New HDD

[rsfnatik]

Well, i'm in the market for a new HDD and i'm looking for some advice on which way to go. My current system has two Maxtor 80GB (IDE) drives installed. I'm looking to replace one of the 80GB drives with a new larger capacity drive then banish the spare 80GB to an external USB/FireWire enclosure for backup purposes and when I need to shuttle data around.

For the enclosure i'm looking at the Vantec NexStar 2 (NST-355UF) (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1127833&sku=V13-1204). As for the drive, the choices are:

1) Maxtor DiamondMax 10 160GB (6L160R0 (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1477506) /IDE/NCQ/16MB) @ $115CDN*
2) Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Plus 160GB (ST3160023A (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=576590) /IDE/8MB) @ $147CDN
3) Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 250GB (ST3250823A (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1265028) /IDE/8MB) @ $152CDN*

(* Price after rebate)

The warranty for the Maxtor/Segate drives is 3-years/5-years respectively, which is a point for Seagate. However, from what i've read, the DiamondMax 10 does have a bit of a performance advantage. The 250GB Seagate offers a wicked cost/GB tho, so i'm starting to look in that direction.

Anyway, just looking for opinions. The primary purpose of the new drive is a shared storage and work area. It will hold photos (currently storing 12GB/10000 images), multimedia stuff and allow me room to capture raw DV and dabble with some personal video projects.

Thanks.

[rsfnatik]

Been doing some more reading on this one but most reviews reference SATA these days... not much help exactly. I started hitting forums and the general impression I got is that Maxtor drivers are good performers with some reliability issues, where as Seagate drives are quiet/reliable at a slight performance hit. I wish I could find a review that actually demonstrated the peformance difference...

Personally, my two Maxtor's run great and I see quite a few Seagate failures at work. Maxtor's and WD fail occassionally. But that **** Seagate 5-year warranty keeps coming back to me... :) I suppose all drives have issues depending on who you speak with.

Still looking for thoughts on this one. Will hopefully be buying tomorrow...

[Midknyte]

did you look at storagereview.com?

The manufacturer's are all pretty close. Did you look at Hitachi drives? They are pretty fast also.

[rsfnatik]

Yeah, I hit storagereview.com but as I mentioned, most reviews these days are targetted at SATA drives with newer chipset, NCQ, etc, etc, etc... doesn't really give me a good indicator IMO. Thanks tho.

I did look at the Hitachi drives, but availability is somewhat limited for me. I can only source the 160GB and 400GB models easily.