Bay 12 Games Forum
Finally... => Life Advice => Topic started by: Nirur Torir on November 13, 2009, 10:39:06 am
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All three (I switch them out) of my computer's internal hard drives are borderline failing. It's probably time to buy a new one, and I'd rather buy one that will last until it is completely obsolete. So: Which manufacturer sells reliable hard drives at a good price? Since I don't intend to store hundreds of gigs of movie and audio files on it, I'm more concerned about price and reliability than storage space and speed.
I currently use ribbon wires, but I'm fairly sure my motherboard has SATA slots. I can mix and match without frying anything, right?
Thank you in advance.
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Seagate and Western Digital are the two which spring to mind when I think good harddrives. Stay away from Maxtor (although they've been brought my Seagate so they maybe better now, but I don't know).
And yes you can mix and match IDE and SATA and it won't fry anything.
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I often hear good things about Seagate, though I had a Seagate external drive die on me after only 4 months, once.
I assume their internal ones are better than their external? I've been meaning to pick up a new internal drive; my current one is almost inoperable, but at 5 years old that's to be expected.
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The thing is no matter what hard drive you buy there is always a change that they will fail.
Also with external drives it's not the hard drive itself that fails but the enclosure it is in.
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The thing is no matter what hard drive you buy there is always a change that they will fail.
Also with external drives it's not the hard drive itself that fails but the enclosure it is in.
Yeah -- I heard that. Apparently you can open up the enclosure and use it as an internal, or so several tech-help forums seem to have told me.
Does it actually work?
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Does the process of opening the thing up and putting it in your computer work? Yes. It -might- be a laptop-sized drive (2.5"), though, so you may have to get some sort of adapter.
As for your original question, I personally think Western Digital is the way to go. Their retail boxes are a tad expensive, particularly when bought in a store, but if you order OEM (basically, without the box, manual, or other accouterments) you can get pretty good prices.
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I have had good luck with western digital. One thing to be aware of is that all drives will eventually fail. Keep at least two copies of anything important enough to save. I wouldn't count on a drive lasting more than 3 years, though most should last around 5. Remember to keep your receipts, a drive that fails early is defective if it has not been abused and can be replaced by the manufacturer.
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Sounds like Western Digital is the way to go, thanks to everyone who answered.
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My hard-drives are still in damn fine condition at 5 years old. can't remember who made them though.
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The thing is no matter what hard drive you buy there is always a change that they will fail.
Also with external drives it's not the hard drive itself that fails but the enclosure it is in.
Yeah -- I heard that. Apparently you can open up the enclosure and use it as an internal, or so several tech-help forums seem to have told me.
Does it actually work?
I used to work in a tech repair place and yes this does work. The drives they use in external drives are just standard sized desktop or laptop hard drives (mostly SATA now, but there will be some which are IDE). Just buy another enclosure or stick it into your computer and your away laughing.
However this does void your warranty, but 9/10 the data on the drive is more important.
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Whatever you do, don't get any of the WD "green" drives. I think they're called "Caviar" or something. They try to save energy by parking the heads whenever possible, then do it too often and cut the life of the hard drive to a rather small percentage of what it should be. So they're good for the environment, if you don't count the whole "it's over its life expectancy after a year and you'll have to buy new ones a lot because they screwed it all up" part.
Aside from that, I hear good things about WD, but it seems like the answer to your question varies a lot with time and depending on who you ask. I've heard Seagate used to be better than it is now, but who knows. It depends on the individual model, too, so I'd suggest reading up on whatever particular model you're interested in.
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i have a pair of hitachi's that have lasted more than 5 years, their a reasonable price and quality.
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I have a SCSI setup and I use Seagate. I believe this computer is about 4 years old (grandpa built it) and its working great. I think the harddrives are a little newer thou. Sad to see SCSI die out, I am the only one I have ever known that uses it.
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Whatever you do, don't get any of the WD "green" drives. I think they're called "Caviar" or something. They try to save energy by parking the heads whenever possible, then do it too often and cut the life of the hard drive to a rather small percentage of what it should be. So they're good for the environment, if you don't count the whole "it's over its life expectancy after a year and you'll have to buy new ones a lot because they screwed it all up" part.
That's interesting. I imagine more energy goes into building them than is saved while using them due to their short lifespan.
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I recommend seagate barracudas (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150014%2050001305&bop=And&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&ActiveSearchResult=True&Order=PRICE). They're cheap, fast, economic power-wise, and overall a good purchase.
As for HDs durability, well. That's completely random. I have a couple barracudas on my server, one's 12 years old and the other is 7. The one that is 12 failed about 3 times and had to be reformatted, but I didn't lose the hd at all, it's still working. The other one hasn't failed yet.
I've found, however, that scsi does tend to last longer, but that's probably because that format was commonly used on servers.
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I've got a fairly aging seagate 140 gig external I'm using now... Still works fine despite my placement(sitting in a nook in my desk surrounded on four sides with some space and on top of a external disk drive), so I'm pretty sure that's useful...
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You can buy flash drives up to 64 gigs at bestbuy now.
Supposedly they go up to 200gb+, according to wikipedia.
Holy shit, I just saw 128gb on amazon.com. For 400$.
I just don't know if theres a good reason not to back up all your data to a flash drive.(easily lost : P)