I need a drive to store all my crap - mpegs, mp3s etc. It will be for storage only, but I don't want it breaking, so is this reliable??...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3408377412&category=168

Maxtor, IBM, WD, Seagate. All ok?

I personally swear by Western Digital drives. I have the 60GB version of this drive in my system now (among a couple other WD drives) and it's been very good to me. The one time I had a failure, I got a warranty replacement within 2 days with no questions asked.

The only way you'll find a better drive is if the part number ended in JB instead of BB. But if it's just for file storage, stick with the less expensive BB that you found. I'd have some WD's now if I had the cash.

Just to add to everyone elses support of the drive, I have had the SE (8MB Cache) version sat in my file server at home since the start of December 2002, The server runs 24-7 and the drive is still performing perfectly.

On a side note, what do people think of this drive as my MK2 is in need of an upgrade.

Echo. WD's have always been great for me. I have the 80GB SE drive as my main drive right now and it's doing fine. I also have a 3 year old 100GB drive (also WD) as my file storage and it is still running like a champ

One more pretty good experience with WD drives. I have a 6Gig WD that came with one of my Macs about six years ago that has been running 24x7 basically ever since and has been moved between machines several times. It currently houses the root and usr filesystems on my FreeBSD server. No complaints.

-Mike

Ok, looks like this is the one. Of course you all understand that if I have a bad experience I'll hunt you all down

Cheers guys

I have the 60GB version of this drive in my system now (among a couple other WD drives) and it's been very good to me.

I think I just bought this very same drive recently. It was the one where I discovered (after asking on this BBS) that I needed the 80-conductor cable to make it work properly. I haven't had it for long, so I don't have any long-term reliability numbers.

I personally swear by Western Digital drives.

Me too. I've had problems in the past with Seagates, problems with Maxtors, but never with WD units. This is, of course, just a testimonial with no basis in actual statistical reliability data. But it does affect my buying decisions. When I bought that 60gb WD drive, I could have gotten a Maxtor 80gb for the same cash, but chose the WD unit instead because of my personal experience.

Oh well, lest we all of a sudden think that WD is perfect, I've had tons of issues with their drives in the past. Current models seem to be working well, though.

Cheers

What conductor cable is this? Never heard of that. On a side note, how large a disk can a 6 month old Dell PC 'see' in terms of gb? Its a dimension 4500

Your Dell should be fine to see large drives like 60 or 80 or probably even over 100gb.

The 80-conductor cable is a new kind of IDE cable that uses 80 wires instead of 40. For more details, please see my saga related to this.

New? I suppose if you haven't touchd a drive in a while.

BTW, just to buck against most everyone else, WD is just about the only brand of drive I will not buy. Far too many failure reports over the past few years. Also poor experience with them in Macs at the office.

Right now I've got a Seagate Ultra160 SCSI Cheetah and a few ATA Maxtor drives (3 x 40GB, 1 x 60GB, 1 x 120GB (brand new) - I just retired a 20GB to my "not currently used for anything" pile to sit with my 1GB SCSI Quantum (I got this in 1994) and 4GB SCSI Seagate Barracuda (1995).

The 120GB Maxtor I got from Staples.com for $120 before a $40 mail-in rebate. (It was $120 after an instant $30 off)

Bruno

Okay, well, two votes against WD then.

Just goes to show how testimonials don't mean much, statistically.

Okay, well, two votes against WD then.

I was going to comment on my distaste for WD drives when I first read this thread, but I've spoken out against the brand many times on this BBS before.

For anyone keeping score, I am strongly against WD drives and will only buy them if abolutely necessary.

So, has anyone here had mixed results from WD drives?

I've always avoided them. I've had nothing but problems in the past. However, I will say that the new Special Edition drives have yet to give me any problems. I normally wouldn't recommend getting a WD drive, but would recommend the Special Edition drives to anyone who asked.

