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I have a purchase problem:

Should I stick to the IBM Deskstar 75GXP 30/20GB,
or the Seagate Barracuda ATA III 30/20GB, for the best performance? (I think the newer Seagate drive's selling at a higher price, but price doesn't matter)

Specs are here, look at the differences between media transfer rates and NO of discs:
(Note: The newer 20GB seagate drives seem to have a 20GB per platter density, over IBM's current 15GB per platter)

Seagate:
<A HREF="http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/personal/family/0,1128,271,00.html" target="_new">http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/personal/family/0,1128,271,00.html</A>

IBM:
<A HREF="http://www.storage.ibm.com/hardsoft/diskdrdl/desk/ds75gxp.htm" target="_new">http://www.storage.ibm.com/hardsoft/diskdrdl/desk/ds75gxp.htm</A>

Help appreciated.

<font color=purple>* * * * * * * * * * *
4110 3DMarks w. Cel 562
GA-6OXM7E i815E M/B
Leadtek GF2 GTS 32MB
128MB PC100 6ns SDRAM</font color=purple>
 

breed33

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I personally prefer the IBM drives. I have three of them and they have worked great. They seem to be quiet, quick, and reliable. The only seagate products I have used are their SCSI drives. The SCSI drives are among the best.

The only tests I can point you to are Tom's latest review of hard drives. In it amongst the Fujitsu and WD are specs and benchmarks from both the 30GB IBM and the 30GB Seagate.

Good Luck! BTW, both drives will do everything you ever need them to do.

Brian
 

Arrow

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I prefer IBM also.

Rob
Please visit <b><A HREF="http://www.ncix.com/shop/index.cfm?affiliateid=319048" target="_new">http://www.ncix.com/shop/index.cfm?affiliateid=319048</A></b>
 

yoda271828

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The IBM drives have a sustained data transfer rate of 37MB/s vs. 30MB/s for the Seagate. Plus the average seek time of the IBM is 8.5ms vs. 8.9ms for the Seagate.

IMHO, those are the two important specs. Get the IBM it performs better and costs less.
 
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I gotta go with seagate and not for any technical reasons. Along with being a computer nerd, i am also a mountain biker. The best mountain biking trails in the minneapolis area are on a large portion of land that Seagate owns and has one of their locations on along the Minnesota River. So I gotta give them credit for community service.

Sorry for typing such stupidity...forgive me?

pill128

Take your Pill, and get some sleep.
 

Arrow

Splendid
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Hehe, that's nice to know :)

Rob
Please visit <b><A HREF="http://www.ncix.com/shop/index.cfm?affiliateid=319048" target="_new">http://www.ncix.com/shop/index.cfm?affiliateid=319048</A></b>
 
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I just got the IBM 75gxp 30G and its the best thing since sliced bread ;) I also have older seagate medalist 9.1G and i cant really complain about it neither but still i would go with the IBM
 
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the Seagate drive get's ripped because of it's high access times.. (way above what's spec'd on their website ).
http://www.gamersdepot.com/hardware/storage/seagate/barracuda_40gb/006.htm

www.storagereview.com (look in there database and then article database for a review of the drive)

Both of these will show an access time pretty high in either HDTach or WB99.

The 75GXP is king of access times and with it's competitive STR it's overall performance is better.. unless what you are doing is strictly STR dependent. Even then I would still recommend the IBM because the price per gig is quite a bit better.. and I like IBM drives.:) I think their quality is top notch. The WD400 by Western Digital is very competitive, but I wouldn't go there with such a competitive IBM product on the market.




***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***
 
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nothing against seagate...but i got a ibm 307030 these days and it´s cool...quiet and fast...u even can tell the hd with a special utility how fast / loud or slower / quieter it should be...great!! if u enable the lowest speed,the drive is super silent!!
 

Kodiak

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Just checked the IBM spec site, got me a bit worried:
"Start stops(at 40° C): 40,000 "
so its rated for 40,000 start stops

which means, lets say I want my HDD to work for 6 years = 2190 Days => I should have less than 18 starts/stops a day...

so if I turn my computer on/off couple times a day, it goes into sleep mode a few more times while I'm surfing, it crashes a few times, some testing occasionally, etc... that gets me *dangerously* close to the limit... :(
 
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don't turn it on and off.. leave it spinning constantly, though have your monitor shut it self off after a period of time. Trust me you can't use up the MTBF of the drive before you'll just replace it.. but since most people don't leave it running, MTBF doesn't matter as much thus they list starp stops. Neither one is tested accurately either though..



***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***
 

bdaley

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Boy, you really worry about things, huh? LOL

Seriously, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Even if the math works out, do you really see yourself using the same hard drive in 6 years?

Personally, I leave my PC on 24/7, and I never have the drive spin down. From what I understand, it stresses the hard drive more to spin up/down than to just keep spinning all the time.

"There's no such thing as gravity, the Earth just sucks"
 
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The IBM has a performance advantage because of their lower access times, but Seagate has an advantage when it comes to quality control, heat & acoustics, and reliability.

The seek times of the Seagate Barracuda ATA line has regressed in each generation, getting slower and slower; but they have gotten quieter, cooler running, and more reliable (especially this last series ATA III with their dynamic fluid bearing motors).

Seagate is probably the best Hard Drive manufacturer there is (some might argue the Quantum/Maxtor merger will outpace them though) and their SCSI X15 at 15000 RPM is the fastest drive you currently can buy (which also runs quieter and cooler than many 10000 RPM hard drives and has an industry leading MTBF of 1,200,000 hours).
 

