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ST Dragon - Nov 9, 2005

		ST Dragon		Nov 9, 2005
			Hello, Iâm in need for some extra space, so Iâm looking forward in obtaining a new Hard Drive. My M/B doesnât support Serial ATA & I donât want to buy a SATA converter, so Iâve come down to choosing one of these three IDE HDs: Western Digital WD3200 Caviar SE â 7200RPM â 8MB Cache â 320GB â 179 Euros Sea Gate Barracuda Ultra ATA 7200 â 8MB Cache â 250GB â 125 Euros MAXTOR 300R0 300GB - ATA133 BULK â 7200RPM - 16MB Cache - 300GB â 135 Euros Iâve used WD & SeaGate HD before & theyâre both very reliable, even though SeaGate is supposed to be a bit more silent. Iâve never used Maxtor before, but with 16MB Cache, 300GB @ 135 Euros, it looks like a better buy. Is Maxtor silent like the Seagate & is it reliable? So which one should I get? Thanks in advance.

		ExCyber		Nov 10, 2005
			Maxtor has not been reliable in my experience, but maybe I've just had bad luck. The good news is that Maxtor's RMA process is absurdly smooth, and I rarely wait to talk to tech support.

		lordofduct		Nov 10, 2005
			I refuse to purchase Maxtor drives. I have used 5 different hard drives from them and they all started to show errors in under a years usage! SeaGate is a good deal, but I've only used one ever... still kicks it as a storage drive. I personally love WD drives... I have always purchased them and only had one crash on me so far (I usually upgraded before any got to old). The one that crashed just did 2 days ago ... but then the drive was purchased in early 2000 and I worked that machine to hell and back! So I think I got some good life out of the lil' bitch! Where the hell are you buying these HDDs from? I've been looking on Newegg the pass couple days for some HDDs and 320 GB WD drives were more around the 135-140 range. That is unless the currency exchange between $ and euros has fluctuated a lot since the last time I looked.

		Malakai		Nov 10, 2005
			You're probably going to find a lot of opinions/experiences on this subject. When I first was getting in to hard drives, connor? was one of the most popular oem manufactures at the time, with WD being what every one considered the best. I bought into the hype several times with WD, from the 486 days until a few years ago. I've had WD drives go out in as little as six months, and most not lasting any longer than 2 years. These were several different "lines" of WD drives, both retail and oem. I've also bought several maxtor drives and so far have only had 1 go out. What I was told about the particular line of maxtor drive that I had was that they were notorious for the cache failure, and I believe that's what went out in it, and the company was replacing them free of charge for a little while. As far as sea gate goes, I've only had 1 or 2 of them, and the one that I bought new has been working great for over 7-8 years, with no problems whatsoever. Good luck on this one.

		it290		Nov 10, 2005
			I actually have two Maxtors in the box I'm typing this on. I've used them both for a few years and have had absolutely no problems of any sort. I have this theory that they like the 24/7 operation they've been subjected to more than being turned on and off. That said, I've had several Maxtors just up and die on me, and I would go with the Seagate for reliability. As for quietness, none of those drives are really what would be considered silent. If you want quiet get a laptop HD and suspend it in your drive bay.

		Landstalkerx		Nov 10, 2005
			I have 3 maxtor drives, all of which are about three years old I've had no problems with the maxtor drives so far. I also have a segate drive which is about 4 years old and hasn't caused me any problems.

		RitualOfTheTrout		Nov 11, 2005
			In my time Iv seen more Maxtor drive failures than the other two. Here at work Iv replaced 4 maxtor drives and Iv only been here for 2 months. As for Seagate, i have been a WD buyer but I think I might switch to Seagate because I hear alot of good reviews from there drives plus all of their drives now have a 5 year warranty.