I've always stuck with IBM and Fujitsu, they've yet to let me down. Even the few IBM drives I've had problems with were promptly replaced for nothing more than the shipping cost to IBM; which is a lot more than I can say for some other companies.

I haven't used them since the Caviar days. I've had good luck with Maxtor's in my home machine (80 GB's L080J4 & L4).

I get 10K SCSI Ultra2 160 drives at work. Yummm. Seagates & IBMs.

-Zeke

I bought several WD's 6-7 years ago, and had a 40% failure rate. It seems it was a bad batch though, since The drive in that was in my current machine worked without issue 24/7 for 3.5 years. I just recently replaced it for nothing other than space and speed considerations. Of all the WD's I currently have installed in the field, and that's about 105, I have never had a failure in a drive less than 5 years old. I HAVE had 3 Maxtors and 2 Seagates fail, however.

I've always stuck with IBM and Fujitsu

On the other hand, I'm not going with IBM and Fujitsu, because of the controversy about failure rates that weren't getting acknowledged by either IBM or Fujitsu. Mainly because I had two IBM disks go bad, along with one Fujitsu disk fairly recently.

At the moment, I am mostly buying Seagate drives.

The thing is: hard disk companies go through good patches and bad patches. A year or so ago, I'd have bought nothing but IBM disks, and I'd have avoided Seagate like the plague.

I've never bought a WD disk, mainly because performance was so poor in the past. These days, who knows?

But, that was then. This is now. Bias against disk manufacturers founded on bad experiences from more than a couple of years ago is, IMO, unfounded.

On the other hand, I'm not going with IBM and Fujitsu, because of the controversy about failure rates that weren't getting acknowledged by either IBM or Fujitsu. Mainly because I had two IBM disks go bad, along with one Fujitsu disk fairly recently.

At the moment, I am mostly buying Seagate drives.

I had an odd experience recently.

I ordered 2 18Gb IBM SCSI SCA drives from www.scan.co.uk but the drives that turned up were actually Seagate drives (model number ST318305LC). They have been re-badged as IBM drives, but there is no mention of them anywhere on the IBM website.

Unfortunately they are a tiny bit smaller (in capacity) that my other 18Gb IBM drives in my RAID array, so they are completely useless for the purpose I bought the for. Looks like my desktop machine is going to be upgrading to SCSI drives. I assume that I can get converters so that I can plug these SCA drives into my Adaptec 29160N SCSI card ?

P.S. if you buy anything from Scan, don't expect a sensible response when you want to return it for some reason. They are cheap though...

I've also had several WD's go bad in the past, say 6-7 years ago when they were still called Caviar drives. Until they released the JB drive I never considered them again. But this drive's specs were just so good, so I caved in and got one. In one word : fantastic! Very fast and reliable, haven't had a problem yet.

I only wish they'd make drives with FDB motors, 'cause this drive is fairly noisy.

I've had troubles with Maxtor, Seagate, IBM and Fujitsu. The only drives I never had a problem with were Quantum (now Maxtor). The Maxtor started to loose it's data, the Seagate (medalist) just crashed, and so did the IBM and Fujitsu. The IBM was one of the dreaded 75GXP models. Supposedly they've improved a lot since then with the 180GXP now.

Actually I'm also looking for a HD now, but I believe I have requirements that most people have not.

Firstly, I want a QUIET HD. So it's only FDB motors from here on. That doesn't leave me with much choice : Seagate, Maxtor and IBM. WD doesn't have them (yet?).
Secondly I want one with a capacity of 200Gb. Byebye Seagate (only max 160gig) and IBM (max 180gig)
I would have still considered the IBM because it's supposedly as fast as a WD, with the acoustics of a Seagate. Only It's downsides are : high temperature (4-5 degrees C higher than Seagates, so active cooling might be required - something I'm trying to avoid, I want to keep my system silent and this automatically means as little fans as possible), and there seems to be an annoying "cricket-chirpy" sound coming from the drive when it's idle. It does this every ten minutes or so when it re-calibrates it's heads. I don't know if I really trust this sound.

