help me choose a hard drive please

[john-boi]

Ok I am after a new hard drive .

I want a SATA drive can't be SATA2 (unfortunately or would have gone for new Samsung Spinpoints) as my NF7-S has issues with some of them..ie they don't work on the Si112 contoller.

So I am looking at 250gb drives and basically between the Hitachi linky ,maxtor linky or seagate.linky

In tests the hitachi comes out a tad quicker but the Maxtor has NCQ and 16mb cache.The seagates are slower but have 5 year warrenty while the other 2 have 3 years.

I'm leaning towards the maxtor at the moment.The seagate is a bit more money too.

anybody any experience of either of these three drives

[Reaps]

I would go for the Maxtor as i've never had a problem with any of the ones i have owned in the past. The warranty process is pretty painless aswell so i've heard.

[0iD]

Try a Spinpoint p120 for size http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=247245
Very nippy.
Other than that Maxtor for reliability and equally Seagate. Seagates tend to be v-quiet too in my experience.

[sawyen]

maxtor if you absolutely need that extra 10 quid... cs the diamond 10 series are VERY.. quote VERY ULTRA noisy.. they're like my sister snapping her finger 20 times a second next to my ear... idle's pretty quiet tho..

Samsung spinpoint is the way to go.. fast, quiet.. just maybe a few quids more expensive..

[dodgybob]

I would choose the seagate for the warranty and quietness over the maxtor. I've had issues with older maxtors in the past but no experience with the diamondmax 10 series and there seem to be a lot of users happy with them in these forums.

Personally I see it as a trade off between the slightly cheaper and slightly faster maxtor on one hand and the quieter seagate with a bigger warranty on the otherhand. I doubt you will notice that much difference in performance to be honest though. I guess it's a question of what you really want from a drive. We all have slightly different priorities.

[Tak]

I want a SATA drive can't be SATA2 (unfortunately or would have gone for new Samsung Spinpoints) as my NF7-S has issues with some of them..ie they don't work on the Si112 contoller.

The SATA II Spinpoints have a jumper setting that can be set to force SATA I mode. This may allow them to work with your board. AFAIK all SATA II Spinpoints have this feature, but check just in case. Here's the install guide from my P80SD:

[Pdog]

Another vote for Samsung, worth the extra few pounds imo. I own a IDE 160Gb sammy and woudn't change it for any other.

[john-boi]

I really wanted to go for the samsung SATA2 spinpoint but just before I went ahead I did a bit of research..I'm glad I did as it would have been £75 down the drain check this link they just don't work with my board.NF7-S damn

Now you have me worrying about the noise on my first choice the Maxtor anyone had experience of how noisy the Hitachi 250gb are?

And anybody else confirm how noisy the Diamondmax10 250GB 7200rpm SATA150 16mb Cache OEM are not that I don't believe you sawyen but sometimes you can get the odd one that is noisy or do you have experience of a few all being noisy???

By the way thanks for all your input

[BUFF]

I've got a 200Gb 8Mb Maxtor Diamondmax 10 & can't say that I find it noisy.
What I will say is that there were some problems with Maxtor 16Mb cache drives not being seen by some controllers on drives with an early firmware.

[baka]

I really wanted to go for the samsung SATA2 spinpoint but just before I went ahead I did a bit of research..I'm glad I did as it would have been £75 down the drain check this link they just don't work with my board.NF7-S damn

Now you have me worrying about the noise on my first choice the Maxtor anyone had experience of how noisy the Hitachi 250gb are?

And anybody else confirm how noisy the Diamondmax10 250GB 7200rpm SATA150 16mb Cache OEM are not that I don't believe you sawyen but sometimes you can get the odd one that is noisy or do you have experience of a few all being noisy???

By the way thanks for all your input

I did not know of the issues with NF7-S and SATA2. However I bought a 250gb SATA2 spinpoint a few weeks ago, and it works fine.... I didn't look for any jumpers or anything i just plugged it in and it worked.
I have a NF7-S v2.0 if that makes any difference