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Hi I'm Ben · Feb 12, 2003, 11:14 AM

I'm buying a new harddrive. I have to, this 40 GIG just isn't going to hold out, if i hadn't been keeping it clean the past few months i'd be on like 2 gigs left.

I'm looking at the IBM Deskstar 120 7200 RPM with a 2 meg buffer

OR
The western digital 120 7200 RPM with the "special edition" 8 meg buffer. But it's a lot more money.

is the price really worth it?

CarpetFluff · Feb 12, 2003, 11:20 AM

IBM and WD are both supposedly unreliable. Everyone seems to think Maxtor drives are pretty hot though.

I suggest you get a fast drive with a large cache as that is supposed to speed up OS X somewhat. I've heard before that the 8mb makes a big difference if you're using it as your system drive.

dfiler · Feb 12, 2003, 05:07 PM

I think most opinions on reliability expressed here are anecdotal at best. Also, keep in mind that drives sold by the same company might actually come from different manufacturers in various countries. Last year's model A drive from company X might be manufactured by a different company than this years A model from company X.

Both the WD and IBM drives are not notoriously unreliable according to most reviews that I've come accross... whatever that is worth

I am quite happy with the WD 8mb 120 gig that I purchased. Finder interaction honestly felt as if I had installed a CPU upgrade.

midwinter · Feb 12, 2003, 05:20 PM

My Maxtor 80 gig (diamondmax, I believe) has been nothing but a pain in my ass since I got it. It began its life as a firewire drive, and worked more or less fine with OS 9. When OS X rolled around, I found that the drive would occasionally unmount or stall during large file transfers. I removed it from its casing and installed it internally, and while that solved the problem of the unmounting and stalling (most likely Maxtor's FW bridge), it continues to go into a deep sleep/spindown far too often, and it can sometimes take up to 5-6 seconds for the drive to spin back up. During this time, the finder is stalled while it waits on the drive.

I'd avoid the Maxtor, if I were you. Yes, they're cheaper, but you don't want to have to deal with the spinning beachball of doom any more than you have to.

Cheers
Scott

jokell82 · Feb 12, 2003, 05:54 PM

I've got the WD 120Gb SE, and it's awesome. Stay away from Maxtor, IBM is pretty good, though (just stay away from the GXP line).

I would say that it's worth it to get the WD.

scottiB · Feb 12, 2003, 06:07 PM

Seagates are nice, too. I've installed a few Barracudas in friends' G4s--very quiet and cool.

Are you adding a drive or replacing an existing one? If this'll be a boot drive, you'll feel the 8MB buffer more than as a slave drive for file storage because you interact with it continuously. It's good, too, if you don't have a lot of RAM, and OS X is swapping to the drive consistantly. I installed an 80GB WD Jumbo in an iMacDV 400 (512 MB) and felt quite a difference.

If your going to be keeping your Mac for awhile and will be using it a lot, I'd spring for the 8MB model (IBM and Seagate make them, too, I believe). Keep the 40 gigger and pop it into a FireWire case.

Buck_W · Feb 12, 2003, 09:27 PM

My Cube came with a Western Digital and for the first year made an infrequent clicking sound. I wish I would have investigated it with Apple before my year warranty ran out, because eventually the clicking became more frequent until it finally died.

I replaced it with a 40 GB Maxtor and it hasn't given me a bit of trouble (so far).

Mr. Blur · Feb 12, 2003, 10:01 PM

like dfiler says above...it varies a lot. ibm and wd had some troubles with a model or batch of drives and so everyone painted their whole lines as unreliable...well, the next bunch of seagates or maxtors can have the same problem.

my dual 800 has the 7200 60gb ibm it came with and the 7200 40gb maxtor i pulled from my old g3.....both have been flawless (so far....knock on wood....)

bradoesch · Feb 12, 2003, 10:18 PM

Well, I've had success with the 10 GB Maxtor that came in my iMac (and was transplanted into a PC-- still works great), the Maxtor that replaced it (a 20 GB model), and the Maxtor FireWire drive I have (40 GB.) So I just stick with Maxtor, because they've been good to me.

I guess the big problem with hard drives, and it really isn't their fault, is they happen to be the only component that has moving parts.

Eug · Feb 12, 2003, 10:43 PM

Originally posted by scottiB:
Seagates are nice, too. I've installed a few Barracudas in friends' G4s--very quiet and cool.