So I think I'll go with the Maxtor route. They do have a 200Gb drive, with pretty decent acoustics (though not as good as the Seagates), high performance (almost as good as a WD, in some tests even better) and average temperature.

I assume that I can get converters so that I can plug these SCA drives into my Adaptec 29160N SCSI card

I believe Maplin sell them.

Well, I went the Maxtor route....and I'm already regretting it! I've just finished partitioning it, reinstalled win2k on it and while I was copying the data from my trusted WD 100JB drive onto it it crashed while copying.
It rebooted and windows is completely FUBAR. Doesn't even boot anymore. At first sight the drive still functions and I *could* just reinstall windows and see how it goes now, but I think I'll pass.

I'll bring it back to the shops tomorrow and order a WD 200Gb, noise and all. (I need this space, otherwise I would go for a 180gig IBM which also has a FDB motor)
The low noise option will have to wait until WD presents it's drives with FDB motors of IBM makes bigger drives than 180gig.

And I absolutely SWEAR (hand on my heart) that I will NEVER buy another Maxtor drive in my entire life. EVER! This is the third time in one year I've had problems with their drives, and it's just not worth it. The glory days of quantum are definitely over!

/end rant.

Update : I reinstalled windows after all -went smooth- and began copying the files again. Only this time I unchecked the option in win2k's setup of rebooting when it encounters a mistake. And yeah : the thing crashed again, and I believe at almost the exact same point in the copy.
I now have a nice blue screen saying a lot of hexadecimal codes and KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR

Anybody has any idea what this means? I have no idea why this would happen. It's a completely fresh install, no drivers of any kind have even been installed yet. (I figured I'd re-copy my old drives to the new one before I do that because that drive also contains most of the drivers of my devices)
The drive I'm copying from is my mp3 backup drive with only my mp3 collection on it. (yes, the first thing I wanted to copy were my mp3's ) It's also a Maxtor drive but this one has never given me any problems. Yesterday I've also copied all my mp3's of it to an external firewire drive which went very smooth.

Does anybody have got any idea why this is happening ? As said before, windows is completely fubard after this. Even safe mode doesn't work anymore. (I get a BSOD saying "the register can't load the following part (file) : \SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE is damaged, not present or not writable")
Only thing left to do is to completely re-install win2k. But I don't know if I'm willing to do this, the error seems consistent enough to assume there is something wrong with this new drive.
The strange thing is that it hasn't given me any error while installing win2k, not the first time and also not when I've just re-installed it after that first crash.

Does you motherboard have a VIA chipset? If so, did you install their latest 4-in-1 drivers? An incorrect IDE driver from the chipset would lead to bad things like you describe.
-Zeke

I'm not trying to be jerk here, even though the question, along with it's editorial response, is going to sound like it. If you can provide an answer, I'd like to hear it, so that I can get a friend of mine off my back (at least for a little while).

How do you install Via 4-in-1 drivers during installation?

It's exactly this sort of bullshit that makes me avoid Via like the plague.

Edit: Apparently, ``bullshit'' is not a word that the BBS software finds needs to be censored.

In reply to:

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How do you install Via 4-in-1 drivers during installation?

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Boot from floppy, then run driver installation from floppy.

Worked for me during a HDD upgrade a couple of months ago Initially when the HDD didnt work, I suspected the new drive - turned out the problem was in the bios not recognising HDD > 120 GB in size.

Well, since I've done it goes a bit like this (and I do agree VIA mobos are a royal PITA):

D/L the drivers with another machine and put them on a CD or on a second HD or your w2k install HD, assuming you choose not to re-format during install (which is what I did).

On the very first reboot of your spanking new W2k install boot to safe mode by pressing F8 on boot.

Install the drivers. Reboot normally & continue with the W2k install, telling W2k the time zone etc...

It took me three installs to get this right, but my machine is mighty stable now.

