I need a 40gb hard drive, 7200rpm.

Maxtor - I'm familiar with. Seem good to me
Western Digital - I've heard are good and reliable
IBM - Says their hard drives are a bit faster


Which one to get? I'm looking for some cdfreaker's opinions on this one.

That is entirely up to the safety and speed you want.

it's best to check on www.tomshardware.com for review of those little things. Some produce more noise , others are far more stable than others , some are faster.

IMHO

I have one 40 g maxtor and one 40gb ibm. It seems the Maxtor makes some weird noises once in a while. So in that case i'd go for an IBM on the next time.

And if the maxtor is 50 bucks cheaper .. i'd still buy a maxtor
Why? Because i don't use it for data that needs to be safeguarded. It's just for fun.

Had 3 Maxtor drives, gave my mom 1 and kept the rest.

Maxtor is a great manufacturer of fast and reliable drives, I never ever experienced any problems with these drives in the past 2 years.

I have a Maxtor 20gig and a 80 gig,both running great.....my father-in-law HAD an IBM.....needed another 1,because his died......

Thanks, i like my maxtor too. So i think I'll get the 40gb Maxtor

Stay away from IBM, they fail way to much.

I love Seagate Barracuda ATA IV(They are damn quiet), Western digital is not bad either, but maxtor makes a very annoying very high-pitched whining sound(At least all maxtor 7200rpms that I've worked with (and that is 100+ now)). Keep in mind I do have very good ears, in a test I could hear sounds all the way up to 19,6KHz while my closest class mate heared up to 18,2KHz......

I'm currently also looking for a new drive...and my choice felt on the new Seagate drives (allthough all my drives I own now are IBM's - IDE and SCSI).

Seagate's latest drives come with standard 2 MB cache; and they also have Special Edition versions out which come with 8 MB cache.

On http://www.au-ja.org/review-hdd2001-4.phtml you can find the read (lesetest) and the write (schreibtest) of various drives (IBM, Seagate, WD and Maxtor). The test is in German but the figures must say enough. Their test winner is the WD drive (solid design, low noise, low heat).

WD 80GB should run around 200 euro's; WD 120 GB @ 310 euro.

I could get the WD 80 for around 150 euro(Was 1495 NOK last week) here in Norway.....not bad

Seagate is not much more expensive either.

I just bought a Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80 GB 7200 RPM today for $139 less $50 rebate = $89 US.

No wonder everyone hates the USA.

Damn you.....why is everything se cheap in the US?

Media, hardware....everything!!!

I don't hate the U.S.A.....in fact,I feel sorry for it's citizens,even if the hardware is cheaper...buy as much of them as you can....

http://www.cd-rw.org/news/archive/2742.cfm

Thanks, I think I'll buy another one today to use in a RAID setup.

Don't the politicians in your country ever come up with crackpot schemes and proposals?

Where are you from, so that I can feel sorry for you?

Politicians in my country(Belgium)aren't interested in that kind of stuff,we have no multimedia industry,who pays a big part of the campaign's bill from some of our senators....
The only time when we have to deal with such things,is when the European parlement decides to go the same way as the U.S.A.,usually after some pressure from your governement......

ZiSE,

When I read the test from the link that you referenced, it stated that the Seagate drive was the winner for the reasons you mentioned, not WD (Western Digital).

Inertia....where did you buy that Seagate Barracuda?? I would love to get one of those for such a cheap price!!!

Send me the address or company name.....thanks.....

They have them at Fry's, but the rebates may be available only in the stores.

Fry's Outpost.com has them online at Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80GB 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive for $129.95 before shipping. It says nothing about the rebate on the web site, so if you have a store nearby check with them.

The $50 rebate slip is only good for purchases through 4/2/02, so don't delay.

If you're not near a Fry's store, the rebate slip has a toll free telephone no. 866-487-7646 for questions about rebate status. I don't know if it's possible, but you could ask them if they could send you a rebate slip if you bought a drive online at Outpost.com. It worth a try, anyway.

When I first buily my computer it came with a 13.5 GB Wester Digital HD. Its never given me a prob, and I have worked with many WD in the past along with several maxtors. They are both are good drives. I recently got a 100 GB Western Digital about a month ago. Its awesome. They had a wonderful instant rebate on it, that I could not refuse, plus it was a WD just like my other drive. Good stuff.

On a second note, if you are adding a second (or third, etc) HD, then I would try to keep them the same make. I have had less problems and complications in the past by trying to keep the drives in the same make. Its probably not as much as a problem any more, but I do not like to risk it that much.

Hope this helps.

Very good info on hard drives, thanks. my question is which one works best with xp professional, my friend swears its IBM.

I would get a Maxtor. They stand by their product. I do alot of PC hardware work. One died from a bad power supply, they sent me a new drive the next day. That was the only Maxtor I've RMAed.
Western Digital, I've repaired bad sectors that have shown up after formatting and OS install. Random lockups and hangs, tracked it down to a bad sector. Western Digital is tougher on their RMA policy, I've dealt with them. I got a dead one on my desk they wouldn't take back.
IBM, I'm running one right now. I got the drive in December ran great for 3 months and found a bad sector in March. I know when I got it because that's when the boot times got longer and sometimes hang. Repaired it and so far so good. IBM has the best performance but I've thought about selling this drive and getting a Maxtor.
Seagate is also very good but I've only had one and it was good never dealt with their service dept. so I don't know on that either.

Remember your data is usually can't be recovered in the event of hard drive failure. Pick a good reliable drive

I use seagate....i like them.....almost love them.


but to my knowledge i though they were bought out by maxtor a little while back?

perhaps i was having a nightmare ?