Good harddrive?

Ya that should work, as long as its a 3.5in IDE drive you should be fine, I have seen cheap drives from Western Digital as well, check their website.

If you want cheap, check out Anandtech Forum's Hot Deal section for the latest in HD deals by Fry's, CompUSA, Office Depot/Max, Staples, and other B&M stores. There's one for a 250MB Western Digital for $125 over the July 4th weekend.

Between a Seagate and a Western Digital, I'd go Seagate every time. I've owned quite a few of them, with no problems. I've heard of issues with WD drives, though I've never owned one.

jsw said:

Between a Seagate and a Western Digital, I'd go Seagate every time. I've owned quite a few of them, with no problems. I've heard of issues with WD drives, though I've never owned one.

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Have used pretty much every brand on the market. Have only had problem w/ 2 IBM 75GXP series. One was DOA, the other died after 6 months. Returned them both, haven't had a problem since. Knock On Wood.

I like the Maxtor D740X series. Very quiet. Currently running a WD 40GB/8MB on the dual G4, and 2 pairs of RAID-0 on the PC. Pair of Maxtor 160GB/8MB and pair of WD 120GB/8MB. I tend to give the lower capacity HDs away when I upgrade, so either people are not telling me about their HD problems or they're not having anyway.

When you have a nicely ventilated case w/ enough cooling for the HDs, it's all good.

I have 80 and 120 gb HDD's in my G4 - no problems and QUIET.

jsw said:

Between a Seagate and a Western Digital, I'd go Seagate every time. I've owned quite a few of them, with no problems. I've heard of issues with WD drives, though I've never owned one.

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I have had a 120GB wd in the past and other than one small failure it was great. wd are kinda like overclocked hard drives in the way that they tweak their drives to run. they are far far better now for reliability.

to give you a quick idea how fast their ata/100 caviar 7200 8mb drives are I have seen benchmarks where it beat their own sata 10k 8mb drive in about 60-70% of the read/write tests.

wd drives scream plain and simple

In my expirience the best are:
(in order from best to worst)
Seagate
Maxtor
Hitachi
Western Digital

I just ordered a Maxtor.

Also http://www.tigerdirect.com is pretty good they have a 200g Western Digital right now for $129 with a $40 rebate so its only $89

http://www.anandtech.com/ is good too.

Also get an 8Mb buffer. You won't regret it!

i like maxtor and western digital myself

i have always had the best luck with ibm drives. i guess now they are hitachi. i have tried seagate, wd, maxtor, and ibm. long ago a seagate drive i once loved developed hard-drive arthritis, the bearings sounded like little rocks going about in the drive, it wasn't pretty. sent that back and got a wd and i like wd drives. maxtor drives are loud and slow, from what i have used, but that was back when 40gb was top prize at the show. lately i have been using ibm drives and no complaints. a smattering of wd, just depends which is cheaper at the moment.

if you go to tom's hardware, the hitachi drives are the best bang for the buck. but i mean who honestly knows? seems like it 'tis based on personal experience...

jaromski

just get such a version that has 8MB buffer instead of two - that makes a difference.

you do realise that all harddrives on the market are all made by only 2 manufacturers: Seagate and Western Digital. So the closer you get to 'pure' brand, the better the harddrive

It's very hard to go wrong with Barracudas from Seagate. They are fast, quiet and reliable... Other Seagates should be OK...

win_convert said:

you do realise that all harddrives on the market are all made by only 2 manufacturers: Seagate and Western Digital. So the closer you get to 'pure' brand, the better the harddrive

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your wrong Hitachi makes hard drives there not just relabled the same with toshiba with there 2.5" and 1.8" drives i'm not sure about the rest but i am pretty sure they use there own drives, do you have any eveidence for this?

(i have to put i word in for samsung spinpoint hard drives there very quiet)

win_convert said:

you do realise that all harddrives on the market are all made by only 2 manufacturers: Seagate and Western Digital. So the closer you get to 'pure' brand, the better the harddrive

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that's just bull****.

as someone said, hitachi and toshiba are also real manufacturers. and, to add, hitachi actually bought ibm hard drive technology a few years ago, so they are really top-of-the-line manufacturer.

i have no respect for toshiba however.

Muskie said:

One thing, you keep talking about this 8mb buffer. Where does it say what this one has? And what's it mean

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You have to look this up at the manufacturer's product specs page and type in your HD's model number, OR buy it from an online store (newgg.com) where they list all the specs for the HD. Cache/Buffer

JFreak said:

that's just bull****.

as someone said, hitachi and toshiba are also real manufacturers. and, to add, hitachi actually bought ibm hard drive technology a few years ago, so they are really top-of-the-line manufacturer.

i have no respect for toshiba however.

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I concur w/ the bull crap part. I wonder where he read that from?

You don't like toshiba? I hope you don't have an iPod, 'cause you might lose respect for it due to its toshiba HD.

Mitthrawnuruodo said:

It's very hard to go wrong with Barracudas from Seagate. They are fast, quiet and reliable... Other Seagates should be OK...

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I agree, I ran dual Barracudas from seagate and the drives were perfect. Never had a problem.

I have also run a lot of Western Digital drives, great product.

If you go with Seagate you shouldn't have any worries.

My Gigabit machine came with an IBM drive and later I added a second IBM drive. Just this week, both have failed. The OEM drive had issues at a couple of years and the second I bought probably lasted a year or so. So, stay away from them. My Western Digital drive has run great, so far. So, where was that wood again?

Yes, I must have been misinformed by, guess whom, the guys down at my local windows-only computer shop.
Being part of the Mac community is most enlightening.

FuzzyBallz said:

You don't like toshiba? I hope you don't have an iPod, 'cause you might lose respect for it due to its toshiba HD.

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no, never have and never will. i was so scared when i back in 2002 bought a titanium powerbook which had a toshiba hard drive in it, and i was right by the way. the laptop was running so hot i couldn't work with it more than ten minutes before the fan begun to operate, even when i didn't really stress the machine to the limit. it was so hot almost all paing fell off from the whitish area of the tibook. but when i opened the laptop and took the toshiba away, putting a hitachi instead, the situation changed. can you believe it? after changing a toshiba to a hitachi, the laptop ran much cooler. the fan almost never operated after that. i had to really stress the system to the limit before the fan began to operate. the thing ran so cool i couldn't believe it.

so yes, i really dislike toshiba hard drives. i only regret that i didn't exchange the drive sooner, because i already had a bad feeling about the hard drive before i bought the laptop.

and yes, i have ordered an ipod. that is a pink ipod mini that has a hitachi inside. i will never ever touch a toshiba hard drive again. unless i touch it with an intention to throw the thing into a trash can.

toshiba sucks big time. period. i wonder why apple didn't openly claim that the tibook paint problem was because toshiba hard drives run too hot. and i wonder why on earth apple chose to use them in the first place.

i once had a toshiba laptop. it was a model "T1000" which didn't have a hard drive. it ran msdos v2.11 from floppy. i liked the thing, so i cannot say there's something wrong with toshiba as a company. i just really dislike their hard drives, big time.