Expert hard drive help..

[Jimbo]

Well after sorting my hard drive upgrade out , my friend now has a similar issue, which i need backing up on.
He currently has a very loud Maxtor drive
Found here:

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products ... _uid=40968

He wishes for an upgrade, maybe a seagate, just as i have got one aswell.
He likes this one, but im not sure wheather is faster or slower than the one he's already got.
Here it is:

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products ... _uid=52159

Now this also appeared to me that this is a ATA/100, the maxtor he has now is a ATA/133. Any difference?
IF you click on the product specs it tells you all about it all.
Also if the product has a seek time of 9.5 and another at 8.5, which is the fastest? i know it sounds stupid!
Anyone help? I told him to go with the seagate, but until he found that it had a ATA/100 he wasn't sure. So been my self i thought i might just be able to get some advice off the simv community.

ME and my pal thank you in advance, and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Thanks.

Jimbo

[Dan]

ATA 133 is faster than 100. And the samller the seek time is the better.
My choices of drive would be between a Raptor (Which Im going to get) becasue of its sheer speed, or a Western Digital Caviar 7200rpm drive - I have the 160Gb version.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/ ... _sata.html

I just love all the WD hardrives as they seem to be fairly quiet (Unlike the Raptor) and nice and fast at 50.2Mb/sec.

Maxtor's and seagates are both supposed to be good, so thats me

[Jimbo]

Thanks Dan, will take a gander

[Jared]

I also happen to have a number of the Seagate Barracuda drives at 7200rpm and ATA133 as well..

They work wonderful for me..

[Delta_]

I also recommend the WD Caviar range, very reliable.  I used a WD hdd in my first built system and it still works just as good now, i built it 7 years ago.  It is currently being heavily used by my sister. I use 2 WD caviar drives in my current system.

Seek time: is the time it takes to find data on your drive, lower is better.

I would not worry too much about the difference between ATA100 and ATA133, it is not noticeable at all, because programs really don't push HDDs enough to use 133MB/s data rate.

I found this WD drive, it is ATA100, 8MB buffer and 7200rpm.
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products ... _uid=32012

[Jimbo]

Well the WD has a seek time of 8.9 ms and the seagate has a time of 8.5, but the WD is

[Delta_]

[quote]Well the WD has a seek time of 8.9 ms and the seagate has a time of 8.5, but the WD is