Maxtor or Western Digetal

[Arnold]

Went to buy a 13gig hdd at Office depot. They were out of the drives and want to substitute a western digital for the maxtor at same price. Is that OK?? The price is still $149.

Arnold

[BBA]

Where did U find a 13G for $149? I just looked at Office Depots listings and a 10G is $229!

I wouldn't care what drive it is, its worth that.

BBA

[ANTONIO E GUERRA]

I had bad experience with Western Digital. It is a very unrealiable hard disk. I think it is as bad as a Fujitsu or JTs. Maxtor is okay and so easy to install it. It is only my humble opinion.

[Arnold]

The HDD was on sale a week ago this past Saturday, and they ran out of stock. This will be a replacement.

[kwai]

western digitals used to suck for awhile, but according to the storage review, their newer drives (which a 13gig would have to be) seem to be back up to their old standards. i would personally still prefer the maxtor, though. can't you get a rain check?

[ENVY]

have to agree with Antonio on this one,the WD drives are junk.I am the owner of 2(8.4gb and 10.1gb)both these drives have a lot of problems running in udma mode.also about once a month one or the other will kick up with bad sectors requiring you to run the WDDIAG to repair it(which it does).The maxtor drives do tend to be a little more reliable and have read some really good reviews on the diamond max plus series.You can do better than a WD drive!Get a rain check or something.

[David]

I saw that too, but after rebate. I have tried both and the maxtor seems quieter and I think it actually has a better overall speed through the whole disk on a review I saw. My maxtor 5.7 gig dma drive does not like 100 mhz bus when I overclock my celeron and has to downgrade to mode 4.

[kdon]

I had a really bad experience with WD. I bought a WD 8.4 (ATA66)two weeks ago when i used it for 2 days the drive, it came out a bad sector. Therefore i took it back to the store and they did a replacement of me.
Unfortuntely when i got a new drive back and used it for 3 days for this time. A bad sector came out again but this time i can fixed it by reformat the drive.
For my own opinion, i wont recommand WD to ppl

[TM BYSON]

hi,
i was looking through a catalog recently, and was wondering if you could give me your thoughts on the following hard drive manufacturers (are they reliable/unreliable, which you would prefer, which you would stay away from, etc.):

western digital
maxtor
quantum
seagate

thanks in advance http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Myke]

I have to agree with everybody else. I have both a Maxtor and a WD 4.3 gig. The Maxtor is quieter and faster.
I just bought a second Maxtor 8.4g at a computer show last sat for $133.

[Mbarb]

Kdon
It is normal for a new drive to have a small amount of bad sectors...

[CMonster]

When installing a new drive for a friend the WD 8.4 we got was DOA - deader than a door nail. We took it back and the stor confirmed that it was dead.

Mbarb - yeah, and it is normal for a new car to have an engine misfire == bull-duky!! I suggest you switch to another brand of drive if you consider bad sectors to be normal. I run a thorough scandisk on all new drives and do not tolerate defects in new drives.period.

After the client has had ample opportunity to improperly shut down his system by hard power-off a few times then I expect a few bad sectors might pop up.

[GIMOER]

Maybe there is two Western Digtals or I'm the luckiest man on the face of the earth.I've use about 8 or 9 WD HD including a 170mb,340mb,1.6g,3.2,4.3,6.4 and have had no problems with any of them and I had several running on an overclocked PCI bus using Ultra DMA not PIO without a hitch.Oh pardon me I think my old 100 meg died about 3 months ago.Give me a break WD makes and has made some of the best hard drives and I've owned a few Laxtor drives and they truly make you think hard about how much thier drives blow.I've seen those 13gig specials a friend of mine bought one and he had to exchange because the first one never booted.So I'll stick WD and those who accept inferior quality can buy Laxtor or Fujitsu or some other lamo drive.

