40Gig Hard Drives.

[Croc Hunter]

I'm buying my Dad a new HD. He uses mostly word processors and space is not an issue. Narrowed it down to two.

40Gb Seagate 7200rpm Barracuda IV Series $88 Au
40Gb Western Digital 7200rpm on sale at $86 Au

Which should I get?.

[satis]

I'm a big fan of Western Digital, personally. However, I've heard lots of good things about the Barracuda drives. However, since I lack any personal experience with the Seagate drive, my vote is for WD.

[(jj)]

I prefer Seagate over WD any day. I've seen more dead WD than any other brand.

[omatic]

Everybody who has seen dead hard drives has probably seen more of one brand go belly-up than the other brands. YMMV.

Way back when, when I was a Novell CNE and field tech for a VAR ('91-'93), the most frequent dead ducks were Maxtors. But lately, I haven't heard too much bad about them, either.

To contrast with JJ's post, I've never had a WD drive die on me. Fujitsu, yes (they had AWESOME free replacement service, though, to their credit). Seagate, many (again, back-in-the-day). Maxtors, see above! IBM's reviled "Deathstar" drives? I don't personally know of anybody who lost one of those... go figure!

So basically, they're mechanical devices, and they're gonna fail from time-to-time. All modern HDs are built to incredibly tight tolerances and standards. I'd say pick the one with the best performance numbers and (especially) warranty. It'd be pretty hard to go wrong!

Bottom line: the best advice I can give is... KEEP FRESH BACKUPS :)

HTH,
omatic

[satis]

funny...I used to swear by Maxtor (had a maxtor drive last five years before dying), then I had several fail all in a row. Now I avoid Maxtor like the plague. Guess it depends. I've had no WD failures. :)

[Croc Hunter]

I avoid IBM and Hewy Packard. Seagate - Barracuda and Cheetah drives I'll confirm are solid performers. omatic reminded me of a post in here (I think) that went something like 'at least if it goes bung you can take it back to the shop'. To save myself a trip across town 'or two' I'll go with my local stores Western Digital. Hope it measures up to my own high opinion of Seagate drives.

Thanks Guys. :)

[YvetteKuhns]

I used to love Western Digital and they WILL honor the warranty and send you a new one when your 80 gig fails after one month! The replacement seems okay. ;) I have Maxtor drives here that are older than my son! Those old things should have died long already.

But again, once you have a bad experience with one brand, you usually avoid that brand. So how fair is that? If you had two WDs that go bad, you can say that 100% failed while you can try one hard drive from another brand and say that 100% were great.

Okay, what kind of help was this post? Maybe you can research each manufacturer's website or a hard drive comparison article from someone who tested each brand better than any of us.

[Barry]

I've seen Seagates since the early days of 5mb units, twice the physical size of the current range and think these are the standard I look at on new drives. In fact, I still have an 8088 system running DOS 3.3 with a 10mb Seagate. System is 1984 vintage and there isn't a bad sector recorded on the drive. Used all the other brands, and I currently have mostly Maxtors in use now. My choice (when available) is Seagate, then Western Digital, then Maxtor. From what I read in all the others writings, and my experience is, all drives are going to fail at some point. We can only hope manufacturer's quality assurance will weed out the poor items on the mfg line, but now and then I'm sure one dective will make it out. (probably on a Monday). I don't think you can go wrong with any of the three I first mentioned. Just be sure to register it with the manufacturer so you can take full advantage of their warranty. Get the best for your money. And be sure to back up the data on a regular basis. I like using DVDs now that their price is down to reasonable levels.

[Ironcleaver]

chances are this post will not help you, but this is what I've experianced:

Seagates: good drives, I've never had one that failed on me. I've owned the 10mb, 20mb, and the 110mb drives (yeah that's back in the-day :) )

Maxtor: this was my first 1.2gig drive, it failed badly, but was replaced by my local shop with my first WD. My friends have also had problems with this brand, but again this was years ago and I hear their better now.

Weastern Digital: I currently own the sata Raptor, smaller that what's out there, but it's unbelievably fast.

IBM: Another one I currently own, it's in my firewire portable external drive bay. This drive has taken massive abuse and is still runing like a champ. It was used as my college work drive, so I could have it at school and work right off it and not worry about losing my work like the other students with their zip disks. It's old now as it was one of the fist 40gig drives to hit the market with a glass/ceramic platter.

In the modern day I have never owned a 5400rpm drive (well, no, I can't say that, my laptop has one) all my current drives are 7200rpm, or like my Raptor, 10,000rpm :)

I am also going to be staying away from IDE, I love SATA too much :)


~

[B&T]

Either you get a good one or a bad one. Which brand you pick is not going to matter (between the major brands). Which drive you pick off the shelf does. You will find out how good your selection was in a few years.

I have used them all.

[mrmagill]

Either you get a good one or a bad one. Which brand you pick is not going to matter (between the major brands). Which drive you pick off the shelf does. You will find out how good your selection was in a few years.

I have used them all.

Me too, and that's pretty much it in a nutshell. My friends and I built computers for charity out of recycled parts. When we stopped counting many years ago, we'd built and given away over 200 systems. We've used every hard drive there is.

One thing that did impress me was the speed with which both Seagate and Western Digital replaced in-warranty drives along the way.

One thing that disturbed me was that some brands only warrant the drive from "date of manufacture" - so if its been on the shelf a number of months, that time is taken away from you.

My bottom-line advice: Get the best performing drive unless the other one has a longer or better warranty. The performance will be so close anyway its hardly worth mentioning. The main thing: Check the details BEFORE you order - ask the "hard questions" of the dealer: How long is the free replacement period? Will the manufacturer cross-ship a replacement drive? How long is the warranty? Is it from date of PURCHASE or date of MANUFACTURE?

[NMS]

I bought a Maxtor from US and when I arrived in Malta it did not work. I sent it to Maxtor Europe in Ireland and they replaced it. It works perfectly.

[blueflowers]

Personally I would go with a Seagate. I had a 40 gig WD, but it krapped out on me after 1 year. I replaced it with a 200 gig maxtor and a 36.something gig Seagate. I use the seagate as the Boot drive (its smaller but scsi 15k) and the maxtor is secondary (but primary ide channel.) The maxtor I havent had any problems with, my uncle has 2 200 gig maxtors and he also hasnt had any troubles with them. But if your choosing between Seagate and Western Digital, I would choose Seagate.

[mrmagill]

I bought a Maxtor from US and when I arrived in Malta it did not work. I sent it to Maxtor Europe in Ireland and they replaced it. It works perfectly.

Just curious - was it dead on arrival in some mechanical way, or could it have had anything to do with its country of manufacture? Doesn't seem to me that it should matter, since they run on +5 and +12 DC...

[NMS]

To be honest, I think it slipped on the floor once and I had never used it before that so I am not sure if it was functional (bet it was!)