PC advice - What's the best 160gb SATA hard drive?

[phillai]

Hi everyone.

I'm doing some minor upgrades to my PC at the moment and one of the main things I'm doing is changing my two 80gb IDE hard drives to two 160gb SATA hard drives?

Which 160gb SATA offers the best value and performance?

Thanks to all replies in advance!

[Fragmaster]

I think, is this the one you got already?

"Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 160GB SATA"

I have heard good things about this, not tried myself though!

[demon9k]

I have got two 120Gb Maxtor SATA hard discs. I have not used them yet but I will post my thoughts once I do later this week. I think they will be pretty similar in performance to the 160Gb hard discs, although mine will be in RAID 0.

[phillai]

I am thinking of this one http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/product.p...0ea243eb3752ee or the one you mentioned, the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 160GB SATA...

Which is better?

[Fragmaster]

Hmm never really heard much about that one, I think Seagate make a few very quiet SATA drives, so you can have

Quiet (Seagate), Performance (Maxtor)

edit: also if you are thinking about setting them up on a raid array then get the maxtor, 2 of the same is better than a mix by far

[phillai]

Nah not gonna set a raid as I don't feel that comfortable doing it!

And yeah I'll be getting two of the same drives.

[Kirby]

The Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 is pretty much the fastest and quietest 7200RPM HD out now. You'd have to get a 10,000RPM Raptor to outrun it..

[Ciaran]

From what I heard its

Segate - Quiet
Western Digital - Performance

I advise you to go to http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/ and look through all the past threads about HDD.

[phillai]

I have got two 120Gb Maxtor SATA hard discs. I have not used them yet but I will post my thoughts once I do later this week. I think they will be pretty similar in performance to the 160Gb hard discs, although mine will be in RAID 0.

Just wanted to ask you how do you partition and format the Maxtor SATA hard drives?

I'm having a nightmare trying to sort it out at the moment and yet I got two 160gb ones to do...

[demon9k]

When I installed them it was with a clean install of Windows, I had to install drivers for SATA RAID disk drives while installing windows. By pressing F6, or one of the F keys. Then the windows set up did it all for me.

I think there is a topic lying around with the answer you need in Windows though. I think Marcus posted it. You might need SATA drives though, not sure.

[phillai]

When I installed them it was with a clean install of Windows, I had to install drivers for SATA RAID disk drives while installing windows. By pressing F6, or one of the F keys. Then the windows set up did it all for me.

I think there is a topic lying around with the answer you need in Windows though. I think Marcus posted it. You might need SATA drives though, not sure.

Yeah I did that but afterwards it says it can't install cause it can't format the drives to install windows...

[Freddo]

samsung spinpoints are meant to be awesome, quieter than the seagate drives and better performing

[Ciaran]

Can you plug it into anothor PC and format it from there?

[phillai]

I could do but it would mean that I have to wait until I get back to work tomorrow...
This SATA thing is really doing my head in!

[DjSatansfury]

Supposedly, from what i've read, SATA doesnt offer much of a peformance increase, therefore, there isnt much point in transfering over

Up to you tho