Which 80GB HDD is better: Hitachi 7K250 ATA100 or Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus 9 ATA133

[Babulmiah]

Hi,

Thinking of buying some 80GB HDD and want some opinions.

Basically I wat to know which is the better performer and which is quiter.

Hitachi 7K250 ATA100
OR
Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus 9 ATA133

I found one website which has some feedback from ppl who bought these drives. Most criticise the Maxtor (fails too quickly after a few weeks/months) but surely Maxtor must have sorted the problem and their drives are OK now.

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X3Jldmlld3M=&product_uid=56725

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X3Jldmlld3M=&product_uid=40968

If anyone knows of any webiste that reviews and benchtests some 80GB HDD against each other to find which is best performer and which ones are quiet (I sleep next to my PC and rub it 18hrs a day), please let me know.

Thanks.

[Midknyte]

http://www.storagereview.com/php/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=LeaderBoard

The Hitachi is the fastest PATA drive on the market right now. :cool:

Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 review:
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200310/20031007HDS722525VLSA80_1.html

[fishybawb]

I don't know about the Hitachi, but the Maxtor is definitely very quiet, and I haven't had any problems with it at all.

[Imperion1]

Never had problems with any Maxtors I've ever bought.

[iceblue]

The Hitachi is faster, but at the cost of heat (so the longevity of the drive is questionable). I've also never had any problems with my Maxtors.

[stealth17]

I have never had any problems with my maxtors either. Did you look at Western Digitals though? I prefer to cool all my fast hard drives. I even cool my WD 80gig 8mb 7200rpm with a 2 fas hard drive cooler:p ...probly don't really need it but it looks KOOL:x

[Babulmiah]

I didn't know which to ge.t so I but both today.

So far I can't tell any real difference between them though funnily enough my ASUS motherboard PC's had no problem picking up the Hitachi drive but did have dificulty initially detecting the Maxtor drive.

The motherboards I used were ASUS A7N8X, ASUS A7V8X, ECS K7S5A, Gigabyte GA7DXR.

Also, after installing a fresh copy of XP on each drive and booting on the A7N8X, I notice windows takes a few extra seconds to load in the Hitachi drive (but only 2-4 sec at most) than the Maxtor drive even though the hitachi is supposed to be the faster.

Don't know why. I istalled XP SP1 from boot CD on Hitachi, then latest drivers for my system. Took Hitachi out, inserted Maxtor, and installed XP SP1 from boot CD on that and then latest drivers for my system on Maxtor.

The big difference with the Hitachi is before the XP booting screen appears, a black screen with a 1cm high grey "progress bar" running along the length of the bottom of the screen appears, whereas the Maxtor posts straigt into the XP booting screen.

Strange that.