What brand to choose?

Nilo · Dec 14, 2005

Hello. I'm here to ask your opinion about what HDD should I buy.

I'm thinking of getting 2 HDDs of 250GB each, with 8 or 16 of cache, and doesn't matter if they are SATA 150 or 300.

Options may be:
Seagate 7200.7 200Gb 8Mb Barracuda - 117
Seagate 7200.8 250GB 8Mb - 146
Western Digital SATA300 2500JS 250Gb 8Mb - 157
Western Digital Sata300 2500KS 250Gb 16Mb - 161
Maxtor 250GB 16MB SATA150 7200RPM - 130

Thanks a lot for your help.

darksparkz · Dec 14, 2005

Western Digital Sata300 2500KS 250Gb 16Mb - 161

That should yield highest performance, due to the fact of SATAII and 16mb of cache. Second in place would be that Maxtor HDD.

K15 · Dec 14, 2005

What is important to you? Warranty, Seagate kicks *** there, 5 years. Noise? Again, Seagate is the way to go, very quiet HDs. Performance, everything i've read points to Western Digitals or Hitachis.
This just my opinion, but I don't like Maxtors. I would stick with WDs or Seagates. The 7200.8 Seagates have higher seek times but higher data rates. The 7200.7 have lower seek times but also lower data rates, so there is a bit of trade-off there. I would personally go with the .8.

As a semi-related question, the drive I have is a 160GB Seagate 7200.9. I haven't heard much of anything about 7200.9s on this forum, or any other sites. Are they really new? Not common? Poor performance?

attack · Dec 14, 2005

Interface meens nothing, SATA, SATA2, PATA. The bottleneck is the drive getting the data to the controller...nothing can even do 100mb/s sustained so ye old IDE133 is more than enough.

I would get the 200gb seagate which is 117 bucks, great price, great performance, low noise...

Nilo · Dec 15, 2005

@darksparkz
What about this one?
MAXTOR DiamondMax 10 250GB SATA2 16MB - 134

@K15
Warranty should be important for everyone, I guess. So, yes, important factor. Reliability, a brand which has low rate of problems.
Is the .8 noisier than the .7?

@ajrettke
So, does tha mean that if I have a better deal with a non SATA version of the drives, I should go for that?
doesn't matter to have a 16mb drive nor a SATA300?

Thanks for your great help

darksparkz · Dec 15, 2005

He's saying having SATAII over SATAI isn't a BIG difference, yes, on specs SATAII is faster, but in real life, you can barely experience the performance difference. The only reason why I'm recommending SATAII and 16mb cache HDDs is because their not all that much more expensive then the SATAI 8mb drives, so why not get the better one for almost the same price?

And yeah, that Diamondmax is great, either their MaxlineIII line or DiamondmaxPlus10 line is fine

tom10167 · Dec 15, 2005

I'd go with the Maxtor 250 but the Seagate 200 looks very good too.

Striker75th · Dec 15, 2005

yes Seagates are very efficient high quality brands....
but then again WesternDigital is to =)

in my opinion id go with the WesternDigital 2500KS but any of those drives are fine...

Nilo · Dec 15, 2005

Thanks for your replies.

I've read that the Western Digital Sata300 2500KS 250Gb 16Mb is having issues with the P5LD2 Deluxe.
What about this one? Is it a good option?
Western Digital SATA300 2000JS 200Gb - 120

K15 · Dec 15, 2005

Nilo said:
Thanks for your replies.

I've read that the Western Digital Sata300 2500KS 250Gb 16Mb is having issues with the P5LD2 Deluxe.
What about this one? Is it a good option?
Western Digital SATA300 2000JS 200Gb - 120

That looks good. I agree about SATA 300. On a single drive, it isn't a big deal. If you ever do RAID 0 though, SATA 300 will help a lot. If you KNOW you will never raid, SATA 150 VS SATA 300 makes no difference at all, all else being equal.
I want to see a site that does good comparisons between 8MB and 16MB drives. It wasn't long ago that 2MB was "large" and 1MB was "average" for HD cache. 8MB and 16MB are both good. Hell my 5 year old Maxtor has 512KB of cache :bang head

tom10167 · Dec 15, 2005

K15 said:
If you ever do RAID 0 though, SATA 300 will help a lot.

You got drives transferring more than 150MB/s? Let's see them, I don't think my Raptors hit 90.

K15 · Dec 15, 2005

tom10167 said:
You got drives transferring more than 150MB/s? Let's see them, I don't think my Raptors hit 90.

I don't know much about raid, but my single Seagate 7200.9 does a 130MB/s burst with a 63MB/s average/sustained. I assumed (perhaps wrongly?) that 2 RAIDed drives could go past 150MB/s...