Kodiak

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my old 3GB IBM drive was admittedly loud when I defragged etc, but the two 45GB 75GXPs are completely unaudible... maybe its the fans from the CPU etc overbearing it, but I seriously do not even know the Hard Drives are in there:)

maybe they're set to the "quiet" mode...
 

Arrow

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You don't really have to worry about that. Anyway, many hard drives "die out" before 6 years.

Rob
Please visit <b><A HREF="http://www.ncix.com/shop/index.cfm?affiliateid=319048" target="_new">http://www.ncix.com/shop/index.cfm?affiliateid=319048</A></b>
 
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Actually, the Seagate Barracuda ATA III has a data transfer rate of 40.5 MB/sec (not 30 MB/sec like yoda271828 said), where the Deskstar has 37.2 MB/sec. If this is an important spec to you yoda, you will have to give the Cuda ATA III more credit.

IBM seems to be having problems with quality control, an aspect Seagate has excelled at. Check out this thread here at Storagereview.com for some info: <A HREF="http://www.storagereview.com/welcome.pl/http://www.storagereview.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/006558.html" target="_new">http://www.storagereview.com/welcome.pl/http://www.storagereview.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/006558.html</A>

If you use that special utility on the Deskstar Photographic posted about to make your drive quieter, you will see a big performance hit and the Cuda ATA III will perform better and probably still be quiter.

Seagate also has good shock absorbtion, runs quieter and cooler than the IBM Deskstar due to their dynamic fluid bearings, and is probably the most reliable ATA hard drive you can buy.

So as If you want performance, go with the IBM Deskstar GXP (or wait until the 60GXP comes out). If you want quality, go with the Seagate Barracuda ATA III. If you want performance and quality, you will have to buy a good SCSI card (Tekram or Adaptec) and a Seagate X15 or Quantum Atlas 10K II (new generations of both these drives are to come out this summer too, if you want to wait).
 

yoda271828

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On <A HREF="http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/personal/family/0,1128,271,00.html" target="_new">Seagate's website</A> they list the Avg. Sustained Transfer Rate as >30 MB/s. If it were 40.5 MB/s why wouldn't they list it as >40 MB/s?

As for the quality issue, has anyone here ever had a problem with their IBM drive? I haven't and I've owned about six of them.
 
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Again, this drive gets ripped because of high access times. Both the reviews I posted show HDTach and WB giving it around 40 MB/s, so I'm more than willing to say that's probably the case even if it's not spec'd on the Seagate site..just as I'm willing to note the high access times because of the same benchmarks that aren't spec'd.

So if all you care about is pure STR, there are some better performing IDE drives.

As to the forum link posted. mm just an example of mass postings for success and failure stories from MULTIPLE manufacturers. One good post out of it was the mention of MS patch for a delayed shutdown so newer drives could clear their cache... and updated drivers needed to accomplish this on ATA66/100 peripheral cards. Every manufacturer will have drives that fail. 5% for the 75GXP is not 5% for even the Seagate ATAIII drive.

***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***
 
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Yoda, you are comparing IBMs Max STR <A HREF="http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/perf/spec/transSTR.html" target="_new">(sequential/sustained transfer rate)</A> to Seagate's average STR. That's not fair, they are two different specs.

Chord, as far as pure STR goes, according to Storage Review who has tested them all extensively, <A HREF="http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200101/20010108ST340824A_2.html" target="_new"> there are not any better performing IDE drives than the Seagate Barracuda ATA III</A>. Like you stated earlier, the Seagate Cuda III gets hurt because of lower seek times. The seek times have gotten lower each generation while the STR has broke the record each generation. This probably has to do with allowing their SCSI drives to be much better and being able to offer a more competitive price in the IDE market.
 
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>>So if all you care about is pure STR, there are some better performing IDE drives. <<

I meant better than the IBM 75 GXP such as this Seagate model. Since I'm reiterating what I've already said in this thread, I didn't expect that to be confused. Still doesn't change my position on the 75GXP since the majority of people don't use their system for work that is totally str dependent, we're only talking about 3-4MB/s difference anyways, overall system performance will be better, and a 45G 75GXP is cheaper.

>>This probably has to do with allowing their SCSI drives to be much better and being able to offer a more competitive price in the IDE market.<<

maybe.. maybe not. More likely I imagine they just haven't figured out a way to do it without using more discs, heads, platters, and higher spindle speeds. (All of which are used in SCSI thus increasing the costs of those drives). IBM hasn't either when it comes down to it, but they are closer than Seagate.




***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***
 
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<font color=red>"Since I'm reiterating what I've already said in this thread, I didn't expect that to be confused."</font color=red>
You might have wanted to specify which hard drive to are referring to when you state there are IDE drives with better STR then. Otherwise, one is lead to believe that you are claiming there are IDE drives with better STR than both the drives in question. The part about "better than the IBM 75 GXP such as this Seagate model" was not reiterated. Also, the Cuda ATA III is the only ATA hard drive with better STR than the 75GXP.

<font color=red>"As to the forum link posted. mm just an example of mass postings for success and failure stories from MULTIPLE manufacturers"</font color=red>
The whole thread has the title of "Another Bad IBM Hard Drive!!!!" and while multiple manufacturers are referred to, it is a very long thread with about 100 posts in a storage enthusiast community that overwhelmingly points to IBM having a quality control problem (something Seagate has excelled at).

Seagate also has a great way of packaging and shipping these drives, neat diagnostic software, and very low return rates. As far as performance, nothing beats the Seagate X15. But if you are only choosing between the 75GXP and the Cuda ATA III, choose the 75 GXP if you want performance, and the Cuda III if you want quality (lower noise, runs cooler, more reliable, etc.) Not to imply that IBM makes low quality drives, just that Seagate's drives are of better quality.