# Want a reliable hard drive.



## rasheed (Jun 11, 2009)

Just need something that wont fail after a few months, or is it too much to ask for? Have around £60 to spend and want 500GB+.

Western Digital WD6400AAKS 640GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache - OEM

or 
Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB Hard Drive SATAII *32MB Cache* - OEM This has had quite a few reviews saying it just dies after some time.
or
Seagate ST3500418AS 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache - OEM

If neither can someone please recommend me a reliable hard drive from www.ebuyer.com

Specs:
AMD Phenom II X3 720 2.8GHz
2GB DDR2 (667 Mhz) RAM
Sapphire HD 4770
OCZ Stealth Xtream 500W PSU
Maxtor STM3200820A
MSI K9A2VM-FD


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## twicksisted (Jun 11, 2009)

any of those three should be fine...
i would personally go with the WD as i always use those in my builds and have never had any issues


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## WhiteLotus (Jun 11, 2009)

My next drive is going to be  WD as well, plus they have a nice returns/RMA system by the looks of it rather easy to do - no hassle etc.


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## kenkickr (Jun 11, 2009)

My vote goes toward WD.  I've used them for the last 10-11 years and had one issue, caused by UPS(the box was torn to shit upon delivery)


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## MRCL (Jun 11, 2009)

WD are good. Reliable thru years. Hitachi is good also. As for the Samsung, i have one since a few months, did not fail yet.


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## WhiteLotus (Jun 11, 2009)

Not from ebuyer - but has 32MB cache instead of the 16MB. http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?prodID=B144433


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## Geofrancis (Jun 11, 2009)

i have owned lots of hard drives ive never had any problems with seagate or western digital drives.

 i found maxtors tend to run hot and are not the most reliable i have had a few die randomly before. 

i have had a 500gb hitachi drive die out of the blue it just refused to work one day.

samsung 1tb drives i have just started using recently they are working fine apart from they wont work with some motherboards and raid cards as you cant set them to sata 150 without a boot disk from samsung that doesnt work on any of my computers.


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## Easo (Jun 11, 2009)

As far as i know, Samsung's F1's are not dying after "some time"...


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## rasheed (Jun 11, 2009)

Thank you all , ill just go with the WD and maybe get some more RAM.


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## kurosagi01 (Jun 11, 2009)

why not buy kyles 160GB seagate barrcuda for £10?? 
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=96485


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## ZenZimZaliben (Jun 11, 2009)

rasheed said:


> Just need something that wont fail after a few months, or is it too much to ask for? Have around £60 to spend and want 500GB+.



You make it sound like you have gone through several drives? I would question why that happened before getting a new drive.

Is your PC in a safe place? Not getting kicked, bumped hard, or moved while powered up? Does it sit near any major electrical appliances? (Big Speakers, Fridge, Washing Machine)...I know that sounds lame but you would be amazed at the places some people place their PC.


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## fadedmemories (Jun 11, 2009)

Western Digital is the best.


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## rasheed (Jun 11, 2009)

ZenZimZaliben said:


> You make it sound like you have gone through several drives? I would question why that happened before getting a new drive.
> 
> Is your PC in a safe place? Not getting kicked, bumped hard, or moved while powered up? Does it sit near any major electrical appliances? (Big Speakers, Fridge, Washing Machine)...I know that sounds lame but you would be amazed at the places some people place their PC.



Nah didnt mean it like that, looking at a couple of different review sites on about 10 different hard drives theres usually quite a few people whos hard drives come faulty or just stop working after a few months, and i dont want this to happen after filling the hard drive with 400GB of data. BTW, the hard drive i have now ive had it for almost 5 years.


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## ZenZimZaliben (Jun 11, 2009)

Ok, cool. Just wanted to be sure.

Any of those WD drives are a good choice. I can also recommend the Samsung F1's never had a problem with any of them and I have used several in RAID 0 arrays. The 32Mbs of Cache is a nice feature to have.


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## Geofrancis (Jun 11, 2009)

ususaly if a hard drive is going to fail it will fail early in its life or late in its life. if a hard drive has ran a month without problems then usualy it will be ok. 

i think some server drives are stress tested before they are sold to ensure they wont die early in there life .


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## rasheed (Jun 11, 2009)

ZenZimZaliben said:


> Ok, cool. Just wanted to be sure.
> 
> Any of those WD drives are a good choice. I can also recommend the Samsung F1's never had a problem with any of them and I have used several in RAID 0 arrays. The 32Mbs of Cache is a nice feature to have.