[ENVY]

TM byson,here is how I would rate the drives you listed.Keep in mind this is just my opinion based on 3 yrs experience in the pc tech field(its my job)
seagate (if you go with the high speed like cheetahs)
maxtor(kind of like your ole reliable)
Quantum(if your short on cash)these come in all HP machines now and they are usually doa especially the bigfoots.
Western digital (uuughhh,sorry that i even own 2 of them,the devil made me do it)They made good drives in the past but seem to have some manufacturing probs with their newer larger drives from around 8.4 gb and up,also some incompatibilities with some motherboards and udma.HEY, If you have one that works more power to you,you got lucky.

[dawgtuff]

Had a WD .5 gig in an old P60.It worked fine for 3 years than finally bit the dust.Bought a new computer with a WD 3.2 gig a year ago,and no problems at all.Can't say anything about the newer/larger ones though.

[ANTONIO E GUERRA]

Personally, I prefer the IBMs over any other hard drive. If you find one on sale, buy it. I do agree with Envy about Western Digitals. If you find the right motherboard they will work for you ...but, if not, God have mercy on you! Good luck in your choice. By the way, I don't like to bash on Western Digital because I used to recommend them as the best hard drives (3-5 years ago).

[ENVY]

Yup IBM is a good drive have found no probs with them as of yet

[Tex_Gex]

Let me see.....

I have 200 systems here at work to take care of, Lets look in the old dead HD box and count them.. I've changed 30 drives the last 2 years. Here is the total...

Quantum 5
Seagate 2
Maxtor 3
WD 20

Now tell which drives suck...

[ENVY]

hehe tex it looks like I hit my drive rating above pretty much right on the money lol

[etcm]

I just bought that WD, but mine was 139.99.
269.99-90(instant rebate)-40(mail in rebate)=
139.99. I cannot use it's ATA/66 but does anyone know if it handles 75 or 83MHz bus speeds well?

Oh yes, the 8.4G Diamond max's were 99.99 @ office Depot today. OD is closingout of the Maxtor line (going to WD).Today's ad said "limited to stock on hand", though).

[kdon]

etcm
i am using the 8.4 WD (ATA66) in 100 mhz
and u cant use ATA66 until the new chipset comes out in the second half of yr.

[MR COMPUTER]

I gotta box full of dead WD hd's.2 bad Seagates,and 1 bad Maxtor.The Maxtors are quiet and do what they are suppose to - RUN!

[yipikayee]

WD is little bit suspicious I think. I had
850Mb, it worked 1Y and then drive door
suddenly opened (NDD reported). Got new one.
Worked 1Y and SantaClaus brougt me some bads
for Christmas. Got rid of it...
Bouht Maxtor 6.8Gb. Worked 3 month and one day BIOS reported following: ??????????? S.M.A.R.T Status Bad.....?!
Bad-block-story happened again. Got new one again.. hehe... Works fine... not so noisy as WD and seems to be quite good disk.

Go for Maxtor!

[Arnold]

Office Depot gave me 8.4gig for $79 being that they did not have the 13gig.

[David]

Compusa has tons of them, Maxtor 8.4 gig under the Compusa brand for $99 after rebate. I went to OD also, but they just carried about 3 in each store and was out 1 minute after opening! What Office Depot do you go to that seems so friendly and cheap?

[This message has been edited by David (edited 04-13-99).]

[GIMOER]

Some of you must have the few bad ones becaus no one I know has ever complained about WD.The drive in my system now is a 6.4 gig WD and it's very quiet and runs perfectly.And WD sent me a replacement for my old 1.6 gig that did just die after three years of almost continous running.I do have a Quantum 1 gig Scsi though and I will say it is a good drive and yes IBM drives are quite good and also quite expensive.Maybe in some places people have better expierences with Maxtor then around here but if someone offered me one I'd pass maybe the new ones are better but they had better be because the old ones blew hard.

[Scott Evans]

The old WD 31600 (or any of the 3 platter drives for that matter of 2-4 yrs ago) had very high failure rates. IBM is teaching them how to make drives again.


