Hard drive experts..help

[KingTermite]

I'm about to get a new system. I want a 120 GB hard drive.

Which would you say is better IBM or Western Digital (and why) ?

I'll probably go to Win XP Pro, is there a partition limit?

I plan to get an ASUS P4S333 motherboard, how can I determine if there is a partition limit in the bios? Where can I get that information?

Thanks for any advice you can give.

Chris

--
If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking 'til you do suck seed.
--

 

[jlanka]

Go with the Western Digital with the 8MB cache. (if they make it in that size)

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[OldBear]

They do. 1200JB is 120gig with 8 meg buffer. I have two and recommend them also.


<font color=green><b>Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the hell happened!

 

[paulmartin]

are they speediest than IBM 120GXP?

 

[OldBear]

Good question. I don't know. I am pleased with the WD but haven't tested the IBM.


<font color=green><b>Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the hell happened!

 

[Arrow]

The recent reliability record of IBM drives tells me to advise you to go for a WD. I'm not sure how their 120GXPs are, but I'd avoid them for a little while.

Rob
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[btvillarin]

I've had my 40GB 120GXP running for about four months without problems. But, I'm always uneasy, especially with my past experience with the 75GXP that was replaced, plus the 11-hours-a-day talk. So, I'd go Maxtor, too.

Bryan

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[blue_heart]

<A HREF="http://www.storagereview.com" target="_new">here</A> you will find which drive is better performer, go to databse and sort the results

i wont go with ibm never becuase of their bad reputation in 75 60 series drives, i do have gxp60 60gb and this is the 5th time the drive crash and die, so i ran dft to fix it.

do not forget, when you WD but 1200JB not 1200BB (JB is 8mb cach while BB is 2mb)

i think all the new bioses work with 120gb, but i think fat32 system is limited to 32gb? so u need to use ntfs if you do not want to partition (i am not so sure about this info).
good luck

wish if there was UnDo in the life

 

[Toejam31]

You are limited to creating 32GB partitions with the FAT32 file system if you use the Win2K or WinXP installation CD's to make the partitions. This doesn't apply if you use FDISK on a DOS or Windows DOS boot disk for the partition creation.

<A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q184006" target="_new">Limitations of FAT32 File System (Q184006)</A>

Toejam31

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[Toejam31]

The BIOS doesn't control the size of the partition(s) on the hard drive.

This mainboard supports ATA/100, which means it is subject to the 28-bit addressing limitation, which doesn't recognize hard drives larger than 137GB. If you wish to purchase a hard drive larger than that, you'll need a PCI ATA/133 IDE controller, which has support for 48-bit addressing.

You should find this article informative:

<A HREF="http://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,s=1470&a=21195,00.asp" target="_new">Hard Drives Reach the Next Plateau</A>

I have not yet heard of a theoretical limit to the volume size of a partition that can be used with a combination of WinXP and NTFS. Microsoft doesn't list anything on this subject, except for "no limit".

Personally, I'd skip IBM and buy the Western Digital. My reasoning? A history of failures with the IBM drives with the higher density platters over 40GB, starting with the 75GXP series.

Toejam31


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