Maxtor, WD or Seagate?

Videocanuck wrote on 11/29/2003, 3:50 PM
I have all Maxtor hard drives in my video editing computer and am looking at buying another hard drive for media (not my OS). I saw a good deal on a WD 160gb 7200 8mb cache hard drive; however, I've read that WD hard drives can be noisier and less reliable than other drives. I've been very happy with my Maxtor drives, so I am wondering whether or not I'll find WD drives to be noisier. I've also read that Seagate drives are very quiet but do not perform as well as Maxtor or WD. Any comments, recommendations on large hard drives that are quiet and reliable for video editing.

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 11/29/2003, 3:55 PM
Depends on which series, which month, and who you ask. Seagate ruled the professional world at one time. Now it's IBM and Western Dig. it varies from series to series. We use pretty well only IBM, but they had a bad run of Deskstars a while back (about 18 mos) and so many folks hate them. I no longer recommend Maxtor, simply because they are the same company now as Quantum, and we've had LOTS of problems with Quantum drives whether they are SCSI or IDE. But, you'll probably find lots of people who like Quantums, too.
riredale wrote on 11/29/2003, 4:37 PM
On my system I have six drives, an 80 Seagate, a 40 Maxtor, two WD 120's, a 200 WD, and a 200 Maxtor. All except the 200 Maxtor are at least a year old, and all are running 24/7. Never a problem with any of them.

The only difference I can tell is that the 80 Seagate runs as hot as a frying pan, while the others are just warm to the touch. Nonetheless, absolutely no problems.
Videocanuck wrote on 11/29/2003, 4:42 PM
How do the noise levels of the drives compare?
riredale wrote on 11/29/2003, 8:26 PM
I've never tried to listen to each one individually, and of course they are all running alongside each other right now. I frankly can't hear much of any noise coming from my case except for a very small amount of "whine" and also the power supply fan.
busterkeaton wrote on 11/29/2003, 8:30 PM
Videocanuck,

You may want to check a site called storagereview.com. They have tons of info on hard drives. The have a storage review database that is filled in with user data. You can go here and check out all sounds of benchmarks including noise.

http://www.storagereview.com/php/benchmark/bench_sort.php

They also have forums you can check out.

Western Digital Drives have been well regarded there for over 3 years. Some find WD a bit loud. Maxtor's DiamondPlus 9 series have "fluid dynamic bearing motors" which are suppossed to make it run quieter. I have had no problems with Western Digital or Maxtor, but it's not really a large sample size. Two new names people have been liking are Samsung and Hitachi. Hitachi bought most of IBM's hard drive business and now seem to be back to doing well. The Hitachi Deskstar is on top of Storage Review's leaderboard as best 7200 rpm drive. I believe Samsung still has a three year warranty. Most drives now come with a one year warranty.

I just picked up a 120 gig 8 meg buffer Maxtor DiamondPlus 9 drive for $49 after rebates at Best Buy during a six hour sale on "Black Friday."
Office Max has a Western Digital 120 gig drive on sale of $60 after rebates. (I think that sale is on for the whole week in stores, but it may have only been Friday/Saturday.)

One thing you should do is plan for your drive to fail. Have a good backup system and know that one day you will probably need to use it.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 11/30/2003, 7:07 AM
I've had many different types of drives: WD, Seagate, Maxtor, etc. I've never found sound to be an issue (in the past few years). I have 2 WD 80gb drives and i don't hear them at all (the cooling fan's are louder). They run pretty cool too. I also have the same model drive at work, and it's loud. The computer there has bad air circulation.

Personaly, i'd go with one with a warenty, or get an extended warenty if possible. If you're like me, and can't afford to replace things like monitors or HD's after their 1 yr warenty, the extra $10-$50 could be VERY useful.

craftech wrote on 11/30/2003, 10:20 AM
I have used only Western Digital drives on computers which I have built (around 30 or so). So far I can remember only one failing and it was promptly replaced.

