any computer/ IT peeps about?

[thomas_highstreet]

im looking to buy a new HDD for my mac (g5 dual 2 ghz ppc)..

im looking for a decent SATA II drive.. anything between 200-300gig drive, just need to know which is the most decent, fast and RELIABLE drive out of the following..

maxtor diamond max 10

western digital caviar

and/or

seagate baracuda

or anything else in a similar price range... (70-90 GBP [£] )

im fully aware this isnt the perfect place to ask the Q.. but any help would be mega nice. hah. cheers!

[thomas_highstreet]

ahh forgot to add.. i dont want a drive thats gonna start whirring away super loud after a bit of use too.. if that helps ..

thanks

[steven]

your going to have to go with the barracuda since you want silence.

i'm a licensed US reseller and I can get you a hard drive, but it's up to you if you want to spend money on shipping.

[thomas_highstreet]

hey steven..

i dont mind a bit of sound, as my mac gets the fans blowing pretty loud every now and then which would probably be louder than them anyway!

is the seagate drive alot quieter than the maxtor/western? which is the best drive all round?

im not sure if it will be economic to ship from the US.. as novatech (where ill probably order) seems to be VERY competitive on price..

also.. do you think its a mistake to buy such a huge drive? as hdd's often bust anyway, would i be better off getting say 2 drives around 100-150gigs than 1 200-300 gig drive?

how much can you offer drives for?

cheers!

[tangerine]

The only advantage I can see of getting two smaller drives is if you are going to set up a RAID, either for speed or redundancy.

You are unlikely to need the speed unless you are capturing uncompressed video (in which case 300GB is not big enough). If you are worried about losing data and want to have a mirrored disk, you can set up a RAID 1 with two disks but this is pretty expensive protection. I think other backup schemes are more cost-effective.

If money is not an object, get an X-Serve!

ask a cassowary

[thomas_highstreet]

haha money seriously is an object.. haha.. a scarce one.

i was just thinking it would be a bit kinder on my system to have one drive for music/image/video/storage and another for application/boot..

wouldnt this help keep the system running cleaner?

plus.. my drives got over 90gig of music on it already, and im often ripping DVDs and stuff, so i have to keep rejigging files to keep enough space to rip all the dvd rentals i get.. haha

so out of seagate, western digi, and maxtor, which is the best drive for my needs? (basicly just storage or boot, not much stress on the drives either really.. im just a keen musician and music listener really - so mostly storage - and just tryna keep system clean)

[thomas_highstreet]

the drive i got in ATM is a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 6Y160M0 160gig.. but deff. need a bit more storage for music etc. and all the japanese porn i download.

just kidding about the j-porn.

[nairb49]

your gf can't be too happy about that admission. on valentine's day too!

i know next to nothing about HDDs, but when I had to get mine replaced, they suggested going for two separate drives since they bust pretty often.

nairb49

[dagsolo]

I have 2 Maxtors and a LaCie, all are reliable for storage although the LaCie is a bit noisy.

The Maxtors are quiet.

http://www.TheLifeLtd.com

[Tisswat]

Check http://www.storagereview.com/. Their recently posted 250GB drive roundup might be helpful.

Reporter: "What do you think about western civilization?"

Gandhi: "I think it would be a good idea."

[dongle]

i've had terrible luck with maxtors. they die on me frequently. used to use them all the time since they were cheap, but after 10 years of problems (94 - 04), i stopped. western digital fared a bit better, but i've been beating a seagate 400GB and 250GB for a year and a half now, no problems. the only good thing i can say about maxtor is that they're good about honoring the warranty and ship fast.

[Tisswat]

I've had the same experience as dongle. The only two drives that ever died were both Maxtors. However, it must be a matter of coincidence. Still, nowadays I only buy WDs.

Reporter: "What do you think about western civilization?"

Gandhi: "I think it would be a good idea."

[thomas_highstreet]

hmm.. my maxtor a while back died too.. haha..

but right now the disk in my mac is a maxtor .. ahh.. hope it doesnt croak..

do we have a deffinate choice for drive? as the comparison/review you linked to me just said really that all of them were quite good :'(

[tangerine]

All of the ones you listed are good manufacturers. I don't think any one of them is clearly superior if they all have the same specs (capacity, read/write speeds, rotational speed, MTBF, etc.)

I have not had any worse luck with Maxtor than with WD or Seagate. They are all good, but any of them can fail. I have had a lot of disks fail in G4s because of heat issues. Not sure if this is solved in the G5.

ask a cassowary

[thomas_highstreet]

ahh ok.. makes perfect sense..

i will probably also be putting in a gig or 2 extra ram..

its 400MHz 3200 DDR - with 8 slots - upto 8gig worth..

is it best to get single gig sticks? or two 512 sticks or something? anyone know competitive prices in the UK?

also - right now i have 2 sticks of 256 in slot *pair* A.. if i get two 1 gig sticks, should i put that in slot A and move the 256 to B.. or is that not really gonna improve performance?

sorry if its stupid questions.. im not super hardware savvy!

cheers!

[Tisswat]

If you have a dual channel platform, you should install pairs of mem modules.

Check out http://www.crucial.com/uk/ for good prices (and lots of helpful info).

Reporter: "What do you think about western civilization?"

Gandhi: "I think it would be a good idea."

[poly800rock]

make sure all your memory runs at the same speed as well as if i can remember from school correctly, memory only runs as fast as the slowest stick....been a while....

adidas sample stuff on the bay now.

DAMN YOU PEOPLE STOP WATCHING AND BID!

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZtriggerkid