I want to buy a new Hard Drive

Post by **Sylvus** » March 30, 2007, 11:23 am

Mostly just for file storage, I'm looking for a 500GB SATA/II. I'm just looking at Newegg right now, wondered if anyone had any recommendations on what to go for or to stay away from. I'm not a big fan of the Hitachi DeskStar (DeathStar) line, though maybe I'm thinking of IBM, did they previously produce that line? Is it different than it once was?

How about the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB? Anyone with any experience there? At $349 it might be a little pricier than I need at the moment, I'd prefer to keep it at or below $250.

To quit my rambling and form an actual request: could someone please recommend a 500GB+ SATA HD and the cheapest place to find it without it having fallen off a truck?

Thanks

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » March 30, 2007, 12:12 pm

Not much to say on large storage type drives where speed isn't necessary. If you get a 7200.10, you'll be happy with it as an OS drive as well though if you ever need it for that....never know how things play out as you upgrade.

349.00 for 750GB 7200.10 is a decent price if you decide to pa a little above your target price. There isn't a 500GB 7200.10 to compromise with.

Neost · Post by **Neost** » March 30, 2007, 12:28 pm

Saw a 500gb SATA drive (didn't notice if it was 150 or 300) at fry's for 109.00 shipped yesterday.

Not sure how long that deal is good for.

Post by **Sylvus** » March 30, 2007, 12:31 pm

150/300 means 1/2? Or is it 2/3? Or am I totally off?

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » March 30, 2007, 12:37 pm

Sylvus wrote:150/300 means 1/2? Or is it 2/3? Or am I totally off?

That's right.

SATA I = 150 and II = 300

Post by **Sylvus** » March 30, 2007, 12:44 pm

I'm not even sure if my computer supports II, tbh. I'll have to check when I get home. It's probably 18 months old, how long has II been the standard?

Xatrei · Post by **Xatrei** » March 30, 2007, 12:50 pm

I can't say much specifically for the larger Seagate drives, but we have a few of their 7200 RPM 250 GB SATA II drives that are in the same line, and have had zero problems with them at all. They share the same hardware for the most part. I've always been a big fan of Seagate drives myself.

Hitachi bought IBM's hard drive unit 4 or 5 years ago, so yes, the Deskstars are the good old IBM Deathstars.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » March 30, 2007, 12:51 pm

Sylvus wrote:I'm not even sure if my computer supports II, tbh. I'll have to check when I get home. It's probably 18 months old, how long has II been the standard?

Most (all?) are 'backwards compatible' meaning you can use a II as a I. Just will be at the I speed, obviously.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » March 30, 2007, 12:55 pm

SATA II HD's will operate fine with older hardware so you're ok even if it doesn't support SATA II/300.

The place you'd notice a speed difference in faster/slower HDs is in loading your OS and apps which doesn't apply in this case.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » March 30, 2007, 1:01 pm

Xatrei wrote:I can't say much specifically for the larger Seagate drives, but we have a few of their 7200 RPM 250 GB SATA II drives that are in the same line, and have had zero problems with them at all. They share the same hardware for the most part. I've always been a big fan of Seagate drives myself.

As far as I know, there is only a 320GB and 750GB in the 7200.10 line so it's hard to compare them to other Seagates for performance.

# of platters, etc makes a difference. Even the same size HDs can be made up of a different number of platters depending on the model. Generally speaking, the less platters the better.

Post by **Sylvus** » March 30, 2007, 1:03 pm

And I'm pretty sure that any of these seagate's will be faster than whatever came installed from Dell, wouldn't you think? I know I didn't upgrade the hard drive that much on it.

From what it looks like on Dell's site, I have an 80GB Maxtor Sabre 7200 150 (that's not all the HD I have, but what my OS and most of my apps are installed on). So pretty much anything I buy should be at least as fast, right?

Kluden · Post by **Kluden** » March 30, 2007, 1:06 pm

Hard Drive prices are dropping like stones in water again...so I would hold out a bit if you can.

Hitachi just released their terabyte drive, and once seagate releases theirs, the 500GB drives should drop to $110, and the 750GB drives should drop to $175, I would assume.

I think you're safe as long as you get one of the newer models from the companies that has at least the 160gb platter densities.

I have a 7200.10, 320GB, and have zero complaints. Its an OS and Games drive, and functions very well as such.

Newegg is where I bought mine, but just a warning, their hard drive packaging leaves a ton to be desired. Fry's usually has a hard drive deal each week, and last weeks was a 400GB for $99.99 shipped...so I would keep an eye out on the Fry's items, they package hard drives for shipping a ton better than the Egg.

Fry's double boxes their hard drive shipments, and suspends the second box inside the outer box. Its much safer.

