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donny31 · May 11, 2003, 06:26 PM

Is it a good idea to buy a 120GB harddrive for my Power Mac and put all of my music/video files in that hard drive? would that make sense or would it be hard to add and partition that way?

MindFad · May 11, 2003, 06:41 PM

It's up to you how you handle your files/what you partition, dude. If you're going to get a new HD, though, I'd recommend a Western Digital. High quality stuff. Make sure it has an 8MB buffer.

zakg4 · May 11, 2003, 06:43 PM

Originally posted by donny31:
Is it a good idea to buy a 120GB harddrive for my Power Mac and put all of my music/video files in that hard drive? would that make sense or would it be hard to add and partition that way?

Seagate ST3120024A is a good choice. I own this about 2 month and use it for my music and backup files - no problems at all.

Evangellydonut · May 14, 2003, 11:11 AM

WD1200JB
I have 2 WD1000BB (2mb buffer as opposed to the 8mb with JB models), and both has been under heavy usage since I got 'em without any problems (2 and 1 year respectively). The Seagate are quieter, but I believe the WD are faster. If you have one of those new PMs with loud powersupply, a little extra noise will be hardly noticeable

Boochie · May 14, 2003, 02:16 PM

I'll second this recommendation. I have a Western Digital 80 GB drive with the 8 MB buffer. Fast, reasonably quiet, and very reliable thus far (I've had it about a year).

Originally posted by MindFad:
It's up to you how you handle your files/what you partition, dude. If you're going to get a new HD, though, I'd recommend a Western Digital. High quality stuff. Make sure it has an 8MB buffer.

bradoesch · May 14, 2003, 06:37 PM

Do you like to put your computer to sleep? I can point you to a thread here, 3 at Apple's discussions and a bunch of reader reports from xlr8yourmac where this drive won't sleep properly. It clicks (sounds like it's spinning down and then spinning up again.) I have one myself and I'm quite frustrated. It's a fast, not too loud drive, but I used to sleep my iMac every night. Just letting you know...

SSharon · May 14, 2003, 07:23 PM

I use a 120gb Maxtor and although many people in these forums don't like it I haven't had any problems with speed, sleeping, noise (I do have a MDD though), or anything else.

tooki · May 15, 2003, 12:56 AM

8MB buffers are wildly, horrifically overrated. They are only slightly faster (and only at some operations, at that). Don't waste your money on it.

tooki

dfiler · May 15, 2003, 10:13 AM

Originally posted by tooki:
8MB buffers are wildly, horrifically overrated. They are only slightly faster (and only at some operations, at that).

No they aren't.

Who pissed in your corn flakes?

The Placid Casual · May 15, 2003, 11:01 AM

Until recently, I would have recommended a Seagate Barraccuda, but have had a few failures... same for IBM which came as standard in a Powermac Dual 867. No-one can ever tell me that all the grinding and thrashing was normal...

The only drives which I have never had a failure with are WD and Maxtor...

I guess you 'pays your money and you takes your choice' in the end though...

Staatkunde · May 15, 2003, 11:14 AM

I have a Western Digital 100GB 8mb Special Edition drive. I'd recommend it for the 3yr. warranty. The 8mb does make a slight difference. You also get a slightly lower latency with an SE drive. The warranty was the big issue for me. Several drive makers have gone to a 1 year warranty on their drives.

I purchased the WD 100GB SE drive at Best Buy for $79.

It isn't hard to partition drives, OS X makes it easy. I have a 60GB partition for my music and video. I'm thinking of adding another drive just to keep video on, since video is a GB hog.
-Mark

RealMac · May 15, 2003, 10:08 PM

Originally posted by Staatkunde:
I have a Western Digital 100GB 8mb Special Edition drive. I'd recommend it for the 3yr. warranty. The 8mb does make a slight difference. You also get a slightly lower latency with an SE drive. The warranty was the big issue for me. Several drive makers have gone to a 1 year warranty on their drives.

I purchased the WD 100GB SE drive at Best Buy for $79.

It isn't hard to partition drives, OS X makes it easy. I have a 60GB partition for my music and video. I'm thinking of adding another drive just to keep video on, since video is a GB hog.
-Mark

I purchased a 120GB Western Digital Special Edition Drive with the 8mb cache too. Before that, I'd been depending mainly on an IBM desk (or is it death)star. I have another Deskstar in my MDD G4 system.

The Western Digital drive feels so much faster than the 60GB OEM Apple shipped with the machine. The price / performance / capacity ratio with hard drives keeps getting better. Now's definitely a great time to buy.

If you're like me, I'd focus on getting a larger drive. One way or another you'll find a way to fill it up..

That being said, I wouldn't buy another IBM hard drive if given the choice. They have a bad track record as far as reliability goes. Recalls and friends experiences have definitely etched their place in my long term memory.

