SATA or case?

[Mitternacht]

kk so I just sold an e-machine to my friend for $50. Should I put it towards a SATA HDD or a mid-tower case? You guys pick a case; try to impress me. I'm asking you guys to do this because I don't look into cases...at all. Maybe something with a screen on the front, to show temps or fans or something.

Here's a SATA drive I found. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144415)

[dgrmkrp]

if i had 50 bucks right no (and i do) which no one knew about (err.. i don't) :) i'd go for the drive or some aluminum plates... no chance i'm buying a 50 bucks case.. anymore :)

[Mitternacht]

but that drive I found on Neweg, is that a good drive?

[Zephik]

WD is a good brand. It's one of their cheaper ones, but it still better than most others for the price.

[Mitternacht]

WD is a good brand. It's one of their cheaper ones, but it still better than most others for the price.

So I should buy it?

I'm looking for a SATA because my new mobo only has 1 IDE channel. I need a SATA HDD for a master drive.

[Omega]

I've had mine (Same exact HD) for about a year. It's been through surges, brownouts, and general wear and tear. Great drive, especially for the price.


Then again, the fact it's still alive might be my PSU's doing.

[Airbozo]

It is a good drive. Been running them in several different systems; desktop windows box, linux workstation, and a SuperMicro 1u server (test system).

[OvRiDe]

I have had my fair share of problems with both Maxtor and Western Digital. The drive I would recommend is this one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148149). In my experience Seagate has been less problematic. Currently we have approximately 60+ Seagate drives running on our servers. Granted they are 10-15K RPM SCSI drives of assorted sizes. We have had few failures, and Seagate backs it up with a 5 year warranty even if you do. Just an opinion, hope it helps.

[Airbozo]

I have had my fair share of problems with both Maxtor and Western Digital. The drive I would recommend is this one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148149). In my experience Seagate has been less problematic. Currently we have approximately 60+ Seagate drives running on our servers. Granted they are 10-15K RPM SCSI drives of assorted sizes. We have had few failures, and Seagate backs it up with a 5 year warranty even if you do. Just an opinion, hope it helps.

The seagate scsi drives are built like tanks. But they can afford to be since most of the scsi drives go into the enterprise setting and not for home use. One major issue with HD's is turning them off and on. The metal expands and contracts with the temperature fluctuations and causes the drive to wear out faster. This is the main reason that drives in the data center last longer. Maxtor used to be THE scsi drive to buy for a server farm due to their 5 year warranty (better than anyone at the time by a couple of years). Maxtor is now owned by Seagate. WD's Raptor series have won high marks for reliability and performance and I think they still offer the 5 year warranty as default for all the Raptor series drives.

A couple of years ago while I was working at SGI, we ordered around 300 Seagate scsi drives for a large project. We ended up being one of the first companies to get drives from a particular manufacturing plant. Big mistake! 80% of the drives failed within the first 2 weeks! Seagate was _very_ responsive and even sent out an engineer to evaluate what was happening to the drives, thinking at first we were doing something wrong (I would too with an 80% failure rate), and found out that the manufacturing plant had some serious quality issues. They made everything right in the end though and sgi even got some free HD's and press coverage from Seagate as well.

[bartvandenberg]

Ive had the bst luck with seagate. ill always recommend them. but. western digital is also a good name to go with, if you dont choose seagate. just make sure you stay away from maxtor. nothing buy issues.

the only downside to that hd, is the 160 gb only had an 8mb cache whereas if you spent a couple bucks more for the 250, you'd get the 16mb cache.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148144

but.. thats more money.. so. its up to you.