ALL drives have surface defects in them. They are re-mapped at the factory before shipping.
The time to worry is when surface defects start to grow rapidly, at that point, back up your data, it'll fail soon.

Of course with a good SCSI drive and a good controller/firmware, we can see the factory defect mapping. Not so with IDE drives, the low level format utilities are proprietary.

[HELLCAT]

My 2 cents....

Have been buying drives for about five years now had about 5 westerns, ALL ran great except for one that I bought used<850mb about 4 years ago> I dont touch maxtors, I tech at my job and 1 out of 2 drives that DIE are maxtors. Some of my tight *** friends buy them and are always RMAing them back and forth through the mail, AND losing there data as well. I've been running Deskstars on the 4 machines at home and they have been ROCK solid drives. Just bought a 2940UW2 and a Plextor 8/20 CDR and am going to the show this Friday in search of a good deal on a Seagate Cheetah 9 gig UW2/LVD. IMHO in about 99% of the cases YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!...if you wanna pay **** your gonna get ****<and headaches and up all night and fdisk format lockups, loss data..need I go on?> You really SAVE ALOT OF TIME by buying the best you can afford in the first place, instead of buying a problem<like a maxtor with there WONDERFULL disk"mangeler"<g>...wait I must be up to 10 cents by now.......sorry........

]-[EI_I_</-\T

[Dreadnaught]

The only hard drives I've ever bought were and will continue to be Western Digital. I've never had one fail or report and bad sectors. I've been running them for 6 years. Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones, if so I hope I stay lucky. As far as noise goes I don't really have an opinion.

Later friends
Dreadnaught

[dawgtuff]

Got a WD 3.2 Gig on a custom built PII233...no problems at all after 13 months.

[GIMOER]

Just bought a new hard drive WD 8.4 and it works great quiet and quick just the way I like them.I'd also add that I've overclocked at 83mhz bus on many systems(41mhz PCI) and WDs never complained as I've heard many other
setups with diffrent drives do.

[socalgal]

ok why not.

I have been running a WD 2.1G for almost 3 years now. Rock solid.
Purchased a WD 8.4G at Fry's, which, btw, was in the cage behind the checkout, packaged in only a static bag. I didnt like that idea at all. Sure enuf, got it home and it clunked clunked clunked. Took it back, returns-counter guy hooked it up and said "yup, this one is bad".

I think mine fell off the same truck as CMonster's friend.

I don't know what I will get yet for my next build.

[augidog]

well, i'm a 'bigfoot' fan from the old (2.5 G) days, but heard enough to know not to buy a new one...i have 2 quantum fireballs:6.4 Ultra/ATA66 & 4.3 UDMA, both trouble-free, fast, and smooth as silk.

[jkreese]

Hey, I know this might be off the "normal" brand subject...but does anybody have any comments about Samsung HDs? I bought a 2.1 gig for my daughter's computer and haven't had any problems installing/running, although I must admit it doesn't get turned on very often. How about it? Any Samsung experience?

[8-BALL & THE ELF]

I've had several WDs without problem. I even damaged one myself and they replaced it promptly under warranty. They've been having some corporate problems lately, but the products are sound. - The Elf

What's a Hard Disk Drive? - 8-Ball

[Susan]

jkreese -

I'm using a Samsung 3.2 right now without any problems. Had a 2.1 also which I sold used and it's still running good. I think the issue with the Samsungs is the speed.

Using Sandra HD benchmark I got:

Drive Index
My Drive 4683
UDMA 8.4G 7600
UDMA 6.4G 6500
EIDE 4G 3500
EIDE 2G 1000

Random Read 3480 kB/sec.
Random Write 3443 kB/sec
Acess Time 7ms(est.)

It has enough speed for me...

[Louser99]

Nah, western digi's of old where unreliable, horrible. But I have the 13.0 gig ultra dma 66 version, and its Fast, cheap, Reliable,AND has a new feature built in that automatically fixes, and detects bad parts of the drive, and you dont have to do a thing! Its pretty much unbreakable, unless you throw it down some stairs.

