[G4] re: my hard drive western dig vs maxtor?

[Philip J Robar]

On Nov 22, 2004, at 9:54 AM, r herman wrote:

> Question... I see a western digital drive on sale... 80 gig... 7200 
> rpm eide
>  
> Do you think it would be as good/same as the maxtor?
>  
>> On Nov 22, 2004 r herman wrote:
>>
>> Is there anything specific I need to find on the box to ensure I get 
>> the right drive?


Meaning no disrespect to anyone on the list, but I'd be willing to bet 
that there is no one on this list who can give you a statistically 
valid answer to your question. The truth is all manufacturers produce a 
bad batch at one time or another and any opinion given on this list is 
most likely to reflect whether or not someone happened to have a 
particular manufacturer's drive fail on them at one time or another. 
(And whether they had a backup or not.)

In the 20 years I've been playing with computers personally I've only 
had one drive fail on me and in the 11 years I spent at Sun managing 
100's of machines that ran 24 hours a day I had only a few failures. 
(Sun purchases drives from all of the major manufacturers, although 
Seagate seemed to be our biggest supplier while I was there.)

My suggestions:

1) If money is your biggest concern buy the cheapest 7200 RPM drive you 
can find of the size you want with or without a rebate. (Depending on 
how you feel about them.) 120-160 GB seems to be the sweet spot at the 
moment, esp. with a rebate. DealMac/DealPC is a good place to check for 
prices.

2) If you want the fastest drive you can get, see the Leader Board at 
http://www.storagereview.com.

Keep in mind that with rebates you can generally buy the fastest drive 
available for the same price as a slower driver. The IBM/Hitachi 160 GB 
drive I recently purchased was both the fastest drive of its size and 
the least expensive I could find, after rebate, at the time I bought 
it.

3) If you want the quietest drive you can get, get a Seagate. (At least 
this was true the last time I checked.)

You don't say specifically what Mac you have, but any modern IDE drive 
will work in your machine. You're likely to be limited by the built in 
controller to only being able to use 120 GB unless you buy a new 
controller.


Phil