Harddrive queries.

Alexrose1uk

Alexrose1uk

Alexrose1uk

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Joined
26 Apr 2004
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Milton Keynes
In my new system, I intend to get

2x Maxtor MaxLine III NCQ 250GB 7V250F0 SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-094-MD) (note has 5 year warranty!)

OR

2x Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A31636) (HD-002-HI)

My questions, which of these two combinations is most reliable, normally maxtor aren't meant to be amazingly reliable, but 5 years warranty must show some confidence? Also which pair is faster?

AND if I was to raid them in striped, what would the fastest stripe size be? 32KB? (wondering as I have no previous experience with raid).

Summing up the questions - whats fastest, raid and otherwise, and what is reliability like on these and raid nowadays.


Thanks a lot! :D
 
The IBM Hitachi's without a shawdow of doubt! Renowned for speeeeeeeeed yet still reliable.

I still have an old IBM Deskstar in my "emergency computer" still firing away like a champ! :D
 
I thort i should step in here because from experience Maxtor have been exstreamily reliable for me and IBM have only ever had problems with me.

My experience with Maxtor:

I'm currently running a 40GB Maxtor Diamondmax 8 (7200rpm) - about a year old, which is apparently one of the fastest in it's class, And a 60GB Maxtor (5400rpm) - about 4 years old. Both drives have always worked, never had a problem with them. They a little noisy but there old now.

My experience with IBM:

My last PC has a 80GB IBM hard drive to make it a working PC because i've kept the 60GB Maxtor it did have. The BIOS screen freezes at "looking for IDE devices" for quite some time, then when you finally get into windows installing software takes forever and it only reads about 18.5GB of the disk, i've tried moving jumpers and all sorts.

A laptop that i used to use stop booting up because it would crash at "looking for IDE devices", control+alt+del wudn't even work. Latop was out of warranty so i took it apart and found a IBM hard drive, so that was that.

Also i know someone who used to work for IBM and apparently at the time there drives were so unreliable, IBM wrote down to "NOT use IBM drives" in there systems.

However i can't comment on their reliability today.
 
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It is not solely IBM anymore though, its now Hitachi and with that brand name comes the top reliability and speed that people are after, and it has been rated very highly with testing etc on all levels
 
Thats the thing slenpree,the maxtors you are using are the older models which were good drives.Check the forums at the moment for threads about the latest ones.It was the same a couple of yaers ago with the ibm drives,they werent called deathstars for nothing,and before that fujitsu had such a bad problem they pulled out of the market all together.
 
danceMB said:
It is not solely IBM anymore though, its now Hitachi and with that brand name comes the top reliability and speed that people are after, and it has been rated very highly with testing etc on all levels
Click to expand...

a) i already know it's Hitachi now

lol, gotta tell u my views of hitachi now:

b) our really old family TV was a hitachi, after over a year of purchace the screen just keep flickering like mad until u hit it, then after about 2 years we just took it to the tip.

:S

I think maxtor is the best to go for, they only get a lot of reliability stick because of there popularity
 
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You cannot rate a company purely based on different markets. This is a Hard Drive forum, and based on the %'age of failed drives between the 2 models in questions, Maxtor wins hands down! In terms of Hitachi, they have the least failed drives and are pretty damn fast, all at the same time :D
 
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