top 10 hard drives

[Neo]

Form PCWORLD

Rank Hard drive: 50GB or over Street price

1 Maxtor DiamondMax D540X (120GB) $230 81 120 Good FEATURES: 5400 rpm, Ultra ATA/133 interface, 2MB buffer, 12 ms average seek time, diagnostic software and installation kit, three-year warranty, 12-hour weekday toll-free support. SUMMARY: This drive delivers a winning combination of high capacity, competitive pricing, and solid performance.

2 Western Digital Special Edition Caviar $349 81 100 Outstanding FEATURES: 7200 rpm, Ultra ATA/100 interface, 8MB buffer, 8.9 ms average seek time, installation kit, three-year warranty, 10-hour weekday, 8-hour Saturday toll-free support. SUMMARY: Has a larger-than-usual cache and exceptional speed, but you pay a stiff premium for the privilege.

3 Western Digital Caviar $299 80 120 Very good FEATURES: 7200 rpm, Ultra ATA/100 interface, 2MB buffer, 8.9 ms average seek time, installation kit, three-year warranty, 10-hour weekday, 8-hour Saturday toll-free support. SUMMARY: Western Digital's largest drive is pricey, but it has the third fastest overall speed on the chart.

4 Maxtor DiamondMax Plus D740X (80GB) $190 79 80 Good FEATURES: 7200 rpm, Ultra ATA/133 interface, 2MB buffer, 8 ms average seek time, diagnostic software and installation kit, three-year warranty, 12-hour weekday toll-free support. SUMMARY: Like all of the Maxtor drives on the chart, supports ATA/133, ATA/100, and ATA/66 interfaces.

5 IBM Deskstar 120GXP $369 78 124 Very good FEATURES: 7200 rpm, Ultra ATA/100 interface, 2MB buffer, 8.5 ms average seek time, installation kit, three-year warranty, 13-hour weekday toll-free support. SUMMARY: Second-fastest and most expensive drive here, it uses IBM's "pixie dust" technology to cram more data onto its platters.

6 Maxtor DiamondMax D540X (160GB) $300 78 160 Good FEATURES: 5400 rpm, Ultra ATA/133 interface, 2MB buffer, 12 ms average seek time, diagnostic software and installation kit, three-year warranty, 12-hour weekday toll-free support. SUMMARY: Moderately priced for a drive with top-end capacity, but it's also slower than other Maxtor drives here.

7 IBM Deskstar 60GXP $189 75 60 Good FEATURES: 7200 rpm, Ultra ATA/100 interface, 2MB buffer, 8.5 ms average seek time, installation kit, three-year warranty, 13-hour weekday toll-free support. SUMMARY: The 60GB version of the Deskstar provides solid performance but costs more than other drives of comparable size.

Rank Hard drive: under 50GB Street price

1 Maxtor DiamondMax Plus D740X (40GB) $130 76 40 Very good FEATURES: 7200 rpm, Ultra ATA/133 interface, 2MB buffer, 8 ms average seek time, diagnostic software and installation kit, three-year warranty, 12-hour weekday toll-free support. SUMMARY: Impressive performance at a moderate price earns the single-platter version of the D740X its Best Buy.

2 Seagate Barracuda ATA IV $115 75 40 Good FEATURES: 7200 rpm, Ultra ATA/100 interface, 2MB buffer, 9 ms average seek time, diagnostic software and installation kit, three-year warranty, 9-hour weekday toll-free support. SUMMARY: Well priced, but slower than the Maxtor D740X, especially in our test that copies a large file.

3 Seagate U Series 6 $90 74 40 Average FEATURES: 5400 rpm, Ultra ATA/100 interface, 2MB buffer, 8.9 ms average seek time, diagnostic software and installation kit, three-year warranty, 9-hour weekday toll-free support. SUMMARY: Terrific price, but lackluster speed. It was especially slow in our Adobe Photoshop and find-file tests.

 

[Acid]

Weee. I got tha IBM 60gxp. It owns.

 

[PostCode]

Where are you getting these stats? I really, really, really find it hard to see a Maxtor drive sitting at the top when an IBM will walk all over one in benchmark after benchmark and a WD drive will last three or four times as long (as well as out perform it).

 

[Neo]

I should edit that in posty they come from PCWORLD, sorry

 

[PostCode]

PC World...hehe Go figure.

 

[Neo]

i had to choose someone. They dont seem to be as biased as some (zdnet)

 

[Acid]

most people are biased towards better drives tho

 

[PostCode]

hehe that's true.

 

[AMDnut]

Sorry to disagree.........

I only buy Maxtor drives. So far, they are the only ones that have not let me down. From my old 4.3GB up to 3 current D740X 60giggers that kick butt.

