Compuer Hard Drive prices

Dec 13, 2007 00:09

so, I need a new OS hard drive really really badly. I have been using an OLD drive for almost a year now, and its a DMA100 and slow as shit, and literally slowing down my entire system ( Read more... )

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Comments 13

wolphin December 13 2007, 12:19:24 UTC
Check the fine print of the drive manufacturer. All of the drives we get at work now come with a 5 years manufacturer parts warranty on the drive, even though the machines we get are only three years themselves. If that is on your drive, then no point paying the store for something they'll just send back to the manufacturer.

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maui_dolphin December 13 2007, 16:09:05 UTC
You just ship it to them in Silcon Valley, they took about a week to return with a refurbished drive.

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frosty_the_orca December 16 2007, 05:35:07 UTC
yeah, I checked with Western Digital, and it's a full 5 years with them. so I'm not going to pay extra for newegg to cover them, not when WD will do it for 5 for free

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kahukilairu December 13 2007, 14:17:28 UTC
I have the smaller one in my system, and it is a great drive. Fast, quiet and smooth. Who could ask for anything more.

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frosty_the_orca December 16 2007, 05:40:03 UTC
yep, I used to have one, but back in the great computer crash of 07 (very very begining of the year) I had some massive stuff happen to my workstation, and part of it was my raptor drive going bad. I think I could probebly get it working, as I never spent that much time with it, but I don't care. once a HD has had something happen to it like that, it's useless to me. uptime and system stability are just too important. and the old drive I was/am using nevergave me any problems, I had only taken it wout of service a few years ago because it got replaced with a larger drive.
so even though it is old and slow... very slow, it's still reliable.

though when it comes out of this system, it's being marked as "Retired, but functioning" and I'll stick a copy of the SMART report on the drive before I stick it on the shelf with all my other drives

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therinm December 13 2007, 14:28:16 UTC
As I understand it, Pricewatch.com is a decent place to benchmark prices for computer parts. I've found NewEgg's prices to consistently be within a very small margin of Pricewatch.com's listed up-to-date prices.

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maui_dolphin December 13 2007, 16:08:10 UTC
I have a Raptor, and yes they are good. But are they really worth the money :/ ? I don't think so, not anymore. I had mine have some corruption and I had to claim the usual RMA. They gave me a refurbished one to replace it. I like Western Digital's warranty, but for that I will just stick to their Standard Caviar.

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frosty_the_orca December 16 2007, 05:34:00 UTC
actually, depending on the system you have, yes they really can make a difference. my computer booted about 3 seconds faster when I had my old raptor drive in it. I had to grab on OLD IDE drive of mine to use for the OS and my system runs significantly slower now because of the drive. the seak time and larger catch of the raptor do warrant it's prices.

when I build my new workstation in about a year and a half my OS will be on SSDs (solid state drives) for speed.
and as I build my JBod I'm going to use SAS drives instead of SATA. but that will be even farther into the future. as I KNOW I wont be able to afford a large RAID array of SAS drives for probably 2 or 3 years.

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longbottle December 16 2007, 04:26:35 UTC
If you buy a WD, it *will* blow up. Just a matter of time.

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frosty_the_orca December 16 2007, 05:28:21 UTC
of course it will. any and EVERY hard drive will eventually, hard drives having moving parts, there mechanical, they die, thats all there is about it.

the issue some people have had with the raptors is that they tend to run a bit warmer than other drives do, and if you put them in against another drive or 2 it will run too hot. if your not using any software to monitor temps in your system (most people don't) you can be burning up a drive and not know it. my drives are going into a SATA backplane which helps to keep them cool. but even without it, my system stays within tolerances on everything I have in it, and considering what all is in it, the system runs rather cool (14 fans will keep your system temps reasonable :P)

SSD's are a different story, but thats besides the point.

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longbottle December 16 2007, 06:34:29 UTC
Note that I said "blow up", not "fail".

WD has a long sordid history with me, including three premature failures of drives in the Caviar series. Conversely, I have a Seagate I pulled from my Mac SE that's been in operation since about 1987.

Flash memory has a finite number of write cycles, so while it's use limit is theoretically higher than spinning disk media, it's also more catastrophic when it fails.

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aquachem December 19 2007, 12:40:54 UTC
You've just had crappy luck in general. I've had WD drives run blissfully for years and years and without a tick. In our computer repair class even the refurbed WD's lasted longer and better then the maxtors, seagates and IBm's. :P

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