whos better? seagate or western digital?

Gadge · 21 Jan 2007 at 13:10

Gonna get an external HD the ones i have seen are same size and price but whos better?

mosfet · 21 Jan 2007 at 13:33

Bit of an open ended question, there's no specific answer. A lot of fanboys on both sides. I personally use WD MyBooks for external drives, and I think they're great, but a lot of people swear by Seagate.

What are you using it for? Which interfaces do you need? Which models were you looking at?

Gadge · 21 Jan 2007 at 13:44

The ones i'm looking at are:
Seagate 320GB USB2.0 7200rpm 8MB Cache External Hard Drive
and
Western Digital 320GB MyBook Essential USB2.0 7200RPM 8MB Cache

as for storage, it will just be media, mainly HD movies that would be streamed thru the pc to the xbox360.

mosfet · 21 Jan 2007 at 13:49

Personally I'd go for the WDG1U4000 MyBook on this week only:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-085-WD

It's currently for only slightly more than both the Seagate and WD 320GB drives and has double the cache of both of them, which may provide a small performance boost.

Gadge · 21 Jan 2007 at 15:05

double cache and 80gb more for 12 quid extra. worth it?

Duke · 21 Jan 2007 at 17:09

Cache and speed doesn't matter as it's going via USB2. Just go for the quietest & most reliable. Might be worth looking at storagereview.com or similar for comparisons.

mosfet · 21 Jan 2007 at 17:41

Duke said:
Cache and speed doesn't matter as it's going via USB2. Just go for the quietest & most reliable. Might be worth looking at storagereview.com or similar for comparisons.

Spindle speed will make virtually no difference, but a larger cache may noticeably help in random access situations.

I agree, however, that noise, heat and reliability are far more important.

£12 for an extra 80GB is a great deal, but in the end it's up to you.

Gadge · 21 Jan 2007 at 19:25

mosfet said:
Personally I'd go for the WDG1U4000 MyBook on this week only:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-085-WD

It's currently for only slightly more than both the Seagate and WD 320GB drives and has double the cache of both of them, which may provide a small performance boost.

ordered that one, its 50quid cheaper than anywhere else so seems a good deal.

sorcerer · 22 Jan 2007 at 18:14

Gadge said:
Gonna get an external HD the ones i have seen are same size and price but whos better?

I have 3 Maxtors, 1 Western Digital, 1 Samsung and 5 Seagates. And I've only had failures on maxtors, I have 7 of them. But I just think apart from the occiosinal bad apple, their all pretty much the same, take your chances and hope you have a good drive.

Massive Attack · 22 Jan 2007 at 18:41

seagate 4tw

Combat squirrel · 23 Jan 2007 at 14:16

Massive Attack said:
seagate 4tw

Greenlizard0 · 23 Jan 2007 at 15:00

I personally only trust WD for my hard drives (external and internal). It's just down to experience.

Though saying that, if you're looking at a WD external drive beware that the software they provide isn't very good at all

Rroff · 23 Jan 2007 at 17:16

seagate have been by far the most reliable drives I've ever dealt with... I have a bunch of external USB2 drives with both seagate and WD discs and from experience I've mentally made a note to keep an eye on the WDs after a couple of years...