What would suggest for hard drive?

[aimeeandbeatles]

I was saving up in my bank account for a filing cabinet and I finally got one on sale and I even had some spare money left over. (I was about $20 away -- including the tax I factored in -- when it went on sale and the discount was more than that $20.). So next I decided I think perhaps I should save up next for an internal hard drive.

Currently I have a 500 GB drive. It's Western Digital if it matters. Although it is actually SATA there's a weird driver issue which makes it list as a SCSI drive (I heard that installing the XP drivers would fix it, but it didn't work for me). Anyways I was thinking about buying a drive that was 1 or 2 terabytes and installing it alongside the first drive.

Currently I have it devided into two partitions, System and Data. I was thinking using the old drive for System entirely and using the new one for Data as my data partition is a lot bigger. I was poking around on Newegg.ca however it has a much smaller selection than the American site. If someone has a better website to look tell me but don't troll me and give me a fake site that will take my money.

I'm not sure when I'll be able to get it. Probably within the next few months if the saving goes ok (most of them seem around the $200 range and I need to factor in shipping & handling costs. Also depending on how things go within the next few months I'm not sure if I'll be able to install it myself or if Ill need to pay somebody to do so.)

What would you people suggest? I know some brands have a horrible reputation but that may have changed since I last read about it.

 

[Cutlass]

The major brands tend to all be good enough. Just check regularly for sales. Look at Amazon.ca as well. They may have some sales.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Well of course I need to get the money saved up first. However the bill will go on my credit card and I pay it off right away. I don't like to carry a balance because interest is a pain to work out.

 

[Zelig]

I don't think amazon.ca sells hard drives.

The only companies that manufacture hard drives are Western Digital, Seagate and Toshiba, and Toshiba doesn't make consumer drives, so you don't have much of a choice.

Newegg and NCIX are both good, Newegg has 2TB Seagate drives for $120, NCIX has 2TB Western Digital drives for $120.

 

[GoodGame]

I was saving up in my bank account for a filing cabinet and I finally got one on sale and I even had some spare money left over. (I was about $20 away -- including the tax I factored in -- when it went on sale and the discount was more than that $20.). So next I decided I think perhaps I should save up next for an internal hard drive.

Currently I have a 500 GB drive. It's Western Digital if it matters. Although it is actually SATA there's a weird driver issue which makes it list as a SCSI drive (I heard that installing the XP drivers would fix it, but it didn't work for me). Anyways I was thinking about buying a drive that was 1 or 2 terabytes and installing it alongside the first drive.

Currently I have it devided into two partitions, System and Data. I was thinking using the old drive for System entirely and using the new one for Data as my data partition is a lot bigger. I was poking around on Newegg.ca however it has a much smaller selection than the American site. If someone has a better website to look tell me but don't troll me and give me a fake site that will take my money.

$200 is a pretty large budget for working out 1-2 hard drives. You might also factor in an external hard drive cage for about $50 if you want to keep the hard drive for off-line storage to minimize risk of catastrophic failure.

I'd definitely have one drive dedicated to OS and some programs that you use daily. 500GB is more than enough for that. Figuring out lemons before you buy them is tricky, since it's really a production line issues down to model # that tends to determine if a drive is a lemon or not. I have both Seagate and WD drives in my computer currently. It's definitely not that one brand is necessarily worse than the other absolutely.

One thing you need to consider is what speeds and connections that your motherboard supports. Also you'll need to know what power connections that your power supply supports (that could be a problem if you power supply unit is very old). If it is a newer motherboard it will probably support 3GB/sec to 6GB/sec transfer rates on a SATA connection. You'll need to get the tech specs to figure it out. Otherwise 1.5 GB/sec on SATA are probable.

Definitely don't buy an IDE drive unless that's all your motherboard will support, although it's sometimes possible to find used, re-certified drives on the cheap, especially since the flooding in Thailand slowed down the manufacture of drives.
There's also IDE-to-SATA conversions for connecting an IDE drive to a SATA interface on the motherboard, which might be necessary.


An option include getting a WD Raptor drive (10,000RPM) as your OS drive, and bumping all your other drives to storage. A WD caviar 1 TB drive is okay too (runs at about 5400 RPM usually). And yeah, amazon.ca does sell hard drives.

Definitely consider that if you do upgrade your computer to the newest generation, your IDE drives will probably be useless or less useful since they won't be supported by most new motherboards.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Well my motherboard is a FOXCONN MCP61M05 if that helps. It seems a bit hard to find info on. I googled it and a few of it was me posting my specifications when having isuses, LOL.

Actually if it helps here is my full specs. Ignore the VirtualBox stuff, that's my Linux VM.

Computer:      FOXCONN MCP61M05
CPU:           AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (Brisbane, BH-G2)
               2200 MHz (11.00x200.0) @ 2210 MHz (11.00x200.9)
Motherboard:   FOXCONN M61PMV
Chipset:       nVidia nForce 6100-405/430
Memory:        4096 MBytes @ 315 MHz, 5.0-5-5-15
               - 2048 MB PC5300 DDR2-SDRAM - Kingston 2G-UDIMM
               - 2048 MB PC5300 DDR2-SDRAM - Kingston 2G-UDIMM
Graphics:      XFX GeForce 8400 GS
               nVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS (G86), 512 MB DDR2 SDRAM
Drive:         WDC WD5000AAKS-22A7B0, 488.4 GB, Serial ATA 3Gb/s
Drive:         HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH20NS15, DVD+R DL
Sound:         nVIDIA MCP61 - High Definition Audio Controller
Network:       VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter
Network:       NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller
OS:            Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Build 6002

 

[Zelig]

Eh, there's been no talk of IDE drives, they don't even need to be mentioned.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Yes, my current hard drive is SATA (though the computer "thinks" it's SCSI because of the weird driver issue. However the one I posted above from HWiNFO32 has it right).