Nilo · Dec 16, 2005

Thanks for your replies

So, I should go for Western Digital or Seagate, right?

A 200GB/250GB HDD, SATA 150 or 300 doesn't matter?
But 16MB or 8MB... isn't it better to buy a 16 one? Or doesn't matter either?

Seagate 7200.7 200Gb 8Mb Barracuda - 117
Seagate 7200.8 250GB 8Mb - 146
Western Digital SATA300 2000JS 200Gb - 120
Western Digital SATA300 2500JS 250Gb 8Mb - 157
Maxtor 250GB 16MB SATA150 7200RPM - 130
MAXTOR DiamondMax 10 250GB SATA2 16MB - 134

attack · Dec 16, 2005

16mb in theory is better, but the problem is that the drives cannot fill the 16mb in practice. Also, SATA 150 or 300 or IDE DOES NOT MATTER. whoever said the thing about SATA 300 and RAID 0....WTH? it's sata...serial/single/sonomorethanonedriveoneachindividualcableokay?

I would get what has the best price/gb rating because your not gonna notice the difference between the others. The only way to start noticing the difference is to get into 10k raptors or 10/15k SCSI drives which are much more expensive.

The only gain with sata is it has a slimmer cable interface which CAN increase airflow...which is very minimalistic...the cable connections are actualy very flimsy and break easily (I bumped one and it snapped off). There is no gain with SATA interfaces...and that's a fact. It won't be for a few years until 7200rpm drives can come close to saturating 133mb/s sustained...we have to move to either SCSI platters and or higher spindle speeds.

K15 · Dec 16, 2005

I'de like 10K RPM to become the standard soon. As far as what I said about SATA, I realize drives cannot saturate the interface, but I figured the burst of RAID could go past 150.
Anyway, SATA VS IDE (misnomer, SATA is IDE too).
Anyhow, SATA VS PATA, there is no reason to NOT get SATA. It's like buying a new motherboard with AGP now, IMO. Also, 2 drives on SATA is better than 2 drives on PATA, even when not in RAID.

attack · Dec 16, 2005

PATA will be around for quite a long time...no reason to worry about it dropping off

for the RAID thing....2 drives in RAID 0 might produce a total of 150mb/s....but that just means each drive is only doing 75mb/s, so in order to saturate SATA 150 on RAID 0 with 2 drives, we need 300mb/s total throughput....

Goshawk · Dec 18, 2005

K15 said:
What is important to you? Warranty, Seagate kicks *** there, 5 years. Noise? Again, Seagate is the way to go, very quiet HDs. Performance, everything i've read points to Western Digitals or Hitachis.
This just my opinion, but I don't like Maxtors. I would stick with WDs or Seagates. The 7200.8 Seagates have higher seek times but higher data rates. The 7200.7 have lower seek times but also lower data rates, so there is a bit of trade-off there. I would personally go with the .8.

As a semi-related question, the drive I have is a 160GB Seagate 7200.9. I haven't heard much of anything about 7200.9s on this forum, or any other sites. Are they really new? Not common? Poor performance?

I'd like to add that Western Digital drives carry a 3 year warranty, and they do advance replacement for free. Seagate indeed has a 5 year, however they charge for an advanced replacement.

Both companies are terrific manufacturers of HDD's, it's just a matter of whats more important to you.

~ Gos

Vulcan · Dec 18, 2005

Easy... Hitachi T7K250. Seek time is the key in hard drive performance. It just so happens that Hitachi drives are the fastest 7200 RPM drives as far as seek time goes. So, if perforamcne is what you are looking for and you don't want a raptor, get a T7K250.

K15 · Dec 18, 2005

ajrettke said:
PATA will be around for quite a long time...no reason to worry about it dropping off

for the RAID thing....2 drives in RAID 0 might produce a total of 150mb/s....but that just means each drive is only doing 75mb/s, so in order to saturate SATA 150 on RAID 0 with 2 drives, we need 300mb/s total throughput....

Still though, the newest, largest and fastest drives will come out in SATA. There is a major push for SATA. Even if mass production of PATA drives stays around for 5 years, why get them anyway? Price being the same, the nice cabling of SATA is enough to make me get it

lXlFUSElXl · Dec 18, 2005

Vulcan said:
Easy... Hitachi T7K250. Seek time is the key in hard drive performance. It just so happens that Hitachi drives are the fastest 7200 RPM drives as far as seek time goes. So, if perforamcne is what you are looking for and you don't want a raptor, get a T7K250.

Is there much of a preformance difference between the T7K250 and the 7K80 other than the fact that one has more storage space?

What brand to choose?

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