Cipher13 · May 19, 2003, 09:29 AM

Seagate.

dbergstrom · May 19, 2003, 12:10 PM

I have 2 IBM (now Hitachi) 80GB DeskStars on an ATA133 RAID card on my Quicksilver. I've always been happy with the IBM drives. I've bought mine from Other World Computing, and they extend the Hitachi warranty by 2 years to match the WD 3yr warranty. For my money, the RAID card buys you much more performance than the 8MB of cache ever could.

donny31 · May 19, 2003, 08:03 PM

Originally posted by dbergstrom:
I have 2 IBM (now Hitachi) 80GB DeskStars on an ATA133 RAID card on my Quicksilver. I've always been happy with the IBM drives. I've bought mine from Other World Computing, and they extend the Hitachi warranty by 2 years to match the WD 3yr warranty. For my money, the RAID card buys you much more performance than the 8MB of cache ever could.

i ended up getting the 120 WD drive --no problems installing the drive. It works great. I thought I had bought a 60 GB with the powermac, but it turns out that I now have 2x120 ! I guess you never have to much hard drive space. Im very happy with it and it runs very fast and farely quiet!

legacyb4 · May 20, 2003, 12:25 AM

Replaced a pair of 60GB Deskstars with a single 120GB as one of them was giving off a particularly annoying whining noise. Took the better of the two 60GBs and stuck it in an external Firewire case.

Definitely worth the money.

Originally posted by donny31:
Is it a good idea to buy a 120GB harddrive for my Power Mac and put all of my music/video files in that hard drive? would that make sense or would it be hard to add and partition that way?

JB72 · May 20, 2003, 01:11 AM

Despite reports of recent problems, I'm still dedicated to Seagate and IBM/Hitachi. I'm yet to have any problems with them myself. *knock on wood*

terrancew_hod · May 20, 2003, 07:49 AM

I would get a larger drive for handling data and video, but I would still have a separate drive for my system (and swap) disk. Even though you would partition a larger drive, it still has one drive head. Doing drive-intensive activities on different partitions of the same drive may slow things down a bit, since it would have to do seeks on each.

You should see better performance this way...

Terrance

kOnshii · May 26, 2003, 06:41 AM

It hasn't 3 years yet, but both my IBM have failed.

Not one, but two, at relativly the same time.

THEY had grinding noises, cracking sounds and were slow.

NEVER EVER EVER IBM, or anything connected to it, HITACHI, (or close to that spelling)

THEY MAKE CRAPPY TV, CRAPPY VCD, CRAPPY DVD, So there is no way in hell i would trust HITACHI anymore.

"thats from my experience"

terrancew_hod · May 26, 2003, 08:05 AM

Originally posted by kOnshii:
NEVER EVER EVER IBM, or anything connected to it, HITACHI, (or close to that spelling)

THEY MAKE CRAPPY TV, CRAPPY VCD, CRAPPY DVD, So there is no way in hell i would trust HITACHI anymore.

Tell us how you really feel and don't hold back this time...

I think Western digital makes the best drives. And seagate after that...

Tally-Ho · May 28, 2003, 10:40 AM

Just acquired a used Quicksilver 800 and so far v. happy. Want to stick a mega drive in it to augment the existing 40GB HD and quite fancy the Western Digital 120GB. The thing that confuses me is that all the terribly knowledgeable types (Ha!) in London Mac shops are insisting that only the 80GB Western Digital (WD800JBRTL) model will work as it�s been specially tweaked to run on Macs. All the others won�t run, or so they say. Naturally this model costs far more than the 80GB for PC�s. Is this simply a matter of milking the Mac customers for more dough? Has anyone had problems setting up a 120GB HD or is it a straight forward affair?

Thanks, in anticipation.

T-H

scottiB · May 28, 2003, 02:53 PM

Bullshyte.

All drives I've purchase for various Macs (WD Jumbos, Seagate Barracudas, IBM Deskstars) have been bare drives (i.e., no cabling or consumer packaging).

The drives care not how they're formatted.

Go for the 120GB--from some other vendor that doesn't spread disinformation.

rstevens · May 28, 2003, 03:32 PM

i recently grabbed a Western Digital 200 gig DRIVEZILLA with 8-meg cache.

HOORAY!

tikki · May 28, 2003, 03:39 PM

Originally posted by rstevens:
i recently grabbed a Western Digital 200 gig DRIVEZILLA with 8-meg cache.

HOORAY!

Now that's a lot of pr0n.

Azzgunther · May 29, 2003, 02:51 AM

That's a lotta pRon on a GOOD drive.

About IBM:

Do you guys agree with me that this is almost as serious as the "windtunnel" effect of the MDD computers? Shouldn't Apple be required to re-supply its customers with drives that actually work for more than two years? I've seen such an outcry at different forums about IBM Deathstars that it's becoming clear that the problem is widespread and serious.

Agree?

Kenneth · May 29, 2003, 03:17 AM

I love my WD 1200JB since day 1 (Late Aug/2002). I used it on a couple of my Macs (from iMac 233, 333, and now FW800).