I dont know anything about hard drives but whats the speed difference between the WD and the F1? Or is it just a minor speed difference?

Just a quick question relating to RAM.
Will it be worth it to get 4GB of RAM @ 1066Mhz/800Mhz or should i just get an extra 2GB RAM @ 667


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## FordGT90Concept (Jun 11, 2009)

Seagate Barracuda ES.2 drives...

 250 GB: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/139225
 500 GB: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130828
1000 GB: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/141598

1.2 million hour MTBF and five year warranty.


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## ZenZimZaliben (Jun 11, 2009)

The F1's are one of the fastest 1Tb drives. The nice thing about it is that it only has 3 334Gb platters. This lowers power comsumption, noise levels and should improve reliability. The motor has less weight to spin and there fewer heads.

Moving to 4gbs of DDR2 1066 will be a nice performance gain over DDR2 667. You will have to adjust bios settings to get the ram to run at that speed. But the gains will be pretty significant from the 2Gb capacity increase and bandwidth increase. You 667 ram may have tighter timings, but the increase in bandwidth and capacity will more then make up for the looser timings of 1066.


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## rasheed (Jun 11, 2009)

ZenZimZaliben said:


> The F1's are one of the fastest 1Tb drives. The nice thing about it is that it only has 3 334Gb platters. This lowers power comsumption, noise levels and should improve reliability. The motor has less weight to spin and there fewer heads.
> 
> Moving to 4gbs of DDR2 1066 will be a nice performance gain over DDR2 667. You will have to adjust bios settings to get the ram to run at that speed. But the gains will be pretty significant from the 2Gb capacity increase and bandwidth increase. You 667 ram may have tighter timings, but the increase in bandwidth and capacity will more then make up for the looser timings of 1066.



k, ill just get the F1 once its in stock again.
The 1066 ram requires around 2.1v and im just wondering whether or not my motherboard will run stable when overclocked.


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## Deleted member 67555 (Jun 11, 2009)

Hate to say it but, I would go for a WD,I have never had a Seagate fail and i have never owned a Samsung,but every Seagate i've owned has gotten "loud" to loud. And of all the WD's i've owned have failed but not before they were completely out dated


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## ZenZimZaliben (Jun 11, 2009)

If this is your motherboard, it is actually spec'd to run RAM at 1066. You should have no problems at all.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130174


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## rasheed (Jun 11, 2009)

ZenZimZaliben said:


> If this is your motherboard, it is actually spec'd to run RAM at 1066. You should have no problems at all.
> 
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130174



Should i just create a new thread in the other section or would you be kind enough to help me pick out some RAM?

OCZ 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 Reaper Memory HPC Edition Dual - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/141930

OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 Gold Memory - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149202

OCZ 4GB (2X2gb) ddr2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 Platinum Memory CL5 - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148036


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## Geofrancis (Jun 11, 2009)

the ocz reaper kits have really good heatspreaders with heatpipes. i have 4x 1gb sticks of 1150mhz ram in my machine. they are very tall so just make sure they are not obstructed.


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## ZenZimZaliben (Jun 11, 2009)

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=K9A2VM-FD&class=mb

OCZ is on the list of accepted memory for your motherboard.

The Reapers would be my choice. The oversized heatsink/heatpipes combo will allow you to OC them even further. You may be able to get 1200Mhz out of them. If you have no desire to oc then i would go with the platinums.


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## Ramo1203 (Jun 11, 2009)

When you want a reliable HDD, you have to choose those "Entreprise" Editions like the RE3 from WD or the ES from Seagate.


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## rasheed (Jun 11, 2009)

Ramo1203 said:


> When you want a reliable HDD, you have to choose those "Entreprise" Editions like the RE3 from WD or the ES from Seagate.



I just want something that doesnt have a high failure count but its probably just a few bad hard drives out of the lot.


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## Geofrancis (Jun 12, 2009)

look for the raid edition drives they are one step down from the enterprise class but they are still rated to run 24/7 for 5 years or sumthing so they should be reliable.

something like this

http://www.overclock.co.uk/product/...7200RPM-SATA-3GB---16MB-Cache---OEM_8672.html

or this

http://www.saverstore.com/product/2...-RE2-1TB-SATA-II-7200RPM-16MB-RAID-EDITION-IN


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## _33 (Jun 12, 2009)

I'm a big fan of the Samsung Spinpoint F1 series.


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## 5ilvgearX (Jun 12, 2009)

i have the WD 640 SE16, and its quieter than the WD 1tb black and produce lesser heat


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