Hey guys I am trying to help my brother decide on a hard drive for his computer and I honestly dont know what brand to recommend because I have only had a IBM 80gig in my life (heh I'm a youngin). I am guessign he should go with Maxtor, Western Digital, or IBM. Am I correct? and if so which is the best bang for the buck. He wants a 120gig drive. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanx again,

TyP3-R

i would go with a Maxtor, my favorite of the ones i have used.

Thats really a tough call- members here on the forums have had strokes of bad luck one after the other with different brands. For years I have used WD and never had any problems, but ohters have. When I built this I purchased a IBM and have had no problems with that..So first choice is WD, second is IBM.

Not the DeathStar (IBM) but then again i have a 80 gig maxtor that died from 12000POH in 18months... good thing it's from the good old 3 year warranty days.

I agree with the Honorable Buzz on IBM hard drives suck. I'd go Maxtor or Seagate. Seagate is on average VERY reliable (well other than their first offering of SATA drives which isn't applicable), just isn't known for performance or cheapest price tag. But since you didn't mention them as an option: I'd go Maxtor, they're cheap, they're good.

personally seagate but since im usually not the one who gets to pick the drives western digital and maxtor are good too.

WD's are renowned for WDDS(Western Digital Death Syndrome), but I've never had a problem with any of my four 120GB WD's. I also have 2 120GB Maxtors and they are okay, but are rather slow compared to my WD's, although the Maxtors I have only have 2mb cache instead of 8mb cache of my WD's. I recommend Maxtor though, I have only had 2 die on me (1 out of the box started smoking, the other was 5 years old and was on 24/7 (12gb)) WD I'm rather new to, only been using them for about a year, but so far I'm happy. KEEP THOSE SUCKERS COOLED WITH FANS OR THEY'LE OVERHEAT! 20watts through those suckers. It really adds up.

If you are just going for a normal IDE drive, no serial ATA or SCSI, I would go with a WD ATA100 w/ 8MB cache Caviar Special Edition. Maxtor owns the rights to the ATA 133 interface so WD drives only go up to ATA100. There isn't much of a speed improvement when comparing ATA100 + 8MB cache and ATA133's. The 3 year warranty you get with WD as opposed to the 1 year with Maxtor and the fact that Maxtors generally run hotter than WD's does, however. As for comparing their reliability....it is a fruitless endeavor. Everyone has their own opinions and horror stories. The best bang for the buck, however, would be whicheverr is on sale at Best Buy, Circuit City, OfficeMax, etc... on Sunday.

I wouldn't go with either Seagate or IBM for IDE drives.

I'd recommend the Western Digital "Special Edition" 8MB cache 120GB drives. They retail for about $106 on Newegg.com I believe...

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...roperty&DEPA=1

Thx guys, G Money ur link is broke

Just go to Newegg.com, and shop by product search for hard drives based off of Western Digital, 120GB, and 8MB cache and a couple of versions will come up.

All I find are OEM's

What's wrong with OEM HD's? I'veonly bought was white label. Not exactly like you need an instruction manual to install one.

All OEM means is you don't get the fancy retail box and cables. They save money that way. It is kind of like how software games don't come in huge boxes like they used to, and now come in small ones with the user manual in PDF format.

Next hard drive I get will be that badass new WD Raptor.

here here, I'll take a pair of the RAPTORs please,so I can raid 0 them

Zenn - why not get 3 and run RAID5?

What's so "special" about the Western Digital "Special Edition" 8MB cache 120GB drives?

Anything that's Special Edition ..I must have.

just got my raptor today from newegg 115 bucks!! going to use it as a boot drive since i have 2 times more MP3's (come on RIAA come and get me!!) then that HD can handle....so the segate 120 is going to serve storage dutys. the best drives on the market right now, from my experence haveing replaced 1 to every 8-10 others in the last few weeks, is western digital. good name brand, but the quality is there, i would shy away from the 120's, had three bad one's in a row, the 100's are a good one and the SATA drives all kick a$$, did you hear that there is going to be a 72 gig raptor??????