Best Hard Drive ?

[clarkey01]

My Old hard drive is making ( I think, well It's that or one of the fans inside) is making a wisshhhh sound and crahes 9/10 on start up. When I do make it to my desktop top, I find MP3's, mpegs, Norton all run slow. I think this is due to hard drive performance. I defrag, clean up files and still it runs slow.


My specs are

2000 xp
512 DDR 2700
5600 FX 256 MB
80 Gig hard drive

I want a fast hard drive that will make my system seem like new, I take it the bigger the cache size on the buffer means greater performnace aswell as the RPM?

 

[amol]

seagate 7200.7 barracuda

they have a wide range of capacities

warranties are good too

 

[Terumo]

Standard config: Raptors for SATA.

Faster: SCSI 10k drives.

Even faster: SCSI 15k drives (but put them in a room far-far-far away!). Those are what they're using on quality game servers now -- no lag.

Unique: http://www.bizrate.com/marketp...,prod_id--7392980.html

 

[clarkey01]

Cheers, any idea whats up with my current hard drive ?


I took the tower into a shop, and god knows why it made no noise at all and they guys at the shop said " Um, we cant find anything wrong with it". I take it home and " Shshshshsh scratch...ummmm" shuts down. Plug the wire out of the PSU, then plug it in 2 minutes later and it starts up.

Well im building a new Rig come july so I'll need a super fast hard drive for then anyhow.

 

[Deckham]

A hunch -

The noise you're hearing is the outlet fan on your PSU (power supply unit).
If it's not -
Get a piece of tubing (garden hose will do) and open up the side of your case.
Put one end at your ear, and with the other pan around the inside of your case (don't get it caught in any fans...)
You'll find where the noisse is coming from pretty quickly.

 

[Terumo]

Originally posted by: clarkey01
Cheers, any idea whats up with my current hard drive ?


I took the tower into a shop, and god knows why it made no noise at all and they guys at the shop said " Um, we cant find anything wrong with it". I take it home and " Shshshshsh scratch...ummmm" shuts down. Plug the wire out of the PSU, then plug it in 2 minutes later and it starts up.

Well im building a new Rig come july so I'll need a super fast hard drive for then anyhow.

Could be an issue with the socket you plug your computer in. Do you use a power strip? Or have a APC with a line conditioner? Brown outs and unstable power in can cause flakey behavior too. Have another computer to test if it's not a problem with the home wiring?

Also it could be the drive isn't seated tightly in it's bay -- it'll vibrate loudly when it starts up too. Take Deckham's advice and trace down the source and see exactly where the noise is coming from too. It might not be the drive itself.

But backup for insurance, as it could very well be dying.

 

[SunSamurai]

Originally posted by: Terumo
Standard config: Raptors for SATA.

Faster: SCSI 10k drives.

Even faster: SCSI 15k drives (but put them in a room far-far-far away!). Those are what they're using on quality game servers now -- no lag.

Unique: http://www.bizrate.com/marketp...,prod_id--7392980.html

Most 15000 RPM drives are not as fast as some 10000 RPM drives.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: aeternitas
Most 15000 RPM drives are not as fast as some 10000 RPM drives.

Which 15K drives?
Which 10K drives?

 

[Terumo]

Originally posted by: aeternitas
Most 15000 RPM drives are not as fast as some 10000 RPM drives.

All Seagate Cheetahs are....

http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/guide

Fujitsus are...

http://www.fcpa.com/products/h...pm/specifications.html
http://www.fcpa.com/products/h...pm/specifications.html

Those are the 2 drives I'm familiar in server ops (which would use such a l-o-u-d beasts!).

 

[clarkey01]

Starting up now, took me 19 trys. I opend up the case and still, it seems the noise is coming from the PSU, or the CPU itself !

Iv tried start up with the side pannel off yet it still sometimes crashes


If it is the outlet fan, how does this cause it to crash ?

Thanks up to now, you'v been great help !

 

[Terumo]

Overheating, if it's an outlet fan -- no way to get the heat out of the PSU. And heat degrades available wattage, making it impossible to boot until it's cooled off (which could take a while 30+ minutes).

 

[clarkey01]

ah, but I took the pannel off and its quite cold here (uk) and it still crashes, looks Like im going to have to spend £70 to get my manchine in and fast tracked and looked at. I thought it was the hard drive hence why I srated this post.

I live on my pc !

 

[clarkey01]

bump

 

[CraigRT]

It still sounds like a hard drive to me... slow performance is the key... if it was a heat problem, it would be locking completely, or rebooting, or shutting down even.
but bad performance sounds like a dying HD.

 

[clarkey01]

well, my system isnt as snappy as it used. But I asked the first time it went in for this problem and I said straight away hard drive and they said it was fine.

 

[dbailey]

Try and download the utility for your hard disk from the manufacturers web site and run the tests that they provide you. This way you can determine if the hard disk is actually at fault or not. Then you can usually use their website to punch in the codes it gives you along with the serial number on the drive itself to see if they will cover it under warranty.

DB

 

[clarkey01]

dbailey, any idea how I find the make of my hard drive and get these "codes"?

 

[blackinches]

the easiest way to do that would be to take your hard drive and look at the label on top.

if you do need to get a new drive check out the maxtor diamondmax 10 series, it has 16mb of cache, or the seagate 7200.8 drives.

 

[dbailey]

Yeah, pull the drive out of the computer to find the make and model number and serial number. Once you have the make, go to the manufacturers website and download the hard disk utilities. These will help u create a bootable floppy, which you pop in and it will run tests to analyse the hard disk and report a code back to you if it is indeed defective. Then you can rma that drive on their website or call them for replacement.