The price of a 120GB 8MB HD is pretty cheap now.

cam80 · May 29, 2003, 03:33 AM

Originally posted by kOnshii:

THEY MAKE CRAPPY TV, CRAPPY VCD, CRAPPY DVD, So there is no way in hell i would trust HITACHI anymore.

"thats from my experience" [/B]

What's wrong with Hitachi Televisions?

Tally-Ho · May 29, 2003, 06:17 AM

Azzgunther I agree.

I have been scoring the forums and back issue test reports on the www for some weeks now for info on buying a reliable HD. So far, my views:
I think drives are being beaten down so much on price (driven by consumer pressures of course) that manufacturers are having to find ever cheaper places in the world to make them. With that comes, I fear, a consequential loss in build quality and reliability. Unless you can maintain scrupulously effective �clean environments� to manufacture your platters and heads, you will eventually get an increase in failures. Maybe these cheaper sources haven�t quite got their clean environments sorted yet. I hear heads are being made in China. That�s OK. But if they can�t control an outbreak of SARS how do they maintain cleanliness in a HD manufacturing plant? My IBM HD in my Quicksilver has �Made in Turkey� stamped on the side. A lot of good stuff comes out of Turkey but Hard Drives? I�m not trying to start a new world war here by dissing countries or their fellow countrymen ( I live in a Turkish neighbourhood in North London and have done so quite happily for 11 years) but when it comes to potential data loss from hard drives, I start getting very nervous about who�s making them. All my picture files and artworks from the last 25 years of my working life are now on that IBM hard drive. If it goes down the swanny because Apple wanted to save a few pounds, sorry dollars, on their components then I shall never forgive them. Broken hinges, dodgy screens, noisy fans, are all serious issues but none so serious as data loss; when it crashes, so does your life. Although nothing is ever guaranteed to be 100%, I think HD manufacturers SHOULD be held culpable for any HD failure. How else are you going to get them to increase manufacturing quality and reliability? HD�s were never a problem in the old days when Seagates for Macs had Made in the good ol� US of A stamped on them. They went on forever with ne�er a squeak when I used to look after my old firm�s network years ago.

Oh dear, this started as a short response and has become a full blown rant�..sorry!

Anyway, the down side to all this is that prices will probably go up as the big HD companies will have to seek factories with more scrupulous clean environments to guarantee better build quality, but this is a price I�m personally willing to pay if it means peace of mind.

�So back up your data�, I hear someone cry. Yes but considering that the storage capacities of the latest HD�s is outstripping the size of the biggest tape drives, the whole back up thing is becoming very wobbly.

No, there are some things that require piece of mind. That�s why I�ve always used Macs. And right now it seems that the Western Digital IDE�s are getting fewer complaints on the forums than the others. That�s reassuring. Talking to a couple of IT guys recently, they are saying that the current �sweet spot� on HD capacity is 120GB. Sounds like it�s going to be a WD1200JB then. Now, where did I put my credit card?

T-H

donny31 · May 29, 2003, 08:40 AM

No, there are some things that require piece of mind. That?s why I?ve always used Macs. And right now it seems that the Western Digital IDE?s are getting fewer complaints on the forums than the others. That?s reassuring. Talking to a couple of IT guys recently, they are saying that the current ?sweet spot? on HD capacity is 120GB. Sounds like it?s going to be a WD1200JB then. Now, where did I put my credit card?

T-H [/B]

good call --I just installed the same drive with no problems -Its a great feeling to have an extra 120 gbs to hold all the media. Also the drive is alot quieter than i expected. find your card and enjoy!

Scotttheking · May 29, 2003, 03:44 PM

Here at work we've had drives from every company fail.
I've had some WD drives fail, they were 200BB drives (20GB), at home I've had my IBM 75GXP replaced before it failed, had 2 60GXP drives replaced and I have another 3 HDs sitting in my bad pile that I'm too lazy to worry about. 2 of those are WD, 1 is IBM.

Current drives that I'm recommending to customers are:
IBM/Hitachi drives for performance, and Segate for noise.

WD JB drives have had some problems pop up after 1 year of operation, so I'm staying away from them.
I've seen too many Maxtor drives fail to ever touch them again.
My current newest HD I have is a WD 600BB, and I have no idea how it is since I bought it 4 months ago and haven't installed it yet.

So really, it doesn't matter what drive you get. Some people like some, some people like others.

Tally-Ho · May 29, 2003, 04:09 PM

Aw nuts, I give up.

Just before you wrote I bit the bullet and ordered a WD 1200JB. I guess I won't know now for another year or so whether I got a good'n. Just have to hang on to all my paper artworks and CDs for a little longer. No doubt this thread will reconvene in a years time where we'll all be going "See, I told you not to buy that ** brand HD......."

T-H

Scotttheking · May 29, 2003, 08:18 PM

It's not that the JB drives fail, it's that a lot of them got loud after about a year.
The nice thing about drives failing is I just offered my work $10 per HD for some refurb 20GB WD drives that we got back from RMA

Timo · May 30, 2003, 11:03 AM

Perhaps of interest:

http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/Ar...pages=01&seq=2