John
jboy wrote on 11/30/2003, 12:54 PM
Isn't WD the only manufacturer around who still offers a 3yr. warranty, at least on their drives w/8mb. caches ? Or has this changed ? For the record, I've used WD's and Maxtors only, had one WD fail, but it was in a tightly stacked array and just overheated. It was promptly replaced. Haven't noticed any big noise diff between Maxtors and WD's..
zemote wrote on 11/30/2003, 3:04 PM
I work in IT and have found HD's to be a crapshoot. I've seen all of them die. I have had very good luck with my personal drives over the years, knock on wood. I've used maxtor, WD, hitachi, ibm, seagate, quantum. To me a drives a drives a drive and since it has moving parts will most likely fail eventually. One should not feel safe with their data without backups. If the data is that important to you and backup solutions are an expensive option, go with 3 drives in a hardware raid setup using a 3ware ATA raid card. http://www.3ware.com

backup, backup, backup!!!!

zemote
Chanimal wrote on 11/30/2003, 4:46 PM
I have had seagate, maxtor, IBM deskstar and WD. My two IBM deskstars both cut out--no real problems, just wouldn't boot (both). Still in warranty but not worth the hassle of sending it back (via Hitachi's wacky RMA process).

I now have six simultaneous WD ranging from 120 to 200 GB. All are quiet (no grinding, no real sound except for a mild spin sound). All are stable as a rock (although they are mechnanical, so I can't expect them to last forever).

I've had one go out a few years ago. Promptly replaced without question.

I still won't touch a Deskstar. I would go with the WD anyday.

***************
Ted Finch
Chanimal.com

Windows 11 Pro, i9 (10850k - 20 logical cores), Corsair water-cooled, MSI Gaming Plus motherboard, 64 GB Corsair RAM, 4 Samsung Pro SSD drives (1 GB, 2 GB, 2 GB and 4 GB), AMD video Radeo RX 580, 4 Dell HD monitors.Canon 80d DSL camera with Rhode mic, Zoom H4 mic. Vegas Pro 21 Edit (user since Vegas 2.0), Camtasia (latest), JumpBacks, etc.

miranda wrote on 11/30/2003, 5:11 PM
Interesting and timely topic considering I just had a WD120 8 meg buffer project drive smoke on me last night with about 80gig of project media on it and no I hadn't backit up recently !!!
Last year I decided to switch over from SCSI drives to EIDE's so I purchased six of these guys and for the last year or so they have been rock solid so I guess I can still recommend these. They are definately more quiete compared to my SCSI drives.
Funny thing though, someone mentioned that these drives have a 3 year warranty however I think this may only apply to retail drives and not OEM purchased drives.
If you are considering SCSI the Seagate barracudas and Cheetahs are absolutely amazing, I have had some running 24/7 on my servers for literally years without a failure.
busterkeaton wrote on 11/30/2003, 6:15 PM
I believe Samsung has a three year warranty. But don't quote me on it.
Softcorps wrote on 11/30/2003, 7:02 PM
It looks like WD JB series drives no longer come with a three year warranty. I bought another WD 200 gig "JB" brive the other day at Circuit City ($249 with $150 mail-in rebate.) All the JB drives I have bought before came with a three year warranty. The retail packaged WD200JB I bought at Circuit City the other day came with a one year warranty, but Western Digital had included a piece of paper inside the package that said I could extend the warranty to three years if I went to their web site and gave them $14.95.

James
Express wrote on 12/1/2003, 8:08 AM
I run Maxtor, WD, and Seagate in my editing machine.

Two of the drives are maxtor's.
The 160GB Maxtor is the ONLY drive I can hear at all - it reminds me of drives from 5 years ago.

The 120GB WD is the quietest, smoothest drive I have ever owned.
Videocanuck wrote on 12/1/2003, 9:47 AM
Thanks to everyone for taking the time to respond. I think I'll give the WD Caviar drive a try, realizing of course that any drive can break down prematurely.

bowman01 wrote on 12/4/2003, 10:43 PM
The seagates run slightly hotter because of its "silencer" mechanism. The WD JB drives have a 3 year warranty- its worth it for the warranty.
kentwolf wrote on 12/5/2003, 12:23 AM
I am running 8, 120 GB Maxtor drives in my tower and all run whisper-quiet 24/7 for almost a year. I also have 3-200 GB removeable drives, which don't run much, but have also been trouble-free.

It really is a gamble.

The only drive(s) to ever fail on me was/were Western Digital (2 drives), but it was about 7 years ago.

As per a previous note, I believe by Spot, yes, Quantum drives were absolutely horrible. Noisy, slow, and failure-prone. Besides that, they were just fine... :)

Thank you.