Choose between 2 harddrives

[garry]

Hi,im trying to choose between 2 harddrives,the
80 Gb Seagate 7200 RPM UATA 100
or the 80 Gb Western Digital 7200 RPM UATA 100; JB Model; 8Mb Cache
Is there a lot of difference with the 8 meg catch.

[volt]

Yes there is a difference. I'd go with WD as I own one (120 Gig and 8mb buffer). In some tests the drive with 8mb buffer beats the SCSI one's. If you want the extra performance, go for it ;)

[garry]

Yeh thanks for that you talked me in to it,Im going to get the 120 to,cant wait.

[Gator]

whichever one you get, make sure it has that 8mb cache you will LOVE IT

[Monolyth]

NOTE - This is my personal view of WD and my personal experience with them and other manuf.

With the disclaimer out of the way...

I owned many WD drives before they got over 1GB and they were excellent drives, the first 2 20GB WD's i got failed on me, so I gave up on them and went with IBM from that time on and I've never been dissapointed (PS one of my 75GXP's is from Hungary) and it's never given me a hickup, stable operation for over 2years. However WD has failed me imho, so I will only buy IBM, Maxtor, or Fujitsu. Seagate is okay, but I work with Crystal Reports at work, so I see enough stuff from Seagate during my normal work day ;)

The fact of the matter is I will never buy WD ever again, because the data stored on my drives is WAYYYY to critical to lose. Some may say IBM has problems but I've NEVER had a problem even with a drive from the "IBM Horror Stories". I pretty much run my puter 24/7, granted there's not 24/7 Data Access going on, but there's atleast 10-12hrs every day...and after 2yrs I'd say it has impressed me.

Sorry for the obscenely long post...Just tryin to get back into the swing of things :D

[Marty McFly]

I have 2 Western Digital HD's.

1 - 120mb w/8mb cache
1 - 100mb w/2mb cache

No problems, no complaints.

Monolyth... I'd be careful how you emphasize the word never. Sounds like you're asking to be jinxed ;)

[Monolyth]

Well frankly they WILL fail someday, but prob not this instant...

Plus I haven't broken any mirror's, walked under any ladders, or seen any black cats lately...*knock on wood* lmfao

btw, Marty I sure hope u didn't go back to the future and accidently buy them old WD drives. Ie. I think you meant GB's not MB's hehe ;)

[Starscream]

Originally posted by Monolyth
btw, Marty I sure hope u didn't go back to the future and accidently buy them old WD drives. Ie. I think you meant GB's not MB's hehe ;)

LOL!

[garry]

Yeh i just got my 120 gig Western Digital with 8 meg catch,its a great drive better than the ibm deathstar 60gig i had before,but theres one thing that im wondering,is that i installed windows xp and formated it in ntfs,and when i get into windows it says that the drive is only 111 gig big,so theres 9 gigs missing is that normal.

[garry]

Ive got another question,when i ordered the 120 gig harddrive i also ordered a Promise ATA100 PCI 2-Channel IDE Controller,but when the stuff turns up, they sent me the wrong controller instead of the promise one,this is the one they sent me http://www.sunrichtech.com.hk/IO/ATA%20100.htm
it says on the box its ata 100 but undernieth here it says Supports Ultra DMA2, 3, 4 but i dont see dma5 mentioned,is this a true ata100 controller,has anyone herd of this controller before.

this is what it says on the website

Chipset : CMD 0649 ATA 100 Controller Chip
Bus Interface : 32-bit PCI Bus
Features :
Ultra ATA 100 compatible
PnP
Supports bus master DMA at 133Mbytes/sec PCI burst rate
Supports maximum bus master data transfer rate of 66MB/sec.
Two independent Ultra ATA channels with 128 Bytes buffer per channel
Supports up to four IdE/ATA devices (coexists with other IDE and SCSI controllers)
Fully backwards compatible with Ultra ATA/33, EIDE/Fast ATA-2 IDE & ATAPI devices
Supports Ultra DMA2, 3, 4 ; Multi-Word DMA0, 1, 2 & PIO 2, 3, 4 driver modes
Compliant to ATA/ATAPI-5 specification and PCI specification version 2.1.
Enhanced data integrity of transferred data with CRC (cyclical redundancy check) protection and verification
Compatible with Microsoft IDE/ATA drives (Windows 95/98, NT 4.0 & Windows 2000)
Connectors :
2 X Ultra ATA 100 IDE connectors

[saturnotaku]

If it doesn't support UDMA mode 5, then I don't think it can be considered a true ATA 100 controller. Methinks you've been had. Return it and get the controller you asked for.

As for the hard drives, and I realize it's a little late now, but I would have bought the Seagate. I have that exact drive you mentioned and it's been awesome. Solid performance and it's been 100% reliable, which is more than I can say for any Western Digital hard drive I've owned. No matter how much cache it has, no WD hard drive will ever go back into my computer.

[-=DVS=-]

I like my HD Maxtor with ATA 133 :D need motherboard that support 133 though mine does :p


and yeah 80 Gb Western Digital 7200 RPM UATA 100; JB Model; 8Mb Cache or any other HD with 8mb and 7200 RPM should be real fast

[8ender]

sure, you could buy the western digital drive if you dont mind having a penis rammed up your ass.

go maxtor, quality drives, especially since the quantum merger.

[Nemesis]

Originally posted by 8ender
sure, you could buy the western digital drive if you dont mind having a penis rammed up your ass.

go maxtor, quality drives, especially since the quantum merger.

Nicely put! I always sit down when using my WD drive ;)

Go here (www.itbutikken.co.uk) and follow the harddisks link and then Top Sellers - they have repair frequency percentages for all the top makes of HD - WD come in lower than the competition.

And mine is damn fast...