Help! Recommend me a hard disc drive

[LuS1fer]

Mine is on the way out. It's a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus D740X 6L060J3 which has been superseded many times over, I'm sure.

This is it:
www.axiontech.com/prdt.php?item=11372&PHPSESSID=be428b95f24f196be92e62fa804f5ddc

I'm looking for a replacement HDD that I can just clip in and replace it with. It's got a ribbon connector and a 4 pin plug on it.

I don't need any more than the stock 80GB and it needs tio be as cheap as possible as I just want to use it to rescue data from the other HDD.

Is this any good?
www.pyramid.com/Product.aspx?StockCode=801157
or shopuld I go for something from western Digital?

Thanks.

Edited by LuS1fer on Wednesday 20th December 14:47

[sneakyneil]

Either Western Digital or Seagate would be fine!

I have quite a stash of dead Maxtor DiamondMax 8's and 10's. Infact I was here till 8pm last night pulling data off a flakey one. They seem to develop bad clusters in the most frequently accessed parts of the disk.

[Jinx]

When I saw the thread title I was going to recommend not getting a Maxtor! My housemates new one died within a month.

I've had a Western Digital (120g IDe) for over a year without problems.

[LuS1fer]

So what's the difference between ATA, SATA and SATA II. Can I just fit any IDE drive.

This one, for example, has an ATA 150 rather than an ATA 133 and an 8MB buffer rather than a 2MB buffer. is there anything that would be incompatible? Sorry but I'm learning slowly, I hadn't opened a case until last week...

www.pyramid.com%2fCategoryProducts">www.pyramid.com/Product.aspx?StockCode=C41012&ReturnUrl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.pyramid.com%2fCategoryProducts

[Plotloss]

You want a drive with an IDE interface. Not Serial ATA (SATA)

I'd personally stick to Seagate or IBM/Hitachi.

(sits back and waits for the IBM/Hitachi are crap, they blew up took all my data, shagged the wife, shat on the kitchen floor and kidnapped my children brigade but I've got about 10 of them now and they've all be faultless :touchesbigbitofwood

[sneakyneil]

SATA and SATAII use the same connectors, PATA is the old style and is different. PATA=big wide connector with 40 odd big pins in it, SATA 1/2=smaller connector, a little bit like USB but slightly bigger.

[sixpackpert]

I always use these guys, very good service.

Follow link to IDE hard drives

www.dabs.com/productlist.aspx?&NavigationKey=11154&NavigationKey=354050000&NavigationKey=41610000&CategorySelectedId=11154&PageMode=1

[LuS1fer]

Plotloss said:

You want a drive with an IDE interface. Not Serial ATA (SATA)

I'd personally stick to Seagate or IBM/Hitachi.

(sits back and waits for the IBM/Hitachi are crap, they blew up took all my data, shagged the wife, shat on the kitchen floor and kidnapped my children brigade but I've got about 10 of them now and they've all be faultless :touchesbigbitofwood

Now I'm confused. I click on IDE drives and they bring up stuff with SATA on it.
What is an IDE interface?
Mine has an Ultra/133 spec???

The drive I have has a 40 pin ribbon connector and seems to be something alternative. It's basically the same as this:
www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=951
which refers to having an Ultra/133 controller card....which is....????

Can anyone make sense of this? I'm baffled by it.

[GregE240]

Plotloss said:

You want a drive with an IDE interface. Not Serial ATA (SATA)

I'd personally stick to Seagate or IBM/Hitachi.

(sits back and waits for the IBM/Hitachi are crap, they blew up took all my data, shagged the wife, shat on the kitchen floor and kidnapped my children brigade but I've got about 10 of them now and they've all be faultless :touchesbigbitofwood

An IBM Deathstar, sorry, Deskstar, you mean, Plotters?

Yeah....they're great.....at dying and taking your bloody data with them .

That said, my trust Compaq EVO (appearing at a museum near you soon) has the 2.5" version of the Deathstar and, whilst noisy, has never chucked a '7'.

[Plotloss]

Sorry, thats my fault.

ATA is also known as IDE

Basically you want a drive that doesnt say SATA anywhere on the specs.

www.dabs.com/productlist.aspx?&NavigationKey=11154&NavigationKey=41610000&CategorySelectedId=11154&PageMode=1

They are all ATA/IDE drives.

[LuS1fer]

OK last dumb*ss question. What's the difference between a UDMA 100 and a U100 and is an 8MB buffer better to have than a 2MB buffer. I believe I will then be confident to buy one.

[Plotloss]

No difference between UDMA100 and U100, shorthand version

8mb v 2mb buffer you'll see no real difference in practical terms just the amount of data they can hold for rapid retrieval before reading/writing.

[LuS1fer]

Fantastic. Thanks a very lot! Cheers!

[malman]

Sorry I'm late

IBM/Hitachi are crap, they blew up took all my data, shagged the wife, shat on the kitchen floor and kidnapped my children

[pjskel]

IBM/Hitachi are crap, they blew up took all my data, shagged the wife, shat on the kitchen floor and kidnapped my children!

So now, I use Samsung exclusively.
Lovely things - they even mind the kids so we can go out at weekends, hoover the floors, compliment the wife on how nice she looks, and store all my data in alphabetical order.
Can't praise them enough because of that and their quietness. Never draw attention to themselves, so they're thoughtful as well.

Edited by pjskel on Wednesday 20th December 16:59

[LuS1fer]

I had some Irish chaps ask if they could tarmac my hard drive once....

[Scraggles]

had a pair of maxtors die, never going to use them for anything important

currently got all seagates and they been working fine for years

120 GB IDE boot
160 GB IDE data
160 GB SATA data x 2

[LuS1fer]

Well I researched around and I did in fact go for a Maxtor again. The reason was that I read a few complaints about Western Digitals dying after a year and some complaint about their noise volume, a question mark over the reliability of the Seagate drive which, in any event, due to it's format, is too large a hard drive for my purposes (minimum 160GB) and a recent review of the Maxtor DiamondMax commending it on it's quietness and reasonable speed.

What finally swayed me was a repairer who said they all fail and nothing really stood out as being exceptional. In fairness to mine, it has lasted over 5 years and I foolishly thought they lasted forever which is why it's rather taken me aback to find they are disposable items that regularly crash. Whatever happens, it has to be better than the 5 year old one I've got.