I thought both were made from the same company. I could be wrong. Maybe it was IBM and Western digital. -Del
I prefer Western Digital. I still have a 520 meg drive I bought in 1994 that is still working in my 486 DOS gaming machine. I have taken that drive overseas with me as a a carry on in a static bag and it has been bounced around and abused and it still spins up. I have had 2 Maxtors in the past, both of them I got in 2000. One died right after the 3 year warranty expired, the other still works but has paging errors and will probably die soon. I have 5 other Western Digitals, one from 1995, one from 1996, and three bought within the last 4 years and all are still operational. To me having a drive last 10+ years says something about the reliability.
No problems so far with my Western Digitals (touch wood), both still run perfectly, although neither is older than 18 months.
i recently had a 40gig WD die after about 6 years but it was great until then. And i got a new WD also have had a Seagate for a few years work great.
I just got a 200gb Maxtor and it works great! Got a good deal too...my friend had 160gb WD and said it all depends on the spindle speed (rpm) of the drive.
can someone answer this question for me? when you say hd fails or dies does it mean your data inside is gone or simply cant write on it?
it depends but usually can kiss off the info on it or pay about $500 or more to a data recovery place who'll take the platters out of the drive, put into another test drive to pull the info off for you
DuskDawn, when I have seen a hard drive die it usually starts making a loud clicking sound and either won't read your data or has to reread again and again taking a long time to read a single file. Another thing I have seen is a head crash. Your drive spins at 5000-10000 RPMs depending on model. When the sensor that reads the data crashes into the drive platter it makes a loud noise and destroys what it hits, imagine sticking something into a fan and that's nowhere near that amount of RPMs. The other thing I have seen is drives not getting up to speed. Back in 1991 I replaced nearly 50 Seagates where I was working. People would shut their PCs off at night and come in the next morning and the drive would never spin the platters. We started leaving them on all night and didn't have any problems after that. I still haven't bought a Seagate since, though I am sure they have improved in the last 14 years.
currently using a WD drive right now, 250gigger...so far so good~ it's about 2 years old. have a 400gb seagate in my server, runs very quiet and it's fast for a big drive. i've had about 6 maxtors in the past (varying sizes...40gb, 80gb, 120gb...etc) ALL of which died shortly after the 3 year warranty, i know it's just coincidence, but that is such a pity...when they worked, they were fast and reliable, but every single one of them died shortly after warranty expired...just thought that was interesting... i stick w/ the caviar series now by western digital...i have 2 of these in my setup right now and are stable/solid drives.
Western digital all the way, Tried maxtor once before and had trouble out of it, took it back to bestbuy and got a 250 gig western digital no problems yet.
hard drives i've had and my experiences: Seagate 13GB 5400: May 99-Now (only very occasional usage Jan04-Now) worked fine, quite loud spindle motor but more than acceptable. No problems. IBM Deskstar 16GB 5400: Mar 01-Jan04 occasional use after, no problems bar one fail after a powercut, worked again after reset though, loud initial noise but very quiet R/W and spinwise. Western Digital 160GB 7200: Jan04-Now, heavy use: no problems Western Digital 200GB 7200: Oct04-Now, heavy use: no problems Maxtor Diamondmax +8 40GB 7200: Apr05-Now, mid use: no problems so far
I have used both & will always choose a Western Digital HD over a Maxtor HD, i find they just perform better and last a lot longer...then again my dad has a Fujitsu 20g HD that is about 8 years old and it still wotks faultlesly
funny because i heard of a lot of problems with fujitsu drives, my mate had a 20gig go down on him when it was about 3 years old, not particularly good really, considering most go for at least 6 or 7...
It came out of his old Time 500mhz pc, it now runs the fujitsu and a 60g WD with a 2800+ xp......i have had 2 maxtor HD go just after the warranty runs out , i now run 2 WD raid edition 160g HD in raid 0 with no problems, the worst HD's i have heard of are Exelstor .... so Western digital get my vote
lol, sounds like that not much of that PC is time any more!! My pc transfored from a time, but ive changed the case, (never bought a monitor with this pc but i changed from the old granville one let's say), added 2 ram sticks, 2 hard disks (soon to be 4 with 2 more raided ones), changed the heatsink on the processor, changed the power supply twice, and changed the graphics card.... Still sounds like you have less left than me!!! ironically granville technology are looking a bit sorry for themselves at the moment, so i won#t say anything unpleasant about them. hey, they gave me a monitor that worked well for 5 years without any problems, come on that surely earns them a few credits, unfortunately less however than viewsonic who make fantastic monitors...
Lol, that's the only thing left from that machine, built his new one from spares i had laying around .....
