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Thread ID: 23579 2002-08-19 10:04:00 evaluating hard drives Ron Bakker (356) Press F1
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72434 2002-08-19 10:04:00 Because I'm very uneducated & easily influenced when I'm looking up hard drives I automaticly assume that the bigger the capacity & the cheaper the price means the better the deal.
I have a p4 2gighz 256ddr ram which I recently installed .
My 10gig hd is almost full . How do I tell what the transfer rates are.
In short how do I weigh up a hard drives preformance.
Ron Bakker (356)
72435 2002-08-19 10:11:00 I would be investigating reliability before transfer rate. It's not funny when a hard drive fails taking your things with it, even if you do have your data backed up. It's very inconvenient.

Having said that I would be looking at 7200rps drives rather than 5400rps and wouldn't be fussed with choosing the fastest between brands at that (7200rps) speed. That's where the reliability comes in. :-)
Susan B (19)
72436 2002-08-19 10:40:00 for adverage use the 5400rpm drives are ok. for gamers and other heavy uses 7200rpm is the only way to go. i prefer to stick to the main known good drives. most come with 2meg caches. cheap drives usually only have 512k cache and obvoiusly slower. concidering ibm's problem with their "deathstar" hardrives i would keep away from ibm. western digital, seagate, maxtrox all make good drives just comes down to size vers $$$. tweak'e (174)
72437 2002-08-19 10:48:00 *Susan wake yourself up! 5400/7200rps my foot - that will be the day!!* Susan B (19)
72438 2002-08-19 12:03:00 > *Susan wake yourself up! 5400/7200rps my foot
> - that will be the day!!*

ROFLMAO and then we'd be accessing our HDDs faster than our RAM :D - I wish :)

Mike.
Mike (15)
72439 2002-08-19 12:07:00 > Because I'm very uneducated & easily influenced when
> I'm looking up hard drives I automaticly assume that
> the bigger the capacity & the cheaper the price means
> the better the deal.
> I have a p4 2gighz 256ddr ram which I recently
> installed .
> My 10gig hd is almost full . How do I tell what the
> transfer rates are.
> In short how do I weigh up a hard drives preformance.

Personally I've always bought Quantum (until they merged with Maxtor and focussed on the HUGE expensive server type drives) and then Maxtor, but over the last couple of months I've been hearing that Seagate have recovered from a few very bad years quality-wise and now are practically on a par with Maxtor and WD, and so on Saturday I took the plunge and bought a new 40gb 7200rpm Seagate, and well so far I'm impressed - it's quick, it's incredibly quiet, and it was cheap, well as cheap as I could find it in Tauragana - $210incl GST... most other places were selling the same drive for $258, and the 5400rpm model they were selling for $230!

Mike.
Mike (15)
72440 2002-08-19 12:08:00 > as I could find it in Tauragana

LOL and I can't even spell Tauranga... I guess I have only lived here 3 1/2 years.

Mike.
Mike (15)
72441 2002-08-19 22:14:00 go for a maxtor 7200 rpm over 40 gig s if you can also use a cd burner to back up stuff to free up ythe HDD space kiwibeat (304)
72442 2002-08-19 22:44:00 FYI - I believe that IBM HDD quality has gone to sh!t. I heard from the horses mouth (IBM storage rep) that you're better off not buying IBM at the moment. If you're going to buy IDE, go for Maxtor. You'll get the same quality at a cheaper price (for now). honeylaser (814)
72443 2002-08-21 09:38:00 Oh how I love my 10K Cheetah Ultra 160 SCSI Giggle giggle BIFF (1)
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