I would seriously not recommend anyone to get a WD hard disk. I've had some WD hard disks that just get corrupted files with no reason at all, and some of my friends have experienced the same problem. After I sent them for RMA under warranty and got new units back, I sold them all off immediately. The same goes for WD hard disks used in notebooks. In my friend's Acer Gemstone, the WD hard disk has some crackling sound already now after a few months. Sigh. I don't know if we're all just really unlucky, but I've had enough.
Wow, I never had any real problems with WD. I had one drive missing an IDE pin, and it was swapped out quickly and that was my biggest problem that I can remember. Now Maxtor, that's a different story. Nasty drives with me... I had some fail after 4 months. Just stop working for no reason. I tried a Samsung, but the speeds were lower then indicated and they would NOT do anything about it. Drive worked for a long time, external influence damaged it, so I don't know how long it would have lasted. But I won't bother with them voluntarily.
Oh. I've had pretty good experiences with Maxtor and Seagate (both under the same company). I guess it all comes down to our luck. I was nearly tempted to get a Samsung because I think they were the only brand to give 5 years warranty, but thankfully I did not after hearing what you said. I don't think they even sell Samsung hard drives at my region anymore. No idea what happened to them.
So bad? How long ago was it? Then again, practically all HDD manufacturers have had their share of bad drives. Take a look at IBM. Some of their Deskstar models were so bad they were called Deathstars!! Now their drives are no longer facing the same problems. Still some of the stigma remains...
Well, Samsung drives are peaty much budget buys IMO no. I wouldn't have a problem using a Seagate drive personally. But I am sure you are right. It comes down to our luck. Heck, I don't know how long I have had the 360GB WD drive, but it's been in there a while. I will replace it only for capacity soon enough. Might get a 1TB drive. Very true. But the Maxtor was replaced with another bad drive. At that point, I told them if the next drive was bad as well, I just won't use the manufacture any more. They said they would verify the drive an so on. Sure enough, a week later, it failed. If I was a budget PC, and load times are not important, I will use Samsung. For the most part, after the OS loaded, it was just fine. So I would use Samsung for just storage also. But I have my limits, and I think I am reasonable in terms of my experiences with the companys.
You mean the WD drives? All throughout the recent years. I think from about year 2003. My friend's Acer notebook having the WD hard disk problem is just a few months old. I used to have a Quantum Bigfoot 2GB hard drive back in the days. It was so well-built I could move it around everywhere and it didn't have any problems, not even a single bad sector. I used it for about 8 years and now it's in one of the PCs which I think 'might' still be in use in my dad's office. It has got to be at least 10 years old now. If only they still built hard drives like that. Nowadays they are so fragile, it's quite sad. note: Quantum was the original brand name for Maxtor hard drives. And now Maxtor is owned by Seagate.
Yup, I have problems with 2 Seagate drives, before and after taking over Maxtor. I had a Maxtor which was OK, but the bearing noise was showing sign of wear and tear. I have 3 WD HDDs now, all are working fine. I love my WDs, Raptor and SE16s.
I have 3 maxtor drives, 1 died, 1 half faulty and 1 still alive and working All my 3 seagate drives are still running fine, one 7200.9 and two 7200.10. The other 2 is WD, one is the very old 30GB 300AA which still runs fine now, and the new WD5000AAKS. Only maxtor drives are dying on me so far... The rest all running fine.
Well I have had Maxtor and Seagate and never really had any HD problems to speak of. I have never owned a Western Digital drive but will in a few weeks a buddy of mine is sending me a WD SATA 320G at a really good price On drives heres a pic for ya I have no idea how many machines this has been in and forget exactly when I got it but it is running the Ubuntu Server 6.06 OS on my server machine as of this weekend (other drive just for data). Never had a bad sector (check the date sticker in the top left)
Over the last 15 years I have owned many WD drives when 3GB Caviar was the BOMB! NEVER a problem. (luck? ) At work our PC builder used Maxtor (when 40 GB was mainstream) and they dropped like flies. As of recent (last year or so) at work we have had 2 drives bomb... both Maxtor. Another note, Toshiba drives I have never had a problem with but there is no software suppot (i.e. no low level format, etc..)
guys, i have a problem with attaching a second PATA HDD (data only, no OS) to my system. My OS (winxp) is installed on the SATA HDD, but when i tried to attach the PATA HDD to the IDE, my system will give the below error message during bootup, "NTLDR is missing..." "Please pres ctrl-atl-del to restart" I tried changing the pin at the PATA hdd to master, slave, select, all to no effect. I went into bios as well and change all the setting that i think need changing, and to no avail as well. I was able to set up the SATA and PATA drive to work togather a few years back, but now i cant, what did i do wrong? did i miss out on something?
Sounds like the PATA has an active partition. That would make it look for the NT Loader there first. You just have to mark is as inactive. Using something like Partition Magic would take care of it quickly.
Yeah, alternatively, go into the BIOS and select to boot up using your first hard drive. Then make the second drive inactive in Windows.
Just another question, how much would i need to partiton for windows XP? I have 2 drives, one 250GB and 500GB. 250GB will be the OS drive. I'll install a copy of Windows in 500GB just in case if the 250 doesn't work (so that at least i could save my files). What would be more recommendable? will 10GB be enough?
If you want all your programs on the XP partition as well, then I would think about 150 to 200GB would work just fine. I have a 74GB Raptor I use for Windows, and I don't have an issue with it's space.
Yeah, 150GB or so will do just fine but it really depends on what you want to install. My Windows Vista installation alone takes up 6GB.
erm... that partition for 500GB is just installing windows only lah... neccesary to put till 150GB meh? I still have the default XP that i'll be using in the 250GB oh...
That's the thing.. It depends on what you intend to install. The best person to decide how much space you want to allocate is you.
And that's why when making a suggestion I prefer to know what they are going to do with the HDD. If I don't know, I take the better safe then sorry approach. For me, I could work with a Windows partition of about 50GB total and be good for a LONG time. I have a data drive for non programs. Documents, music, ect all go there. If someone said they wanted to play a lot of new games, I would say give Windows about 150-200GB. It will give enough space for “full” installs of games and do some DTP or video editing, have all the applications needed for other stuff, and you don't have to worry about running out of space for a while. Just games, about 100-150. Just video editing, I would say about 150 flat. Just basic usage (Office suite, Internet, and some picture stuff) I would say about 75GB with another drive for storage if needed. Each time it changed, because the needs are different. These are rough estimates to. Overall, if I can I take the time to learn about the persons usual habits. Some people just remove a game after playing it, so I would suggest a smaller drive probably. Very dependent on usage.