I'm sure you've looked at the http://forums.viaarena.com/ site. There's far more knowlegeable people there than me.

-Zeke

ps: if you go jarob10's route, but don't have a floppy there's a good resource at http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/ for making bootable CD's

I had problems with my VIA mobo, but that thing had to have more problems than just the chipset. However, nothing seems to be going wrong with my nVidia board (*knocks on desk*)

I've honestly never owned a VIA mobo, but seeing all the problems they've created for several friends of mine, I'll never own one, even if that means that I'll never own a non-Intel x86-style computer, something that I would like to do. In many instances, usability trumps politics, and this is one of them.

I suggested an nVidia chipset mobo to one of those friends just recently (the one who really should not own a computer at all, much less be building them himself), so I hope that knock worked.

Does you motherboard have a VIA chipset?

No, it's an Intel 845PE chipset.
The motherboard is two months old (an Aopen AX4PE Max) so I don't think that either chipset or bios is the problem here.

Also, I hadn't installed any driver when this happened. I created the partitions on the drive, installed win2k, formatted the partitions and started copying those mp3's. The system really can't get more driverless.

I've never owned a mobo with a Via chipset and I never will because of all the problems that may occur with them.

Also, one hint I've heard from a friend concerning those 4-in-1 drivers : when you install them, DON'T install them with the "turbo" settings. (which is the standard setting). Allegedly those drivers are a lot more stable when the "standard" settings are used.

Another thought : could this be because that drive is 200gig and there's still a limit of 137gig in win2k?
Or is that a limit of 137gig per partition and not per total drive size? (I would think so because I could partition the drive just fine and when formatted it did show the total of 200gig available, devided in 4 partitions)

Could this have anything to do with it?

Problem solved. Seemed that it WAS this 137 gig barrier that was causing the problems. In all windows OS'es (except XP with SP1), when the OS tries to access the diskspace above that 137gig, whether it is devided into partitions or not (makes no difference), windows crashes.

Solution : install Intel's Application Accelerator. This utility enables (among others) this 48bit LBA mode.

Use this utility until MS will have the brains to include an update for this in (I hope) SP4 for win2k.

So to anyone who is using win2K and isn't using the application acclerator yet : install it now, because if you'll want to install a new disk (larger than 137gig) into your system in the future and you forget to install IAA then, your system will crash and a completely fresh install will be required to get some life into your PC again.

In my case this wasn't so bad because it was a completely fresh system install to begin with, but if I had installed this disk as a secondary hard drive, it's very well possible that my system would have crashed and destroyed all my data with it.
So be warned!

Note : Intels website makes mention that the IAA utility may not work with Win95, 98 or ME OS'es.

That's great news! I'm glad it wasn't a mobo issue. Do you know if the limit is on partition size or physical device size; i.e. would two 100GB partitions on the 200GB drive have avoided the problem?

-Zeke

would two 100GB partitions on the 200GB drive have avoided the problem?

No, the limit seems to be in the size of the harddisk, not in the size of the partitions.

I had devided that 200gig up into 4 partitions, the biggest being 80gig, just to avoid this problem. Needless to say that didn't work.

It's really quite incredible how badly documented this problem is, especially considering how common it may become in the future when 137+ disks won't be so rare anymore.
Knowing MS, they probably assume that everyone will be using WinXP SP1 (or later) by then.

No way!

Win2k SP3 can also handle disks over 137GB without IAA. You just need a registry hack... It's been mentioned on this board earlier. Or do a search on the Micro$ucks site for 137Gb.

Stig

Win2k SP3 can also handle disks over 137GB without IAA. You just need a registry hack... It's been mentioned on this board earlier. Or do a search on the Micro$ucks site for 137Gb.

I know, I've read that too. But the MS site made mention of possible data loss when using that registry hack. I just thought that the IAA option was safer.

Thanks anyway!

BTW : this is what you posted about it earlier.