so i need a new hdd, what do you reckon is the best brand (getting a sata 2 something or other gb, probably 500)

I like Seagate, never failed on me.

But then again, I've never had any HDD fail on me. Touchwood.

if i buy all my hdd's off you will that work?

Back when i was a systems builder (2 years ago now) I liked WD, mainly cos they were a little bit cheaper and quieter (this is the old JB's mind you). The failure rate at that stage was exactly the same per 100 units for Seagate and Western Digital. Maxtor was a higher percentage tho.

Bottom line? it don't really matter, just so long as its Seagate or WD.

Last week WoW Sight and Sound have a pretty good special on a 400GB HDD, wouldn't know if it's still on though.

I piked up a sammy 500gb SATA II from umart for $135 last week, was a bitch to put in, but goin well.

what about with the cache, is there much difference between 16 and 32mb

meh, in real life i doubt it makes that much difference, mines doing fine, run games n s*** off it, nothing bad so far, except the amount of porn I put on it already. hahahahahahha.

I bought a 500G LaCie External drive from Office Works a couple of weeks back for $170. Works great, apart from the fact it won't let me copy a file bigger than 4gig at any one time... wtf?

right click the drive in my computer and check properties - if it says 'file system: fat32', that's why. You can reformat it to NTFS and you'll be able to make bigger files, but obviously you'll lose all your data

You can reformat it to NTFS and you'll be able to make bigger files, but obviously you'll lose all your data

Do you have to lose your data because it's a USB drive?

Because normally you just nondestructively convert a FAT32 partition to NTFS from the command line:

CONVERT D: /FS:NTFS

Takes a few seconds, and bam it's done. I haven't tried it in Vista nor on a USB drive though.

last edited by parabol at 20:13:09 27/Nov/07

My old WD drive was faster than my seagates, however now it takes forever to scan it or if I access files on it it seems like it's taking up 100% cpu time and the computer takes ages to respond, even though cpu time is down at like 10%. It gets no SMART errors so I have no idea what's going on with it.

I'm after another hard drive too, was looking at a 500gigibyte seagate, that or a single 1tb drive, though I don't need that much yet but with more and more games coming out on dvd and taking up > 12 gig it'll come in handy.

I'm a tad hesitant to get 1 single big drive though because if it goes, EVERYTHING goes, whereas the way I have it now windows + games on one physical hard drive, my documents/pictures on another and the failing WD drive for temp storage of data that doesn't need to be kept for more than 5 minutes.

Billy - I used to have an external hdd enclosure that stopped working after copying 4GB of data. Not necessarily a single file, just 4 GB overall.

I did some research on the enclosure, turned out the chipset responsible for the usb->ide bridge was the culprit, some kind of buffer overflow or addressing bug IIRC.

Pretty much had to switch the enclosure off and on again to resume copying data, same sort of thing happening to you? If so, I think you're best bet is probably just to rip the drive out of the enclosure and get another one, or take it back to where you bought it and demonstrate the problem for a refund.

I used to have an external hdd enclosure that stopped working after copying 4GB of data. Not necessarily a single file, just 4 GB overall.

Mine does that (Vantec Nexstar which got rave reviews).

I've tried 3 different machines (including a laptop), under Linux, XP and Vista. All of them drop the device after a few gigs of data have been transferred. Pisses me off to no end.

yeah I was plaining to buy a 750gig sea gate sata2 drive this week but msy ultimo was sold out..

Im gonna be getting a 1tb drive next week sometime, probably going for Western Digital because most of the drives I have bought are WD and have been fine. Plus its like 70 bucks cheaper!

Whoop: with the cheap prices of HDD's these days and the sheer volume, you may as well get 2 x 1TB drives and raid them, with constant backup.

It's so cheap you'd be silly not to >< (and all mobo's these days come with raid)

I thought I'd throw this out there for you especially Matt...

WD's 1TB drive is only 5400rpm. Out of Seagate, WD, Samsung and Hitachi, the Hitachi drive is 5 platters, WD and Seagate are 4 platter, and Samsung are 3. Which technically makes the samsung the most advanced.

Seagate have a 5 year warranty dont forget. They are also the fastest 1TB drive.

5 Years is way too handy for me, I always buy Seagate.

After doing a bit of research, it seems the Seagate 7200.10 drives are really noisy. At SPCR, the Samsung 500GB (HD501LJ) was bandied around as the best drive. It is quieter, cooler and cheaper to boot (Link).

I've always had Seagates, but the price and reputation of this Samsung drive is a big factor.

Holy s*** 5400!? I read that it was some weird half way point? that couldn't exactly tell ya. Samsung? eh!
Ermm might be worth getting the seagate afterall!

Thanks Mongie!

You dont have to lose all your data and format to NTFS, that is stupid man you can convert.

simply type in the command prompt

CONVERT DRIVE: /FS:NTFS

If it is the drive windows is installed on you should boot into the windows xp recovery options from the cd.

What are you on about mongie?? Why do you think it's a 5400 drive?

Western Digital 1TB SATAII 7200 rpm HDD - pulled from Umart's site. Google says it's real as well....

YOU LIED TO ME MONGIE!
Whats the warranty on the WD's like?

I had a cluster failure of 4 x Western Digital drives in the past 12 months
they all started off with a similar serial number, 12 months later they all have been replaced with new drivers that once again, have a similar serial number
This was in a raid5 array

the WD RMA process is surprisingly easy and pain free

What are you on about mongie?? Why do you think it's a 5400 drive?

The WD 1Tb drive is a 5400+rpm drive it is slightly faster than 5400, its quieter, and more energy efficient than the 7200rpm offerings from seagate, hitatchi and samsung. WD do not make a 7200rpm 1Tb HDD. Go and check their website, you'll notice they don't state the rotational speed on their Caviar GP disks cause they run slow to make them "Green". Umart are lying if they state 7200rpm. The largest 7200rpm disk they make is Caviar SE 750Gb.

The fastest 1Tb HDD available is the Samsung. Using the 3 platter design, its read/write performance is actually better than the WD Raptor drives (Raptors still have it hands down on seek times). Samsung has 32Mb cache as opposed to 16Mb.

Samsungs are also cheaper than the Seagates. Only benefit of the Seagates is the 5yr warranty.

All that said I am running 4 x Seagate 750Gb hdd and 2 x WD 150Gb Raptors. I do like the look of the samsungs though, I might have to get 1 to try.

Ermm might have to check out these samsungs....but its samsung?! Had a few die on me :(

I recently got a 500G Maxtor for $139 from MSY.
Anyone had one of these fail miserably?
I intend to use it as storage (for stuff I have backed up on DVD-R).

Was a bit weird cos I have an xBox networked to my PC and last night I went to watch something only to find the Maxtor drive, after initially appearing on the list, was then showing zero content. A reboot of the xbox caused the Maxtor to disappear completely from the xbox's dashboard.
When I went to investigate the PC, the Maxtor had disappeared from the tree! I checked in Disk Management etc and no Maxtor.
However the tried and true reboot fixed the problem on both xbox and PC and the drive reappeared on both in working order.
Any explanations? Should I replace it?