I gonna buy a 300GB SATA Hard Disk this weekend... my options are SAMSUNG, HITACHI and MAXTOR. I was originally planning to go for a MAXTOR but I need your opinion... Is it true that they are not producing MAXTOR drives anymore?
I would definantly go for Maxtor...I have never hear they are't selling HDD's anymore..And i very doubt they will,since they are one of the leading HDD Manufactures
Maxtor no longer producing hard drives? First I've heard of it,actually I thought that was they're main business. Anyway, my suggestion would be Western Digital. As of late I have been seeing more and more failure of Maxtor drives...although I must say they're warranty service is fantastic! Maxtor is still however my #2 choice.
HELLO maxtor are one of the best hard drives. but in my xperience maxtor slim drives they get too hot!!fo example i nver turn off my pc and had to replace couple of hdd in the past so i recommend if you go for maxtor get also a hdd fan it will extend your drive life.
I agree,all of my remaining Maxtor drives are now being cooled by fans...an ounce of prevention so to speak.
Thanks Guys. I always used MAXTOR. My MAXTOR 40Gb 5200rpm IDE HDD which I bought almost five years back is still in working condition. The MAXTOR 160GB SATA drive which I'm now using produces a lot of heat as you said, but I think it's no harm. My only problem was that one of my pals in computer industry said that MAXTOR is not producing HDDs anymore and they are not receiving new MAXTOR stocks. Could this be true? If this is true I'm not gonna buy a MAXTOR drive.
Maxtor has been bought out by Seagate. If the deal closes (the time is soon), I've no idea whether they'll continue to make drives. I'd recommend a Samsung drive, they're far quieter than maxtor drives, and faster, for very little extra cost.
OK. One more question. I've checked out a Samsung drive with 8MB cache... Is it ok? ...or should I go for 16MB cache... What's the difference between 8M cache and 16M cache? Does it make a big difference?
OF COURSE!! the bigger the better!!! more cache means more memory it means the disk can whole more data on memory during transfer or reading
16MB cache drives are better, but with 16MB cache, NCQ is far less effective than with an 8MB buffer, so avoid 16MB NCQ drives - the effect is detrimental.
I'm a bit confused... Is NCQ a technology used by all SATA drives or what? So... are you telling me to buy a 8M drive cause it performs faster than 16M with NCQ? Thanx.
No, it's used by SOME IDE and SOME S-ATA drives, but not all of them. The pecking order for performance is: 16MB 8MB NCQ 16MB NCQ 8MB 2MB a 16MB cache drive is better than an 8MB drive, but an 8MB NCQ drive is better than a 16MB NCQ one. I hope that makes sense.
Go for Samsung Spinpoint SATA drives - they offer good performance and reliability, and they are very quiet with low seek noise (dunno if this bothers you or not)
Doesn't bother me now, with a loud PC (well, let's see count them, 8 fans) but probably would with a quiet one, the spindle noise is what irks me most, seek noise I can deal with, it's less irritating and also an easy way to check for disk activity (LEDs don't always give the full picture) No two ways about it though, you're best off with a Samsung.
