Maybe honda and toyota should start making harddrives. May God forgive, and bless the United States.

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doc, HDDs go bad whatever make you buy, you've just been unlucky, as you can see from your recommendation of Maxtor and the following reply. The fact remains that the Deskstar range are among the quietest and fastest available. Some people are like Slinkies?, not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs...

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The original poster asked between maxtor and western digital and thats what I gave a answer too. I have used all of the above and am currently using two western digital sata raptor drives 10000 rpms in my own computer running a raid 0. I am a bit concerned though because every now and then I hear one of these drives chripping at bootup. They are about four months old and its a good thing they have a five year warranty because it appears I will be needing it soon. Nobody ever said there were harddrive made that did not fail. Thats understood. I only commented on my own experiances concerning maxtor, western digial and ibm drives. May it be said when I die, He was a man of integrity.

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They're all about the same. And the IBM Deskstars -- also known as Deathstars -- are no longer made by IBM. They now have a terrific reputation.

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IBM sold its hard drive division to hitachi and the plant and people went with it. There were a few terrible deskstar drives in the past and that's why they got a bad rep but their current drives are fine. WD and Maxtor are the popular drives because they are somewhat cheaper than seagate because seagate commands a premium. The main functional difference in today's drives is lifespan and that's tough to measure since it will be a while before these drives fail. My vote goes to seagate since they are the leaders in quietness and temperature and heat and noise are what kills drives over time. All that said, those above who say they are all about the same make a fair statement.

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I have been using Seagate drives since 40 Mbs was huge and have never had one fail on me. They have all been retired in perfect working order. Seagate are reliable. Speed, quietness, temperature are all desirable, but reliability is essential. Stuart

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I believ what Johnoh meant was heat is a contributing factor to failure as of course it affects ballbearing expansion/contraction and will lead to a quicker wearing of bearings, and no doubt other problems. Yes also a desirable thing but a reason to go for Seagates.

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wow, i wasnt expecting so much debate. thanx guys. AMD Athlon XP *barton* 3200+ Asus A7N8X-X Kingston PC3200 512 DDR ATI Radeon 9600SE 40 GIG Western Digital 7200 RPM 20 GIG Maxtor 5400 RPM X-Dreamer II

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"... quietness, temperature are all desirable, but reliability is essential." "but" might be replaced with "and their resulting". A product with motorized and/or moving parts that is quieter and cooler than its competition is going to be more reliable than its competition.

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Whats with the new western digital hard drives and the locking/unlocking arm? They make a click noise when started and then make a click noise when turned off. I talked to a wd agent and they said it was normal and that its just the arm(sorry if thats not the correct term)locking on power off and unlocking when starting. Seems to me this would lower life expectancy on the drive..Any thoughts?

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Interesting, It is a clicking noise I am hearing when starting, but only sometimes. Never hear it on shutdown. I will have to check into it. Do you have any refferance websites about it? May it be said when I die, He was a man of integrity.

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I dont have any reference sites but I believe I did a google a while back and found some posts about it. Yeah,thats odd how you dont get it on shut down or on all boots. You may want to contact wd about it.I think they have have a toll free number,you'll need your serial number to get assistance.

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All hard drives have read/write head parking, which puts the read/write head (which is at the end of the arm) on top of a part of the drive that is known as the landing area. You don't want the head resting on a data area since it may end up corrupting or injuring that part of the drive, so platters all have a landing area and the read/write head comes into contact with that part of the platter first before progressing smoothly over the bits of the data area. WD also has protective head parking which forces the head to the landing area even when you have a system freeze or abnormal shutdown.

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I've used Maxtor for years with zero problems. I also replace a lot of older WD and Seagate drives that have failed. None of this means a Maxtor is better than the other brands...it's just what I see on the systems I work on. If a point of sale vendor signs up with WD to provide hdd's over a ten year period, they will have failures and they will also have long periods without any real failures. My next hdd will be a Seagete or Hitachi or WD or Maxtor... If one of my new drives should happen to die an untimely death, I'll just write it off to the luck of the draw and likely replace it with the same drive. Skip

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I've got to throw a vote Hitachi's way right now. Seagate second fav. I've seen too many WD and Maxtor bite the dust on customers' systems. I used to be a big Maxtor fan, but when the 30 gig drives were becoming the common size drives, Maxtor's quality suddenly tumbled. The Hitachi nd Seagate drives now usually have 8.5ms seek times, which is tops among Serial ATA/IDE drives aside from the WD Raptors. MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!

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I have always been a WD man. I tried a MAXTOR and its been great for me so far. either 1 i think is a good choice. I build System builder, i have built about 15 systems in the last year. Every one of them has a WD in it. I have never had a prob yet. Shuttle AK39N 512 Micron AMD 2600 Barton core 40GB 7200 Maxtor ATI 7200 radeon

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I upkeep 30 PC's at work. I have always used Maxtor and have never had one go bad on me yet. I have replaced many Western Digitals with Maxtors.

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WD! best service, best reviews, best price i have had IBM, Hitachi, Seagate, Maxtor, and WD hdds and it seems to me that WD is definetly the best, the maxtor went bad after four years and i have heard from a friend of mine at my local comp shop that they run hotter than any other drives and he's been in the business for over 20 years so i now believe that they are crap, the Hitachi is still going strong after being in a Mitac Minote 6133 forever and out of it into my desktop as a backup for a while, the IBM is still going strong too and its been in a P75 desktop for years probly 9 years. i have no problems with the Seagates, but the WD caviar 80gigs remain the best. They are the quietest and fastest hdds i have ever had and hey if a WD goes bad then their excellent customer service will replace it for you but like Skip said it really is the luck of the draw, although if you want to increase your odds get a WD the corsair of hdds ^(',')]}~~~:]>

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I've always had good luck with Seagate. -Bob

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although the new hitachi sata drives are getting high praise especially in Maximum PC magazine if anyone's familiar with it what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

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I had a 3 gig Maxtor fail after 6 1/2 years as a C: drive then a 5 gig WD fail after 6 years as a D: drive in the same machine. I currently have 4 Seagates going in 2 different machines and 1 Maxtor in a 3rd machine. The Seagates are 20 gig (C:) and 2 40's (D:,E:) in one and an 80 (C:) in another. The 20 gig Seagate has been going since late 99 and the others added later. That machine is on virtually 24/7 and does a lot of downloading (over 14000 mp3s on it). The 80 doesn't do much work and is about 1 1/2 years old. The remaining Maxtor is in an old IBM 300 PL that dates from 98 and was salveged from an airline company so god knows the usage it got. Currently it is a dual boot machine with linux and XP partitions. I agree with those that say luck of the draw and can't complain about any of them though maybe the WD was the weakest of the bunch. Its your call. "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference." Frost

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How about Tobisha? That's what I'm currently using on my new laptop - anyone had any experiences w/ Tobisha HD's? Good or bad? Lemme know! Thanks. =) -Andy

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i've never even heard of Tobisha what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

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Wow! This thread is still alive? Giggles, you've never heard of Toshiba!? What planet are you from? LOL Andy, I have never used a Toshiba drive myself because they only make them for laptops and I don't have a laptop. But I've heard very good things about them. Symbios

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yes Toshiba laptops are the creme of the crop but this Tobisha company... lol what is painfully obvious to one person might be just painful to the other

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