I'm not particularly worried about speed, as that can be pricy. The new drive will be used for data files primarily.

 

[Quintillus]

All the major brands have been fairly good for 2-3 years. Western Digital and Seagate are the main ones. Toshiba does make drives that are available to consumers, although (usually) they aren't quite as cost-competitive. Hitachi and Samsung were recently bought by Western Digital and Seagate, but you'll still see their drives available, and they're pretty good, too. NCIX is a good site, and is primarily a Canadian site, so if anything it probably has a better selection in Canada than the U.S.

Prices are fairly high right now due to the Thai flooding, so waiting a few months is probably actually a good idea. The prices should be at least somewhat lower by then, although exactly what path they'll take is anyone's guess. Back around September, a 2 TB drive could be had for $70 U.S., so probably about the same in Canadian dollars.

 

[GoodGame]

Eh, there's been no talk of IDE drives, they don't even need to be mentioned.

They would be if one's motherboard was aged, or semi-legacy. I trashed a motherboard with a working IDE just 2 months ago before I leaped into the i5 gen. And the IDE hard-drives can still be bought refurbished in stores. I was just browsing through a huge lot of them last month at a MicroCentre store. Apparently the hard drive manufacturing slow-down hit some people hard, or was a good excuse for some rampant capitalism.


@Aimee, well it looks like you got 3GB/sec speed on the SATA, so you should be safe getting another one like that. I couldn't find images for that motherboard online, so I guess if you're not voiding warranty, then take a peek inside the case with the power cable removed, and count the number of free SATA slots. Also count the number of free SATA power cables. Unless the motherboard is very cheap, or the power supply for low wattage, then you should be able plug in at least 3 more SATA hard drives (assuming your motherboard is competitive with most microATX motherboards).

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Well I basically dont have a warranty on my computer anyways -- it was pre-owned when I bought it and the previous owner had tinkered with it.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I have a question about this. How much does the bathtub curve apply these days in hard drives? A lot of the stuff I find is kind of old and quite a lot of it looks like non-castrated male cattle excrement.

 

[GoodGame]

I have a question about this. How much does the bathtub curve apply these days in hard drives? A lot of the stuff I find is kind of old and quite a lot of it looks like non-castrated male cattle excrement.

IDK. Some people are starting to sell "military spec" hardware which supposedly eliminates initial failures on the curve (i.e. stuff dying in the first 30 days of use), but I don't know about older items.

Pretty much go by warranty, and typically 3 years lifespan. I've read 5 years is not unreasonable. Three to five years fits with my experience with building several computers over the past 8 years. So buying something used and loose that you can be sure is over 5 years of age (by lot/model#) is probably not a good idea. Of course if it was sealed in the original package (no chance of dust getting into the mechanism) and no signs of use, then it might be good for 3 years of use. So I guess the middle point of the bathtub curve is approximately 3 years of use.

Corporations, specifically government, tends to push for completely replacing a computer before it hits 3 years age, and most of the better warranties for computer hardware are for 3 years.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Well I'm hoping for it to last a little longer. I'm on a little too tight a budget to get a new machine every 3 years.

Still debating on 1 TB vs 2 TB. I'm leaning towards 2 TB. Most of those in the $100 - $200 range which is good. Im still saving up. I have about $60 now.

EDIT: Thats in Canadian dollars too

 

[MajKira]

Would go for a SSD, solid statedisk
like this:
PDP PATRIOT 240 GB 600 MBps
70 € online

Comparison of SSD with hard disk drives
Making a comparison between SSDs and ordinary (spinning) HDDs is difficult. Traditional HDD benchmarks are focused on finding the performance aspects where they are weak, such as rotational latency time and seek time. As SSDs do not spin, or seek, they may show huge superiority in such tests. However, SSDs have challenges with mixed reads and writes, and their performance may degrade over time. SSD testing must start from the (in use) full disk, as the new and empty (fresh out of the box) disk may have much better write performance than it would show after only weeks of use.

Most advantages of solid-state disks over traditional hard drives come from the characteristic of data being accessed completely electronically instead of electro-mechanically. On the other hand, traditional hard drives currently excel by offering much more capacity for the same price.

While SSDs appear to be more reliable than HDDs, researchers at the Center for Magnetic Recording Research "are adamant that today's SSDs aren't an order of magnitude more reliable than hard drives". If and when an SSD fails, the failure is likely to be catastrophic, with total data loss. HDDs can fail in this way too, but often give warning that they are failing, allowing much or all of their data to be recovered.

Traditional hard drives store their data in a linear, ordered manner. SSDs, however spend a great amount on rearranging pieces of data and bookkeeping their new locations, the main reason being wear leveling. This puts a big responsibility on the flash memory controller and its firmware to maintain data integrity. One major cause of data loss in current SSDs is firmware bugs, which in HDDs rarely are the source of a problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive#Comparison_of_SSD_with_hard_disk_drives