I think the Seagate Barracuda IV is the best drive in existence for this reason.

I'm seriously considering replacing my two IBM drives (total 105 MB) with a single 'cuda. The IBM drives work perfectly fine, but they make a bit of noise. With a 'cuda in my computer it would be almost silent.

P.S. Wrong forum.

Catfish_Man · Feb 12, 2003, 11:14 PM

Originally posted by Eug:
I think the Seagate Barracuda IV is the best drive in existence for this reason.

I'm seriously considering replacing my two IBM drives (total 105 MB) with a single 'cuda. The IBM drives work perfectly fine, but they make a bit of noise. With a 'cuda in my computer it would be almost silent.

P.S. Wrong forum.

My dual 867 came with a Barracuda IV. Great drive.

Hi I'm Ben · Feb 12, 2003, 11:39 PM

i've decided a 80 gig SE is how i'm gonna do this one.
120 is kinda over kill... i just wanted the best possible cube i could make.

i guess i should have done dual 1.2's instead of one 1.2 G4 then...

macmike42 · Feb 12, 2003, 11:49 PM

Big brand name hard drives are not unreliable. The problem is that you only hear the horror stories.

That said, I have *never* heard a horror story about a Maxtor, which is odd because they are generally the cheapest drives money can buy. ($150 for 120 GB, c'mon!) It is also worth noting that every Maxtor drive I've bought has been almost COMPLETELY SILENT. It still jars me a bit to this day to hear a hard drive grinding away. I personally never buy anything else, have never seen or heard of one dying, and wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone who asks.

As for caches, 8 MB is a lot faster for almost every operation, however your ATA controller has to be able to support that kind of speed. The Maxtor in my beige tops out at 15MB/sec (which is the limit for ATA/66 AFAIK), and it is only a 2 MB drive. I'm not sure what kind of ATA controllers come with the newer G4's, but I'd wager they are ATA/100 or 133. If you need the speed and have the cache (edit: err, I meant cash, lol), the 8 MB cache is worth it.

If anyone has a link to a bonafide Maxtor horror story, I'll happily change my tune.

macmike42 · Feb 12, 2003, 11:50 PM

(double post)

wr11 · Feb 13, 2003, 12:01 AM

I work at a PC/MAC repair shop as a technician. So fell free to trust my opinion

#1 Seagate. You can not beat these drives. Quiet, cool, made to last. These babies are far and away the prime HDD. I put one in my now completely silent iMacDVSE 400.

#2 Western Digital SE drives. I have seen a few of these come in dead...but very few. Go for an SE drive as it has a 3 year extended warranty, wheras the regular drives are just 1 year.

#2.5 IBM. I have have not had many break down, but the ones that did....were very difficult.

#3 Maxtor. I have one of these in my PC. I don't mind them, the price is right. I will warn you that I have seen more and more maxtor drives failing these days (convient since they moved their non "SE" drives to 1 a year warranty about 4 months ago)

While it is true that you only "hear" about the bad stories... I see them everyday.

Gul Banana · Feb 13, 2003, 01:27 AM

I have five hard drives - one IBM, one Maxtor, one Seagate, one Western Digital and one Lacie, and I've never had issues with any of them.. so I'd recommend whoever has the best prices/speeds/sizes

dfiler · Feb 13, 2003, 07:28 AM

The number of drives showing up in a repair shop is a bad way of judging brand reliability.

Honda Accords are stolen in the united states more frequently than any other car... However, this doesn't mean you are more likely to have your car stolen if you own an Accord. The percentage of Accords stolen compared to Accords owned is a actually lower than many other car theft rates.

Eug · Feb 13, 2003, 09:06 AM

That said, I have *never* heard a horror story about a Maxtor, which is odd because they are generally the cheapest drives money can buy.

I have had just about every brand of drive go bad on me at one point or another over the last 10 years, including Maxtor.

The basic take home message is all important data must be backed up regularly, regardless of the perceived awesomeness of the drive brand.

mikellanes · Feb 13, 2003, 09:24 AM

For the best reliability/speed/noise drive I would go with a Seagate, by far some of the quietest drives I have owned, never had a seagate drive fail (I also have 2 in my TiVo running 24/7 usually) I have had several IBM drives fail and some maxtors beyond repair... all drives can fail, so make a backup plan if you data is important to you.

for a cube (Quiet) I would go seagate all the way.