Seagate BarracudaATA IV

[(Shovel)]

I'm wanting a second hard drive soon and after the horror stories referring to the current IBM HDs (I have an older 5400 IBM which works fine) I was thinking of getting something else.


The Seagate looks pretty good but I know little about the brand reliability, although they are supposed to be durable?
I'm thinking of getting the 40 GB one.

If anyone has/has had one I'd be greatful for advice. Thanks.

 

[Will]

I have a 40Gb Seagate Barracuda IV, very quiet, never given me any problems.

 

[old.Jas]

I was in the same situation as you last month. I ended up buying a 80Gb Maxtor (5400 RPM, 2Mb Cache) for £96 from Scan.

Damned quick compared to the standard one Dell stuck in, almost silent as well.

 

[PR.]

I have a 7year old 1gb Seagate disk and it still works fine. In fact all my HD are Seagates' except my Lappy which has an IBM

Most new seagates are silent, I will soon be buying two of their 60gb drives for a RAID setup

 

[xane]

Regarding Seagate durability.

A few months back I had to build a separate Linux box as a firewall, the 20MB install demanded full use of the HDD so it was not worth wasting a Gb monster on it.

I dug out an old Seagate 130MB drive that had been sitting in a cupboard for an estimated seven years, to give some idea of the age it had my old Windows 3.1 install on it, it started up no problems and has been running 24/7 in the firewall/router machine since.

The "IBM scandal" only applies to drives later than the 60GXP and 75GXP models, I have two 34GXP (pre-60GXP) running in my main machine 24/7 and they've been okay for the last 18 months at least.

The only disks I have ever had problems with are both Quantums, an older 52MB one seized up completely and another 4Gb one (a "Bigfoot") has had intermittant block failures in the past.

Maxtor have also proved reliable to me, several of my old models are running fine in other machines, IMO they are just as good as IBMs. Seeing as IBM intend to pull out of the HDD business I would go with Maxtor if you need a quality HDD (not exactly dissing Seagate as in my experience they've been good to me).

 

[S-Gray]

Originally posted by Jas
I was in the same situation as you last month. I ended up buying a 80Gb Maxtor (5400 RPM, 2Mb Cache) for £96 from Scan.

Damned quick compared to the standard one Dell stuck in, almost silent as well.

Jeez... prices these days are unbelfuckinlivable, just wish i had some money to buy something

 

[Will]

Yeah, I just got a 60Gb ATA133 7200rpm Maxtor for £65 or £70 as a special offer. Shame RAM is climbing again though.

 

[sabrex]

i have maxtor 20GB in 3 machines all been working fine for 2 years now.

Very reliable !

 

[(Shovel)]

OK, thanks.

Out of interest, I saw a while ago something about replacement IDE cables that weren't in the 'ribbon' form (they were conventional cable shaped) and were much better for getting about inside the case and for cooling.
Anyone know if they are still available and how much they cost? I might replace everything inside with these.

They were bright yellow iirc.

 

[Scooba Da Bass]

Uh, rounded IDE cables?

90cm ATA 133 is £5.99 at Scan, god knows if they are cheaper elsewhere, but they are are certainly yellow.

 

[(Shovel)]

Ah yes, that's the one You realise now why transparent cases never caught on really...