Western Digital On Top?

[Spritzup]

Is Western Digital currently the top hard drive manufacturer? If not, then who would you say is? Thanx!!

[Theo]

Maxtor, in my opinion - quiet, fast, reliable and value for money.

-Edit
By the way, I currently run:
3x120Gb 7200rpm 8MB cache DM9+
and a few 40Gb 5400rpm jobbies. All have been very reliable, and great performance giving. (touch wood)

[SilentDeath]

i think maxtor aswell

[Austin]

Another vote for Maxtor. WD tend to give you slightly better perf on average but are much noisier and lack FDB. Seagate are the other top manu and are the quietest but are slightly behind in perf but still use FDB. But with Maxtor you get very nearly top perf (easily top in SATA) without having to compromise elsewhere, plus there's sw to alter the perf-to-noise ratio. Pricing is very good as are RMA's (although you do have to return to Rep Ireland). The Maxtor HD's only offer 1 year now though, as has become the HD industry std ... except for WD's 7200-8 HD's (and presumably SATA) where you get 3 years. Over all I'd still have to side with Maxtor although WD and Seagate are also top notch ... I wouldn't buy anything else.

[Trash Man]

I would say Seagate are the daddeh's when it comes to HDD's

[St3v3]

I'd say seagate too

Silence is more important to me than hard disk performance.

I my shuttle, the seagate isn't as hot as my WD drive and I barely notice the difference

[Speedo]

It really doesn't matter. I have several maxtors and WDs (the latter all 8mb) which are all excellent, I'll just buy the next depending on price and availability. There isn't much in performance, just watch out for the noise levels and warranty .

[perryh73]

Have to be WD for the 3 year warrenty.
1 year is very poor for such precise and well engineered kit from respected manufacturers.

Or do I smell a fujitsu debacle fear smell from other manufactureres?

[Aaron]

Western Digital drives are way too loud for my liking. I've currently got a Seagate Barracuda V. Very quiet. I've heard good things about the Maxtor drives too though.

[Rabs]

What I dont get is how can WD drives be loud, do you remember drives from about 5 years ago, now they were loud. With modern cpus and case fans putting out lots of DB's etc you can hardly hear any of this generations HD's from any manufacturer, I think you guys are being to picky.

Personally I go for WD's because of the 3 year warranty which gives me a lot of faith in them. Touch wood, I have bought 20+ for me and friends in the past 2 years, all still working fine.

I'd rather pay a little more for something thats guaranteed a life of 3 years + with replacement protection if it doesn't, than a drive with one year which dies shortly after the warranty expires

[PanzerKnight]

Would say maxtor
Hvae had one of theie drives running fine for bout 4 years now

Seagate are nice and silent but find that they can get pretty hot as a result

[drunkenmaster]

WD's don't all have 3 year warranties, infact, fewer than the rest i believe. Seagate i think are 120GB 8meg drives and up with 3 year warranties, everything under, or none 8MEG with 1 year. Maxtor i think are still doing all 8MGcache with 3 year warranty, and the rest with 1 year.

WD are also 3 year warranty on 8meg cache, but not sure if there is a size limit or not. Raptors with 5 years but hugely overpriced, they are priced so highly due to warranty, not performance.

Gonna go check now, but warranty situtation is pretty equal throughout. Value wise you don't really want to buy less than a 120Gig drive anyhow, so you should really be getting 3 year warranties all round.

Speed wise, maxtor are king, IBM very close with the 180GXP, the 250GXP may be faster yet, and win the speed stakes, got one en route. The WD's are slightly older now, (first 8 megs were fast, but same drives and the maxtor/ibm/seagates came out later), and noticeably slower.

Seagate barracuda's 5's run hot, and slow, the 7200.7's are very fast and run cooler(too much insulation for noise causing heat on the barra's). thats about it.

basically, in sisoft terms, maxtor ibm and the seagate 7200.7 are all hovering in the 36-39k area, raptors only manage 37-39k, WDSE's are around 33k, seagate barras 31k or so. HDtach, IOMeter all confirm roughly the same performance gaps. In a home use kinda way, for server use the Raptor goes ahead(small filesxlots=low seek wanted , the WD SE's become far better here, but most of us don't need a drive thats best in server use.

[drunkenmaster]

ok, checked WD now, everything 2mg cache is 1 year warranty, size doesn't matter, all 8 meg is 3 year, and raptor 5 year.

ok, maxtor have 3 year warranties on 8meg cache on drive 120gig or bigger, leaving only the 80gig 8 meg cache with 1 year warranty, think all sata's are 3 years. all maxline drives, whatever the kind, are 3 years, all retail drives, any size or cache are 2 year warranties, and everything else 1 year. external drives are also 2 year. Also says scsi are all 5 years, pretty standard on enterprise drives all round.

[Spritzup]

Yeah, the 120 gig Maxtor SATA drives come with a 3 year warranty on them

[drunkenmaster]

Very very worryingly, seagate state 1 year for absolutely everything, cept their enterprise stuff, which it didn't really state. however their info talking bout them all going to 1 year warranties for 1st october 2002, kinda seems to say that new drives, can contain used or remanufactured parts????

Maybe they all do this, and maybe it jsut means casings and stuff that won't matter, but, sounds a little iffy IMHO.

[drunkenmaster]

Opps, didn't check seagate(56k aol for now, ain't going back no no no no ) , but WD and Maxtor have good appearing RMA service's, both offer normal, IE get a rma number, send off drive, on reciept they will send you a replacement. Or advanced, give credit card details, get replacement first, send your drive back within 30 days of replacment arriving and don't get charged(good for if drive is jsut useable, to back up data from, but needs rma'ing).

I've only used maxtors though, had wd and maxtors die on me, both very old ones, wd 2 months outside warranty, maxtor 1 month inside. Maxtor were very quick, advanced rma, here after 4 days, inc weekend \o/ Got a 30gig d740x liquid bearings, for an old quatum drive that was far slower and 20gig's, not bad.

maxtor can send out refurb'd drives, though if that dies on you, they garentee sending you a brand new drive to replace that one. Which is pretty sweet.