and I have no complaints about the warranty service, maybe on the length of warranty. Seems like all the Harddrive manufactureers are very nice and eager to help with any problem. Unlike some of the MOBO manufacturers.

Click to expand...

Bum deal on the hd failures.

I had two scsi drives fail about a year ago... the scsi cdrom is still ticking away in an old p3 that the kids use to play games.

The last couple of drives I have purchased are from Maxtor. More or less cost effective and a good warranty should they fail.

Just my $0.02 worth.

-Tyrinon