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Western Digital 1TB Caviar GP SATA Hard Drive $157

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B

B.K.

Member
I've been thinking about getting a new hard drive. Is Western Digital a good brand? I thought they had a lot of problems with dying? Or was that the Maxtor brand?
 
P

Phobophile

A scientist and gentleman in the manner of Batman.
B.K. said:
I've been thinking about getting a new hard drive. Is Western Digital a good brand? I thought they had a lot of problems with dying? Or was that the Maxtor brand?
Click to expand...

Depends on who you talk to. I've had nothing but bad luck with Western Digital products but I've had no problems with Maxtor. Others will tell you the exact opposite.

I just try to stick to Seagate.
 
L

Lhadatt

Member
B.K. said:
I've been thinking about getting a new hard drive. Is Western Digital a good brand? I thought they had a lot of problems with dying? Or was that the Maxtor brand?
Click to expand...
Seagate. Only. Seagate.

WDs aren't bad, but really. Seagate.

And no, not Maxtor. I don't care if Maxtor is owned by Seagate. They're not the same.
 
C

Corwood Rep

Member
I'm not replacing my 250GB Seagate until I can afford a 1TB Seagate. Experience tells me that externals are one of very few products where you need to completely fucking ignore saving money.
 
C

CharlieDigital

Banned
Lhadatt said:
Seagate. Only. Seagate.

WDs aren't bad, but really. Seagate.

And no, not Maxtor. I don't care if Maxtor is owned by Seagate. They're not the same.
Click to expand...

I've always had good luck with WD I guess. Seagate, on the other hand...they're good for those fun neodymium magnets I get to pull out of them once they die, I suppose :lol
 
A

Actiss

Member
CharlieDigital said:
I've always had good luck with WD I guess. Seagate, on the other hand...they're good for those fun neodymium magnets I get to pull out of them once they die, I suppose :lol
Click to expand...

You know, I used to ONLY get Seagate products. Then I had two Seagates die in two seperate PCs. To replace them, in one PC I got a WD and the other I got a Maxtor. Both the WD and the Maxtor died shortly thereafter.

I just have bad luck with hard drives in general.
 
C

CharlieDigital

Banned
Actiss said:
You know, I used to ONLY get Seagate products. Then I had two Seagates die in two seperate PCs. To replace them, in one PC I got a WD and the other I got a Maxtor. Both the WD and the Maxtor died shortly thereafter.

I just have bad luck with hard drives in general.
Click to expand...

I've owned and installed plenty of HDs and I've kind of settled on WD as my preferred brand for 3.5" HDs. I have a whole collection of magnets from Seagates that I use for various purposes (fridge magnet, holding vent covers, etc :lol) that I've ripped out of Seagates that have failed on me over the years.
 
K

Karmacide

Member
Most people I know have had problems with Maxtors.

I've had hard drives of all of the top 3 brands (Maxtor, Seagate, WD) go out on me. I also have a 20 GB quantum fireball and a 10GB Maxtor that just keeps going and going.
 
jts

jts

...hate me...
I own both a 250GB and a 500GB iomega externals, never had a single problem with them, but i wonder what's the manufacturer inside. Is there a way to find out without opening it?
 
Z

Zyzyxxz

Member
Lhadatt said:
Seagate. Only. Seagate.

WDs aren't bad, but really. Seagate.

And no, not Maxtor. I don't care if Maxtor is owned by Seagate. They're not the same.
Click to expand...

And yes, any Maxtor 300gb and up is gonna be a seagate these days. Its just rebranded so it is the same.
 
Z

Zapperkhan

Member
I have a pair of 500gb Samsungs for my FRAPS'ing in WoW, never had a problem with them. When I was younger and first upgrading PCs with my dad we had a string of bad Maxtors :(. Seems though everyone has THAT brand they have no luck with. So just stick to one till they suck for you.
 
S

shuri

Banned
I run a park featuring around 200 machines, all with seagate drives on various configs.THEY ARE ALL DYING, ONE AFTER THE OTHER. We're not ever going to use Seagate.
 
V

Valkyr Junkie

Member
I just ordered 2 of these drives from ZFF yesterday :(

Fortunately it was only a few dollars more per drive, and there seems to be some discussion on the slickdeals forums about what drive these are in particular.
 
Phoenix

Phoenix

Member
Karmacide said:
Most people I know have had problems with Maxtors.

I've had hard drives of all of the top 3 brands (Maxtor, Seagate, WD) go out on me. I also have a 20 GB quantum fireball and a 10GB Maxtor that just keeps going and going.
Click to expand...


I have lost a considerable amount of data to Maxtor drives, both their shitty portable drives and their shitty "server class" drives. I will never deal with Maxtor again. I used to use IBM Deskstar drives in server farms, but after the deathstar issue we left them alone too. Now, we live or die by Seagate and since the seagate drives aren't croaking - we will continue to do so for some time.
 
L

Liu Kang Baking A Pie

Member
These hard drive brand discussions are never-ending and frustrating in their short-sightedness. All hard drives die, and you never know when it's going to happen.

You should only look at warranties, and Seagate gives you five years while Western Digital gives you three (last time I checked). Back up your shit regularly, and if your drive dies during the warranty period, enjoy your new free one.
 
H

hobbitx

Member
So how much space do you actually end up with after formatting and stuff? Is there an actual technical reason, or are they just too cheap to add in the extra gigs it would take to ensure a user actually gets the advertised size. I think it's pretty messed up for them to pass that lost space onto the consumer.
 
Phoenix

Phoenix

Member
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
These hard drive brand discussions are never-ending and frustrating in their short-sightedness. All hard drives die, and you never know when it's going to happen.

You should only look at warranties, and Seagate gives you five years while Western Digital gives you three (last time I checked). Back up your shit regularly, and if your drive dies during the warranty period, enjoy your new free one.
Click to expand...


Gotta disagree with you there. While a "per brand" metric isn't doable, there are absolute measured metrics for MTBF between various drives and there are differences in laptop, consumer, server, and datacenter grade drives. There are runs of drives which are bad (The IBM Deathstar drives and the WD blue portable drives) and that shouldn't be discounted.
 
H

hobbitx

Member
An example, take a hard drive that can store exactly 250×109 or 250 billion bytes after formatting. Generally, operating systems calculate disk and file sizes using binary numbers, so this 250 GB drive would be reported as "232.83 GB". The result is that there is a significant discrepancy between what the consumer believes they have purchased and what their operating system says they have.

Some consumers feel short-changed when they discover the difference, and claim that manufacturers of drives and data transfer devices are using the decimal measurements in an intentionally misleading way to inflate their numbers. Several legal disputes have been waged over the confusion. See Binary prefix — Legal disputes.
Click to expand...
Nice info, I liked this little tidbit about other disgruntled consumers.
 
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