Page 1 of Who make the most reliable hard drives?

I am looking at replacing my aging 4GB hard drive with a newer one. Something in the region of an 80GB drive should do.

Has anyone had any bad experiences of certain manufacturers?

Has anyone had nothing but good experiences from a manufacturer?

I`d recommend Western Digital, used them loads and never had any problems.
Try this one at Ebuyer :

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=34419

80GB drive, 7200rpm with an 8MB cache, £47. Should suit you, although I`d recommend going to this one :

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=32012

120GB for an extra tenner or so..

IBM\Hitachi, Fujitsu, Seagate drives are good, always found WD drives to be a little noisey in operation. IMO

Dont Buy a Quantum, Ive had probs with them :(

I have used Seagate and Fujitsu

Both very good & quiet :)

Gary.

jumping from a 4 gb harddrive to an 80 gb ?
Have you upgraded your motherboard since you bought this drive as I think you`ll find that quite possibly it won`t support harddrives that big without at least a bios update (if thats possible) and possibly not even then.
The pc I gave to my parents can`t handle harddrives above 20 gb forinstance

Anyone had any experiences with Maxtor DiamondMax as I am tempted to get the 80 GB off SVP for £42.49.

Quote:
{HA 4074} 3.5" DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB ATA/133 HDD/2MB Buffer

DiamondMax Plus 9 blends performance and value in an ATA hard drive. This drive is the perfect combination for the mainstream consumer or commercial user. The DiamondMax Plus 9 is equipped with fluid dynamic bearing motors. This technology minimizes the noise of the drive, which is especially important in home PC applications. This fast performer at 7200 RPM and fast Ultra ATA 133 interface is the most reliable and robust single-head/single platter hard drive on the market.
Single platter, single head hard drive
Fast ATA/Enhanced IDE Compatible
Ultra ATA/133 Data Transfer Speed
2 MB Cache Buffer
FDB (fluid dynamic bearing) motors
Quiet Drive Technology
Maxtor Shock Protection System
Maxtor Data Protection System
Dimensions (mm) (WxDxH): 101.6x147x26.1
SVP Price: £42.49 Including VAT at 17.5%


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Wayne

This item was edited on Thursday, 3rd June 2004, 21:34

maxtor is a good brand. dont have a problem with them before. I`m using one right now and the only problem i have with it is the excessive noise it makes when accessing files (but maybe its just me)

however DONT buy IBM/Hitachi their deskstar series are more popular as deathstar

cokie enjoy

Thank goodness you mentioned the noise Maxtor makes. I have just had one installed and been worried by what seems like a lot of noise, as if I want to here it sifting through every file to find the one it wants. I guess it is "normal" then? I have been worried about it, thinking it was faulty as I have never heard a hard drive make noises before!

The Maxtor Diamondmax drives are supposedly good, but I`ve had 3 of them fail on me! I may just have been unlucky though. I buy Seagate drives now and haven`t had any problems.

If your BIOS doesn`t support larger drives, and no BIOS upgrade is available, you basically have 2 options (apart from changing your motherboard/whole PC):

1) Drive overlay software. This is provided free by drive manufacturers, and allows the PC to access the entire drive. You may get some compatibility problems and instability when using such software though.

2) New IDE/ATA controller card. These typically cost £10-£15 (see here for example), plug into a spare PCI slot and provide extra IDE ports to attach drives to. They have their own BIOSes, so they aren`t affected by limitations of the motherboard`s BIOS.

Mike

This item was edited on Friday, 4th June 2004, 11:25

I am assuming the motherboard will be OK, it`s not as old as a lot of the PC. I already have added a 10GB drive with no problems.

The motherboard is an ASUS A7V which has two normal IDE channels (I assume they are ATA 66) and two ATA 100 channels running off a Promise controler (built into the motherboard). ie there are four IDE connectors on the motherboard.

Am I right in assuming that an ATA 133 drive will `dumb down` when connected to an ATA 100 IDE channel? Or do I need to get a maximum of an ATA 100 drive?