HDD CHOICES

[yogi7272]

HI PEOPLE , I WANT TO GET A 250 GB HDD NOW I HAVE GOT TWO CHOICES

1. SEAGATE 250 GB SATA NCQ WITH 8 MB BUFFER
2. MAXTOR 250 GB SATA NCQ WITH 16 MB BUFFER

NOW FROM THE INFO I HAVE GOT FROM NET IS THAT MAXTOR IS THE BETTER PERFORMER . BOTH HAVE 5 YRS WARRANTY .

PLS HELP ME CHOOSE BETWEEN THESE TWO .

[Charley]

Originally Posted by yogi7272

1. SEAGATE 250 GB SATA NCQ WITH 8 MB BUFFER
2. MAXTOR 250 GB SATA NCQ WITH 16 MB BUFFER

Firstly lower ur CAPS, then r u sure that there is a 250GB drive from Seagate? I got an update that thers only 160 GB now.

I wud recommed to go for the Maxtor drive as it is better....

[yogi7272]

hey achacko@dataone.in , in which world r u living?

EVEN THE 400 GB IS AVAILABLE .

anyways since i am opting for ncq hdd ... will the feature work on my mobo?
i have asus p4p800 e deluxe - intel 865pe chipset board .

pls advice

[magnet]

intel 865 looks old to me....its better u go for 9XX ones.....but also i cant guarantee that it will work on lower 9 versions..its better u go 4 945

[ASH18MARCH]

can any one tell me why maxtrome is better i thoyght segate is the best

[yogi7272]

hey magnet , thanks for ur advice . see i have changed the mobo some 15 days ago . so no question of changs of mobo .

now since the ncq feature of these hdds work only when the hdd hardware as well as the sata controller supports this feature . now as i said i have a mobo with 865 pe chipset with ich5r which has two sata ports and a promise sata 378 tx 2 plus raid controller which gives 2 additional sata ports . now the question is whether any of these two support the ncq feature .

or otherwise i will have to get a non ncq sata drive .

so pls help me in this regard

[pradeep_chauhan]

The 865 / 875 mobo do not support NCQ. I would recommend the maxtor drive because of the larger buffer it has.

[sba]

pradeep_chauhan is right. you would benefit from the larger buffer that Maxtor has and it WILL show the difference in performance. Make no mistake about that. Also if you will have a look at various benchmarks (on storagereview and anandtech) then you will know that the newer Seagate 7200.8 with NCQ enabled are actually slower then their 7200.7 counter parts so you are better off with Maxtor.

If you mother board doesn't support NCQ still you can use the drive even though that specific feature will be disabled. The feature will be enabled when ever you upgrade your mobo. If you have the greens then no use buying older technology when you can afford the newer stuff. So imo go for the Maxtor drive with NCQ.

[QwertyManiac]

gofor a seagate 10k speed HDD as they r known for reliablity...
BRCUDA is another good option...

[yogi7272]

hey sba , r u sure that 7200.8 family drives are slower than 7200.7 series hdds . then i am better of with 7200.7 series 200 gb sata hdd

one more thing, there is one pci card which adds support for sata II 3 gbps connection .

actually its is pci card named promise technology sata 300 tx 2 plus which adds two sata 3gbps port with ncq support and one pata port . will this do the trick for me .

pls advice

[sba]

Originally Posted by yogi7272

hey sba , r u sure that 7200.8 family drives are slower than 7200.7 series hdds

Yup I am sure. I am just not able to remeber the place I read about it. It was either on Anandtech or on StorageReview

[Charley]

Originally Posted by yogi7272

hey achacko@dataone.in , in which world r u living?

EVEN THE 400 GB IS AVAILABLE .

You dont have to yell that out. I was just confirming whether its available.

[AlienTech]

Originally Posted by sba

pradeep_chauhan is right. you would benefit from the larger buffer that Maxtor has and it WILL show the difference in performance. Make no mistake about that. Also if you will have a look at various benchmarks (on storagereview and anandtech) then you will know that the newer Seagate 7200.8 with NCQ enabled are actually slower then their 7200.7 counter parts so you are better off with Maxtor.

This depends. IE for a single user use it will usually be faster to use the version without NCQ. But for a multi user use the speed increases will be astronomical. An example would be you start to load a program while editing a document. Without NCQ your editing will have to wait to be written out to disk while the other program finishes loading. While with NCQ the drive will alternate between the two. It is the same as SCSI. Now imagine if you have a web server running on the machine where 100 people would make requests. For normal users the computer would run more smoothly. You wont notice the sudden jerks when the disk cache driver starts writing out data to the disk. Another NCQ advantage would be when you are loading 2 programs at the same time which are scattered over the hard disk. The drive itself will send over data the fastest way it is possible for it to get. IE it can start reading data for the 1st program and if it notices that data for 2nd program is closer it will read that data and send it over. All this intelligent checking takes a little time and if you calculate just how much data is moving and how fast, even a little over head comes across as a slowdown. But only in benchmarks, not in real world.

[asdf1223]

if u have the cash a western digital caviar is recommended.otherwise go for maxtor.