Current Fry's deals:

Latest and greatest western digital (uses 3 x 160gb platters and short strokes): WD 400GB OEM

7200.9 retail kit 500GB (uses, I think, 4 x 125gb platters...its the previous model, but still in production): Seagate 500GB Retail

Xatrei · Post by **Xatrei** » March 30, 2007, 1:39 pm

Winnow wrote:As far as I know, there is only a 320GB and 750GB in the 7200.10 line so it's hard to compare them to other Seagates for performance.

# of platters, etc makes a difference. Even the same size HDs can be made up of a different number of platters depending on the model. Generally speaking, the less platters the better.

Not so! ST3250620AS. Both have virtually identical performance. 750's are 4 platters, AFAIK, vs. 2 on the smaller drives.

And yes, I'm rather familiar with how hard drives function, and what makes for better performing systems

. I've been earning my living with this stuff for nearly 20 years now - mostly network engineering more recently, but plenty of time dealing with performance oriented hardware (high end servers & disk farms) earlier in my career, and while the specific hardware may have changed a bit since I've been actively engaged in that area, the fundamentals remain the same

. Admittedly, though, I'm pretty burned out with the IT gig and am looking to change careers now, but I'm still reasonably knowledgeable heheh.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » March 30, 2007, 2:01 pm

Xatrei wrote:
Winnow wrote:As far as I know, there is only a 320GB and 750GB in the 7200.10 line so it's hard to compare them to other Seagates for performance.

# of platters, etc makes a difference. Even the same size HDs can be made up of a different number of platters depending on the model. Generally speaking, the less platters the better.
Not so! ST3250620AS. Both have virtually identical performance. 750's are 4 platters, AFAIK, vs. 2 on the smaller drives.

I'll find the discussion thread over on Hard[OC] later on. It wasn't so much performance, but reliability, etc. I think someone did do some benches on performance as well.

Waikiki · Post by **Waikiki** » March 30, 2007, 2:14 pm

The HDD that I use is a 500GB WD with 16MB cache SATA II.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136073

129.99 after $10 MIB.

I recommend it and have had no problems!

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » April 2, 2007, 9:29 pm

Hmm, here's 500GB Seagate 7200.10 for 145.00 at Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148136

comments from reviewers say it runs hot so be sure your case has good air flow.

Post by **Sylvus** » April 2, 2007, 11:09 pm

Winnow wrote:Hmm, here's 500GB Seagate 7200.10 for 145.00 at Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148136

comments from reviewers say it runs hot so be sure your case has good air flow.

I actually ended up ordering that very drive earlier today. Hopefully my case is cool enough.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » April 3, 2007, 12:27 am

Good man. good man.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » July 7, 2007, 5:10 am

Just a note on the Seagate drives.. Not sure about all drives but I know on the 750 I got the jumper by default was set to force it to SATA 1 mode. I only noticed that by accident last night while trying to get Vista 64bit working (which I didn't). So if you're the sort of person who just sticks stuff in you may want to check and remove that jumper if it's there. You may get a speedier drive!

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » July 7, 2007, 8:17 pm

Aslanna wrote:Just a note on the Seagate drives.. Not sure about all drives but I know on the 750 I got the jumper by default was set to force it to SATA 1 mode. I only noticed that by accident last night while trying to get Vista 64bit working (which I didn't). So if you're the sort of person who just sticks stuff in you may want to check and remove that jumper if it's there. You may get a speedier drive!

Not enough driver support for Vista 64! it's not worth the headache. Try 32. It's much better!

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » July 7, 2007, 8:44 pm

Well as I have 4GB I'd like to use it all rather than just 3.25GB. I don't have a lot of hardware really so I didn't think drivers would be a big deal. However I can't even get the install process going as it tells me a CD/DVD drive device driver is missing. Which seems odd as it reads the DVD and can also see my drives. I searched around and found a few things to try but nothing seemed to work. Anyway, as I was saying, at least something good came out of it as I had two drives in SATA 1 mode that I didn't know about.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » July 7, 2007, 9:07 pm

Reading around i found this:

"One of the biggest Windows Vista x64 'gotchas' is its new signed driver loading policy," Hoffman explained. "Hardware drivers which are not certified by Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) are not allowed to load into the 64-bit Windows Vista kernel.

"When installing a non WHQL driver, Windows will pop up with a warning explaining that the driver is not WHQL certified, which gives the user an option to continue anyway. Once the driver is installed, Windows tries to load the driver (which fails), and an unhelpful error message is displayed: 'Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39).'

"Instead of simply stopping the user from installing the driver in the first place, Vista's otherwise improved error messages and diagnostics fail to help the user," Hoffman said.

Something to possible try:

For some (bizarre) reason, if you set the cd/dvd drive to slave, the driver prompt doesnt appear

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