Also works great at 112 mhz bus, unlike maxtors I have had. Great Drive

[steves]

Use 2 gateways with WD drives at work. Both have failed (at 12 and 35 months). Gateway now use Quantum so that should tell you something.

Personally I've had a segate 1Gb for 3 years no problems, just upgraded to 10Gb IBM, quiet or what.

How can anyone say WD UDMA 66 drives are reliable they haven't been out long enough.

The general opinion here 12 months ago was that Maxtor and WD both suck. Which made me avoid a Maxtor drive.

[freedom1]

I just got the Maxtor 8.4 at Office Depot for
$99 and it is working fine in my BH6 300a o/c to 464@2.0 v

[bharn]

Got both WD's and MAX's but always used to say WD only. Happy with both. Bottom line is when a WD failed after 33 months continual use (24x7) it was replaces with no Q's asked. If you keep your drives cooler they last longer!! BTW... the way them make drives now if you get bad sectors start to show you can begin to kiss your **** goodbye!! Haven't seen a one that didn't rapidy go from bad to worse once the sector party started!!!

[800XL]

In the years I have been using computers I have been on the phone to Maxtor for an RMA a total of 6 times. One of those times was for 5 drives. I have had just as many Western Digital drives in the same amount of time, but I have never called them, even once. Maxtor service is great, I admit. They back their products well. Western Digital service could be really lousy, but I wouldn't know because I've never had a chance to test it.

We got in a Dell machine with a 4.3g Maxtor and the drive failed 30 minutes after I powered the machine on. I had one take out my Linux machine at home. I collected 5 dead drives from systems at work in less than 2 months. I have never had a WD drive fail. EVER. I still use the 400MB drive that I got in 1993 or 94 that has been running near constant from the time I got that machine.

Of people I know, the only failed WD drive I've seen was where a friend accidentally punched a hole in the side of the drive trying to screw it in. The "tape" they used to seal aound the sides of the drive has one spot 1/2" from the screw hole where there is no metal behind it. A small flaw yes, but if you don't poke it...

[Butte]

Let me settle this argument, ALL HARD DRIVES SUCK. Seriously tho. I have had Maxtor and was happy with them and I have had seagate and was happy with them and I have had Samsung and was happy with them but did have one go bad on us and I have had WD and am happy with them. This debate kinda sounds like a Chevy verses Ford kinda thing.

It isn't unusual to have a small amount of sectors bad on a new hard drive. It's when you notice a trend of the number of bad sectors increasing that you need to worry about your drive going bad.

A good place to check out the aquisition rates of hard drives is ZDNet.com.

Mark

[Helly Hansen]

I would go with Western Digital, especially the Western Digital Expert (7200RPM, UDMA/66, 2MB Buffer, 7.5MS Seek) 750,000 Hours/5 Year Warranty, Really Designed By IBM! So IBM drives are good too. New Caviar drives are pretty good.

I would do not prefer going with Maxtor!! I deal with a lot of hard drives and Maxtors are not so hot, especially the new ones! They are really noisy!! I ordered some new Maxtor drives and one was new and defective, It roared and clanked and stuff! It was new! I have sent drives back to Maxtor for warranty return, they lost two of my drives and took 1.5 Months to send replacements twice!! I have also had weird problems with new Maxtor drives, one kept comming up as 504MB after reboot, autodetct was fine! I have to use normal mode! This is just my experience! I would rather use a low budget drive from JTS or Conner in some cases. Every brand makes some garbage!!!

I have a Western Digital Expert 9.1GB Evaluation Drive that was used for stress testing by Western Digital, It has been working perfectly for several months! The performance is better that a lot of fast SCSI's!

See You Guys!
Brandon Sandifer
Sandifer Peripherals
www.gowiththebest.com

[This message has been edited by Helly Hansen (edited 05-09-99).]