I have an older dell dimension 9100 with the 1.5 Gb/s SATA interface. I'm looking at getting a new HD for it somewhere in the 500 GB - 1 TB range. I know I'll have to set a jumper on the HD to downgrade the speed to 1.5. Anyone have any suggestions? I've read about the issues with the SG Barracuda 7200.11 HDs, what about the 7200.12 models?

Thanks!

7/15/2009 2:50:42 PM

Seagate is crap. Do not buy seagate. They haven't fixed anything yet. Furthermore, their RMA warranty department is completely overwhelmed, so when your drive dies in the first month(my last one died just a couple weeks ago even with the latest firmware updates) you could be waiting months for a replacement.

Again, do not buy Seagate right now. Their failure rates are reported to be 1 in 3. Hard drives are, of course, complicated delicate machines and a failure rate is to be expected, but the Barracuda line is just terrible at the moment. Spend $10 more for something else.

7/15/2009 3:28:49 PM

^ whats your source for 1 in 3 failures?

7/15/2009 4:28:31 PM

^^ dude shut the fuck up with that garbage
http://storagemojo.com/2007/02/20/everything-you-know-about-disks-is-wrong/
http://storagemojo.com/2007/02/19/googles-disk-failure-experience

7/15/2009 7:50:56 PM

That's fine, go out and buy some Seagate 7200.x drives. Remember, in my case and many others they didn't give any SMART errors before they failed.

7/15/2009 9:10:03 PM

you still completely shit out a 33% premature failure rate statistic. be gone troll

7/15/2009 9:54:11 PM

Get one of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815283005

Then look on newegg for the 1TB Caviar Black or Green Western Digital models. They run under $100 these days. This combination has kept an older Dell PowerEdge SC400 of mine going as a nice HPTC.

Curious though, does the drive have to be strictly internal and/or do you really need the 1.5Gb/s speed on it? If it's just storage, I'd consider an external drive. Make it portable if / when you decide to get a new box. Or, external casing with internal drive you can then pop into new machine once built.

And yes, link plz on the Seagate drive stuff. Would like to read comparison of it to other brands. Haven't read a good report / comparison in a little while.

7/15/2009 10:32:59 PM

Quote :

"Curious though, does the drive have to be strictly internal and/or do you really need the 1.5Gb/s speed on it? If it's just storage, I'd consider an external drive. Make it portable if / when you decide to get a new box. Or, external casing with internal drive you can then pop into new machine once built."

i concur...if you don't currently have an external drive and you are only using this new drive for storage, definitely consider something external...unless you simply don't have any space for an external drive, i think you'll find that having something you can unplug and take with you in rare cases (sharing media, for instance) is a great perk (also, the fact that you won't need to open the computer is nice, too)

the 1tb fantom USB/eSATA drives are constantly on sale for $80AR (you just missed one at buy.com) and they would allow you to hook it up via eSATA if you really want the speed (otherwise, USB will be enough for most of what you'll probably want to do with it)

also, if you're not planning on using this as an OS drive, i'd suggest going with a "green" drive...they're just as fast as your average hard drive once they've spun back up (they spin down after a period of no use and they take 3-5 seconds to get back up to speed when you go to access them), but they'll use less energy and generate less heat (the latter being more important to me)

1tb samsung 7200rpm 32mb ($76AR): http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10007194

1tb WD 7200rpm 32mb "green" ($75AR): http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10009901

7/16/2009 8:30:57 AM

Perlith,

Yeah, I am replacing the only internal drive in it. So I'm looking for something that has decent specs in terms of throughput and cache as my OS will be loaded on it. I'm limited at the 1.5 Gb/s speed and don't really want to buy a separate 3.0 Gb/s controller.

7/16/2009 10:10:31 AM

in that case, get a WD caviar black drive

7/16/2009 10:34:22 AM

I'm looking at the black. Will I need to set the speed negotiation jumper? If I buy the OEM drive, no jumpers come with it right?

7/16/2009 10:39:18 AM

The Hitachi Deskstar looks pretty good too.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/500gb-hdd-disk,2150-12.html

Tom's Hardware gave it decent ratings ^.

7/16/2009 10:41:42 AM

is this speed negotiation jumper bit a dell exclusive? i've never had to touch a jumper related to a SATA hard drive on either a mobo or the drive itself...what kind of mobo (or HDD board) doesn't negotiate the speed by itself?

7/16/2009 11:05:02 AM

you don't need a speed limiting jumper. if the board can't do 3gb/s it just won't.

7/17/2009 12:56:30 AM

Quote :

"I'm looking at the black. Will I need to set the speed negotiation jumper? If I buy the OEM drive, no jumpers come with it right?"

some drives have a jumper on the drive itself, but you only have to use it if there is a problem.

7/17/2009 6:10:21 PM

Quote :

"you still completely shit out a 33% premature failure rate statistic. be gone troll"

I bought two 640GB seagate drives that failed in a few weeks. I RMAed them and received two replacements (both were brand new) and those failed within the next 24 hours. I sent those back and seagate sent me two 750GB enterprise storage ("ES" labeled) drives. Those have been in there for a year so far.

I know someone else that had the same problem (failed drive and a failed replacement from seagate -- second replacement worked). Seagate drives have a 5 year warranty IIRC, which they are glad to honor. You have to pay the shipping to send it back though.

So in my small sample, 9 failures in 12 drives!

7/17/2009 8:54:44 PM

it's possible (and likely) 9 of those disks were all from the same defective batch

7/18/2009 11:02:35 AM

Regardless, it can't hurt to avoid seagate right now.

That being said, I'm running 2x 1.5TB 7200rpm Seagate Drives, and 1x 250 GB 7200 Seagate Drive. No problems, yet

7/18/2009 12:33:19 PM

^^ the first 2 i got were from the same batch, and the 2 replacements they sent were from another batch (according to the tech support guy at Seagate, who are quite knowledgeable and don't assume every user is an idiot). The problem is supposedly with the electronics, not the disks. I remember one of the firmware updates they put out bricked a lot of the drives. The problem affected drives of all capacities that used the same circuit board.

I don't know about my friend's drives because I never saw them myself. They were the same line but different capacity I think.

And it was 6 failures in 9 drives. I don't know why I said 9 in 12... I was drinking last night.

P.S. Search the seagate forums (forums.seagate.com) for 'drive not recognized'. They've purged some of the old threads on the topic including the one I started, but there are still a few on there. Their new drives might be better but I really don't know. I do know I still see the old problematic drives being sold on the shelves of retailers.

7/18/2009 1:49:28 PM

WD Green 1TB for $70... I've had two of these since early last year without a hitch.

7/19/2009 9:38:56 AM

I just bought a seagate. Fingers crossed.

[Edited on July 19, 2009 at 10:31 AM. Reason : Plus a deskstar.]

7/19/2009 10:31:38 AM