I admit, the IBM will be a tad faster, but are prone to failure lately (over the last 14 months....). Western Digital are good drives, but a tad slower than the new Diamondmax Maxtors and the WD tend to drop boot sectors and require rebuilds for no apparent reasons. Also, my last 80GB Western Digital drive was in the server tower 3 weeks and blew. Went to Maxtor and all has been good for 4 months and counting.

I have had good luck with Maxtor and reccomend them to people I know. Just my opinion........

Neo, what are you running on your network up there?

 

[Acid]

I've had a WD 7200rpm 20gig drive for a year and a half now, and been running an IBM 60gxp 7200rpm 60gig for around 6 months, and both run fine. The WD has even been pounded against my case a few times (not intentional, of course ).

 

[UltraLiberty]

AMDNut, only the IBM 75GXP series is prone to failure...so far, that does not appear to be true of the 60GXP series, and of course the new 120GXP series is too new to tell. All makers have had their bad product lines...

WD vs. Maxtor in terms of reliability. WD wins hands down, based on what I have read on some other site, Maxtor drives are returned to the store 200 times as often for being defective. 200 times!

This is the only site I would trust to tell me what is a good hard drive, and this page right here tells you what is the best in the various categories at this time: http://www.storagereview.com/articles/leaderboard.html

 

[tamago]

Keep a sharp EYE on the buffer size.. 8MB and fast seek times are something to stare at! Personally, I'm a IBM/Fujitsu person. Although, I have not toyed with any new technology lately

 

[PostCode]

The 75GXP was the first drive IBM made with glass platters. So something in the design is the issue. I'm not sure if the 120 has glass platters or not though.

 

[Neo]

AMD,
on the server im running cheatahs, SCSI is the only way on the servers for speed. On the desktops either maxtor or WD.

 

[AMDnut]

The 60GXP's had a few problems, but not near the problems of the 75GXP's. The big stink now is the 120GXP's are only rated for 333hrs. use per month........

....The IBM 120GXP Revisited

The revelation that IBM’s 120GXP line of drives was only rated for 333 hours of usage per month kicked off a storm of controversy and discussion both here at VH and at other websites as well. With little actual data to go on, however, speculation has run rampant and official response has been scarce. VH launched its own investigation into the issue with the goal of examining IBM’s claims regarding the 120GXP’s optimum usage, whether such claims were sufficiently documented, and how consumers may wish to respond to the situation. We’ve organized this article in a question-and-answer format to allow for simpler organization and easier reading, with the questions themselves designed to walk a reader through the situation.

IBM, unfortunately, would not provide additional information or official comment on the 120GXP situation, despite repeated phone calls and requests for data.

Is there a reliability problem with IBM hard drives?

This isn’t an easy question to answer, especially with IBM withholding comment. While large numbers of readers responded to the questions I posed regarding drive reliability, their emails present very different pictures. Some of you swear by IBM drives and their reliability, while listing many of the Seagate, Maxtor, or WD drives you’ve seen fail in both a corporate and a consumer setting, while other readers had horror stories of seeing IBM drive after IBM drive bite the dust.

Based on the emails and feedback we received from earlier stories, however, the IBM drives seem to have one distinguishing characteristic—they fail faster. Most of the emails and commentary we received indicated drives that survived only a few months past their purchase date. My own personal experience mirrors this—of the three 75GXP drives I’ve replaced for customers, two of them were less than a year old, with the third being just shy of eighteen months.

If you take into account the fact that IBM is currently facing a lawsuit alleging that the 75GXP line is defective, it seems fairly clear that, at the least, IBM’s 75GXP line is suffering from problems. How widespread the problems are, which drive models they affect, and what IBM is doing to fix them, however, is not clear. It’s been suggested that all of the defective drives have shipped from a certain factory, but Big Blue has done nothing to confirm or deny this, or even acknowledged that a problem exists.....

See this link here for more info: http://www.viahardware.com/ibm120gxp.shtm

I still would not get an IBM drive until these problems settle down.

UltraLiberty, I'm not trying to dispute your 200 times statement, but I return a lot of things because of "failure" even though they work fine! It's the only way sometimes to avoid a "restocking" fee! I would rate the Western Digitals and Maxtors pretty close from what I've seen, but that is MHO.

Watch, now that I've spouted off about Maxtors treating me good, these 3 new 60GB D740's will pop on me just to teach me a lesson!!!

NEO - I can't believe your still fooling with SCSI! J/K! Your Cheetahs perform great I bet. I'ts been a while since I've messed with SCSI. We still have a few older Macs in the LAN with SCSI....

Myself, I love RAID..................

 

[AMDnut]

Here's the complete internal shot. I spent some time folding and tucking cables and wires!!!

 

[Neo]

AMD, i can still run raid with the scsi. i just usually mirror or duplex them. mainly because of the cost of the HDD's.

MAN that is way to clean in there....looks very nice though.