Got my new hard drive today

[Psychopete]

Yes, I have watched them all. I quit my job a few years back and drank, smoked pot, and watched Star Trek all day for three months. It was great.

LOL, **** that, I couldn't even do it.

Pete

 

[MAKG]

You guys are rookies. I remember working on 20mb hardrives. 10 was removeable and 10 was permanent. It was biggger than a 2 drawer file cabinet.

Rookies? The "disc pack" on a PDP-11 was about the size and shape of a washing machine.

If you wanna top that, you'll have to go to hand-wound magnetic core memory.

The Computer History Museum (Mt. View, CA; http://www.computerhistory.org ) has several examples.

 

[AllanD]

you must not have many cds then?

200-250 and growing.

I'm in full swing of replacing all the albums I have on Vinyl
while spending half my music budget on new stuff.

Remember that on a 250GB drive a Music CD is only 702mb
and most Albums run nowhere NEAR the full 80min
(For example the new Airbourne album runs less than 40min)
So on average there's only about 500mb on a complete album,
so a 250mg drive will hold nearly 500albums as uncompressed
.wav files.

Granted I COULD use lossless compression but with storage
volume so cheap why bother?

 

[naford]

If you wanna top that, you'll have to go to hand-wound magnetic core memory.

I've seen that. It was a little coil of wire. It was cool because you could peel it apart and see the bad spot.

 

[MAKG]

I've seen that. It was a little coil of wire. It was cool because you could peel it apart and see the bad spot.

That's one bit, along with the three wires (addressX, addressY, and read/write).

They came in whole arrays. The last ones with tens of thousands of bits.

Take a peek at www.computerhistory.org , and if you make it to Silicon Valley, visit the museum (it's in the old SGI main production building in Mountain View) -- the only one I've seen that's better is the National Cryptologic Museum adjacent to NSA HQ in Ft. Meade, MD. But THIS one has those 1960s ICBM consoles you saw in the movies....

You'll be amused at some of the early ideas for memory (my favorite is the acoustic delay circuit, though the not-very-surprising telephone relay was the first idea). Transistsors in the 50s were experimental, expensive, and very, very temperamental.

 

[Jspafford]

Well the drive went bad already!

I read some bad reviews, but thought I would try it.

Turned the PC on last Thursday and it sounded like a blender and windows would not load. I tapped the drive and it stopped making noise, I heard it speed up, and windows loaded.

I transferred my shit off of it and took it out.

Bought a 1TB locally, getting my money back for this seagate POS.

 

[almostclueless]

Thats surprising....I've always had good luck with seagate and would rather have that brand than anything else.


This very computer has one, and it's on for endless hours. Guess I should use my freaking head and make another backup LMAO.

 

[LearjetMinako]

Well the drive went bad already!

I read some bad reviews, but thought I would try it.

Turned the PC on last Thursday and it sounded like a blender and windows would not load. I tapped the drive and it stopped making noise, I heard it speed up, and windows loaded.

I transferred my shit off of it and took it out.

Bought a 1TB locally, getting my money back for this seagate POS.

Don't feel too bad. I'm in the same boat. I actually upgraded my whole system from the 1TB Raid 5 to 3x 1TB HDD (2x are in Raid 1, 1x is just by it self). And then I went on to upgrade to Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit. With in a month, both of the 1TB failed. Both of them were from Seagate. One arrived DOA from Newegg.com (replaced under 30day warranty), the second failed 34days later (Sent directly to Seagate for warranty). Luckily, because of the Raid 1 volume, I didn't lose any data. But now Vista is acting up and causing the blue screen to occur.

PS. The older Intel Mobo don't support Raid volumes above 1TB. Like the ICH7 southbridge equiped. Found this out when trying to get 2TB out of a Raid 5 volume and only got the 1TB.

 

[pocket-rocket]

Thats surprising....I've always had good luck with seagate and would rather have that brand than anything else.


This very computer has one, and it's on for endless hours.

x2

 

[fastpakr]

Agreed - on average, Seagate is on the upper end of the spectrum.

 

[Wicked_Sludge]

ive also heard nothing but good about seagate...though ive never had one.

western digital has been pretty good to me. ive even had OK luck with a few maxtors, which are supposed to be crap.

 

[Psychopete]

ive also heard nothing but good about seagate...though ive never had one.

western digital has been pretty good to me. ive even had OK luck with a few maxtors, which are supposed to be crap.

I've had a 4.0GB Western Digital RMAed so many times that the warantee just ran out and I was just screwed. This is just one of several WDs that I've had to RMA. Some are good, some aren't. From my experience, I'd never go and buy one ever again.

I've had a 120GB IDE Seagate in my machine for about 2 years and never had any problems. Actually, probably one of the best drives I've ever owned to date.

I also have a Maxtor that sounds like a pop-corn popper that won't die. It's origins are unknown. Not much experience with those drives though.

Pete

 

[Wicked_Sludge]

the 40 gig WD that came with my desktop has been in there since '03. it was the master for 4 years when i installed a 120 gig WD and moved the 40 gig to slave. ive heard that the older WD drivers are of a lot higher quality than the newer ones (i guess WD bought out maxtor and their quality fell). my 2 WD drives have 2 different countries of origin on them.

this laptop also has a WD drive...mary got it in '05 as a "referbished" computer...so who knows what its life has been like. this laptop runs HOT, so i give this drive serious props.

her old laptop had a maxtor drive that lasted about 4 years before it failed unexpectedly. i also had an old 8 gig maxtor (in my first desktop). i bought the computer from the high school (so it was already old and abused) and i ran that drive for 5 years in 2 different computers before it failed.

i think ive been lucky more than anything though. my next drive purchase will probably be seagate.

 

[pocket-rocket]

i think ive been lucky more than anything though. my next drive purchase will probably be seagate.

I buy a majority of my components from Newegg and I tend to read a lot of the good and bad comments on the stuff I buy. When I bought my 320gb over a year ago it had mostly nothing but good reviews. I have gone back considering buying another of the same drive a while ago but now found tons of bad reviews, so I would think it's safe to say it depends on which batch of drives you get yours from on any manufacturer. The best advice I can give for any drive though is read plenty of reviews on it before buying.

 

[LearjetMinako]

What 'pocket-rocket' just described is probably what happened to me. It was just a bad batch of HDD. I've ordered 1x 1TB HDD much early than the last 2x 1TB HDD, and it has worked flawless. But the last 2x 1TB HDD failed. And before all this, I was using 2x 500GB HDD Seagates that also work flawless.

Seagate and Western Digital are the only two HDD manufacters that I trust. Hitachi HDD I don't trust. Still have the 80GB that failed used as a paper weight.

FYI. Seagate bought out Maxtor.