Maxtor vs. WD?, partition setup

[Guest]

I'm about to put together a PC and I am going to buy a 40 GB HDD to put in it. The system will run Windows 2000 (and may multi-boot with Linux and/or BeOS - not sure yet).

Questions:
1 - The top choices I am considering for this HDD are the 7200 rpm Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40.9 GB HDD and the WD Caviar 40 GB 7200 rpm drive. Their specs seem to be similar; which drive would you folks recommend, and why?

2 - Setting aside the possibility of booting multiple OSs for the moment (and removing from consideration the partitioning I would have to do to accomodate them), I have seen recommendations that the drive should be set up with 3 partitions: C for the OS and pagefile, D for apps, and E for data. Is this a Good Idea, and if it is, how large should each partiton be? If not, why not?

Remember, I'm running Win2k with ATA 100 drives - although the mobo may only support ATA 66, I don't know yet. (I'm getting it from a friend.)

Thanks for any advice you might be able to provide.

Dave Knapp,

Stealth Geek

 

[Guest]

In my opinion, maxtor seems a beter choice over WD. I have seen more WD drive fail then Maxtor. The Maxtor drive that you are talking about have acoutic management, so you can select whether you want the drive to opp for sound or speed.
(u have to dl a utility from the maxtor website for this)
As for your partitioning question, i think it is better to put the OS and the apps on 1 partition, data on the second.
My reason for this is that if u put a additional HD later on, the drive letter will move, so the partition of the new drive might be D, then the old D(the apps drive) will be then pushed to E. WThen when u run a apps, it will keep trying to look for the files in the D, but all the apps have been renamed to E. So all your shortcuts will be useless.

 

[Guest]

Would you use something like Partition Magic to partition with?

I have heard both good and bad things about it.

 

[Guest]

I expect I will probably partition during OS installation using Win2k's built-in version of fdisk. I'd rather not use third-party tools for this if I don't have to.

--Dave Knapp

Stealth Geek