Choosing between an 80gb Western digital/80gb Seagate!

[aidanjt]

I don't even know what someone would want an 80Gb HD for these days anyway, fine for a system disk, but then you'd be better off with a 74Gb raptor, since you actually get a performance increase.

No one disk performs better than the other, reliablity is a milage that varies greatly, one samsung disk might be good, one might be bad, one seagate disk might be good, another might be bad.. and so on so on.

So, just go for whatever one is cheaper, or any company you have a bias for, quite frankly all this "omfg don't get a maxtor/samsung/seagate/WD/whatever they sux0rz, maxtor/samsung/seagate/WD/whatever rulez" crap is bugging me.

There's hardly anything worth talking about in the 7,200RPM range.

[TooNice]

I am inclined to agree with the above, although I can also understand why one might not want to get a Raptor. At 3x the cost, it may have a more significant performance advantage to comparing to 7.2k RPM drives... but still falls far behind in terms of bang for buck. I'd say that 250-300GB is the sweetspot when it comes to capacity/£, but if the original poster don't think he'll need that sort of capacity, then he can save half the cost by going 80GB.

[DanceswithUnix]

That site forwards me to www.microsoft.com???

Apologies, I obviosly messed up inserting the link.

I shall try again:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/sho...spx?i=2682&p=1

Also you cant really compare drives which have different sizes due to data density differences.

I would personally go for the seagate.

No, you can't compare drives from different ages/ranges because of density differences. These drives have 160GB on a platter (I think that is true of the WD, it certainly is of the seagate). If you buy 160GB you get 2 sides & 2 heads, if you buy 80GB you get one side read/written by one head. Otherwise you get the same disk.

The performance difference will be down to the drive having to occasionally recalibrate as it switches heads, and they have to be very good at that so I don't think you will notice.

[DanceswithUnix]

I don't even know what someone would want an 80Gb HD for these days anyway, fine for a system disk, but then you'd be better off with a 74Gb raptor, since you actually get a performance increase.

Reliability. If you get 500GB then you have 4 platters, 8 heads. All those heads generate friction & heat and have a small but definate chance of falling off.

So, just go for whatever one is cheaper, or any company you have a bias for, quite frankly all this "omfg don't get a maxtor/samsung/seagate/WD/whatever they sux0rz, maxtor/samsung/seagate/WD/whatever rulez" crap is bugging me.

There's hardly anything worth talking about in the 7,200RPM range.

People always have been like that with hard drives, and I'm sure they always will. When your graphics card goes you need to get a new one. If your drive goes you lose data and that really narks people. At that point they switch manufacturers out of spite, and get a much better drive simply because 3 years have passed since they got their old drive and they are all now that good. They don't know that all the others are that good, and just think that the new manufacturer must be miles better than the old one.

As for nothing worth talking about, some people would love a second off their game loading time. Some people want a drive that is _really_ quiet. There are differences.

[vrykyl]

for me when it comes to choosing drives there are two things that make my decision - warranty length and noise. Iv found seagate are a lot quieter than western digital (I have a 200gb model, both same age from both companies), and seagate have a 5 year warranty on enterprise drives...last time i looked WD only offered 3 years (except on raptors)....
Id get a seagate - but thats personal preference based on my experiences.

[DanceswithUnix]

Do Seagate allow 24/7 operation on their warrenty? I just bought one of the Samsung drives that was on Scan today only, partly as they are quiet and partly as they are one of the few drives that have a server style warranty. The drive is going into a TiVo and will therefore have a hard life

[Koolpc]

How will the manufacturer know if the drive has been on 24/7?

[hitman67]

I'd say a sammy, purley because they make quiet, cool and pretty rapid drives.

[DanceswithUnix]

How will the manufacturer know if the drive has been on 24/7?

If they care enough, it is only pence to put a small rewritable memory on the drive to log operational hours.

If they store that data on the hard drive platter, then they may or may not be able to retrieve it when the drive fails.

Doing a "smartctl -a /dev/hda" on my Linux box here says the hard drive has logged 14456 hours powered on. I think from that you can work out to the day when I installed it! It has been powered off 22 times. Blimey, it is only 44 degrees right now, but it once hit 68 celcius

I think all SMART enabled hard drives log this stuff. I have seen an IIyama monitor log it's usage, and the wife's ABIT motherboard seems to keep all sorts of stats as well.

[TooNice]

M'well, if you back up your drive frequently, then RMA policy is another thing to look at when picking drives.

Hitachi was a lot faster than WD in my case.

(In an ideal world, HD wouldn't fail - but that *is* too much to ask for at the moment )