Which Hard Drive should I pick?

[911aaron]

So is this OEM that I provided below, "unbranded" and can be used on three personal/family systems?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116056

So if I understand you correctly, if I were to replace my hard drive with another hard drive, I am legally allowed to transfer the OEM disk onto the new hard drive as long as the hard drive was the only thing being replaced?

 

[StrangleHold]

Yes you can install a new harddrive. Dont know where he got that you could install a unbranded OEM on 3 Computers, but I dont know where he gets much of his nonsense. But no a unbranded OEM is tied to the computer just like a branded OEM. Unbranded is just for System Builders no different. Please ignore PCeye.

Use of this OEM System Builder Channel software is subject to the terms of the Microsoft OEM System Builder License. This software is intended for pre-installation on a new personal computer for resale. This OEM System Builder Channel software requires the assembler to provide end user support for the Windows software(( and cannot be transferred to another computer once it is installed)). To acquire Windows software with support provided by Microsoft please see our full package "Retail" product offerings.

 

[PC eye]

You would simply be reinstalling Windows on the exact same machine with a simple hardware change namely the drive. I moved Vista off of an ide drive here to see that reinstalled fresh on a larger sata model.

It's common for someone with a full install disk to decide to replace one drive with a larger one or even reinstall Windows in a dual boot with another version or a Linux distro. No problem simply install Windows on the new drive. MS isn't worried about you replacing or upgrading a drive. That's still well within the licensing snce this is on the exact same system. The information on the OEM for XP happens to come from someone who beta tests for MS directly.

 

[911aaron]

Oh I see. Knowing this, I guess I will go with the Seagate just because of the 32mb cache. But before I purchase it, I got a question about Newegg's warranties. Lets say I bought a product that has a Limited 30-Day Return Policy. If I want a replacement I must send it back to Newegg before the 30 days is over. Let's say I did so and I got my replacement a few days later. Does this mean the Limited 30-Day Return Policy will start over again on the day I receive my new replacement or does it continue to live off the original Limited 30-Day Return Policy I started off with?


EDIT: What do you guys think about this HDD?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152052

 

[PC eye]

Samsung, Hitachi, and other off names are rather recent brands and not always the best of quality. Personally I wouldn't tough any of the recent brand names for sure.

There's nothing wrong with either to the two drives you were looking despite the noise made by a few there. When you ask around to people that use WD drives rarely do you hear any complaints.

I occasionally will see a pm where someone can't figure why all the noise was made on other threads when they have reliable results using SE and other models by WD or Seagate. The way you maintain a case keeping any drive from overheating and cold hard starts generally sees any good brand drive last to start with.

 

[911aaron]

Well I'm using a Hitachi HDD right now and it seems to be working quite well so far in the 8 months I've had it. No problems I've noticed. I'll stick to seagate or WD anyways, probably the seagate cause of the 32mb cache. I'd still like to know how newegg's policies work.

Lets say I bought a product that has a Limited 30-Day Return Policy. If I want a replacement I must send it back to Newegg before the 30 days is over. Let's say I did so and I got my replacement a few days later. Does this mean the Limited 30-Day Return Policy will start over again on the day I receive my new replacement or does it continue to live off the original Limited 30-Day Return Policy I started off with?

 

[PC eye]

When the first board here on the present build quit only after 3 days I contacted newegg for an rma number and saw that taken care of within the 30day period fast. They stick to that with anything problems later seeing a need to contact the manufacturer to ship it to them under their own limited manufacturer's warranty. That goes for just about any hardware while they generally honor their own return policy if you catch the 30day limit in time.

 

[911aaron]

Oh okay. Thanks. I'll be purchasing everything tomorrow. Thanks very much PC eye and everyone else!

EDIT: Actually I do have one more question. Yes they never cease to stop

Let's say there were two HDD that had the same exact specs except that one of them was a 250GB HDD while the other was a 500GB HDD. Would the 250GB be faster then the 500GB? I think the 250GB HDD would be faster because theres less space that it needs to look through. Am I correct? If I am correct, how fast of a difference would this be and is it something I should really be concerned about?


I'm asking because I'm thinking about getting a 250GB HDD and installing my OS and games on that while putting the rest of my media onto a 500GB HDD.

 

[myPCrocks]

They just raised that too.. Up until summer of last year it was one year. I guess they had to do something to compete.

But yeah.. there's a very good reason why I ditched my "WD Authorized Reseller" status... Cuz... They are total garbage.

That is such BS, I have installed hundreds of WD HDD in the last 8 years and had only one fail.

Yep, they are garbage.

 

[SirKenin]

Well I'm using a Hitachi HDD right now and it seems to be working quite well so far in the 8 months I've had it. No problems I've noticed. I'll stick to seagate or WD anyways, probably the seagate cause of the 32mb cache. I'd still like to know how newegg's policies work.

Lets say I bought a product that has a Limited 30-Day Return Policy. If I want a replacement I must send it back to Newegg before the 30 days is over. Let's say I did so and I got my replacement a few days later. Does this mean the Limited 30-Day Return Policy will start over again on the day I receive my new replacement or does it continue to live off the original Limited 30-Day Return Policy I started off with?

Ok. ANY Windows can only be installed on one computer at a time. The difference between OEM and retail is that retail is transferable, OEM isn't.

The warranty is 30 days, period. Even if you have to send it back the warranty doesn't start over again. After the 30 days you have to send it back to Seagate.

A caviar SE has troubles with the following issues:

Heat. They can't handle heat. A poorly ventilated case is death to a Caviar SE.

Significant write/rewrite transactions. Disk errors develop and eventually the drive will stop loading Windows.

They are infamous for a) the click of death and b) corrupting the MFT. Unmountable Boot Volume errors are exceedingly common with Caviar SEs.

Multiple users accessing shares. A Caviar SE self destructs as it can't handle the volume of transactions.

Losing security descriptors. People will be told they are opening files "read only" or not having appropriate permissions for transactions they once had.

The newer ones have significant issues with aftermarket external casings. Delayed write failures are disturbingly frequent. $MFT errors pop up regularly. The drive will actually shut down, causing it to disappear altogether from "My Computer".

Another example. I have a computer that's sole purpose is to record video off the cameras in my store. The software records every time the cameras detect motion. For fun I put a WD Caviar SE that I had lying around. The drive lasted a month before it quit.

I have a friend that was contracted by the government for IT work. His first day on the job consisted of RMAing two boxes full of dead WD Caviar SE drives.

I repair or replace a Caviar SE 3 or more times a week. My estimate is 90% of all drive problems I encounter on the job site are Caviar SE drives.

I've been selling computers full time since 1999. I've been using them since the mid 80's. I've owned, sold and serviced every brand of drive available. The three worst were the Connor, Fujitsu desktop line and the WD Caviar SE. Connor went under, Fujitsu stopped making desktop drives and I ditched the Caviar SE lineup.

Notably bad drives:

Maxtor DiamondMax 8
Maxtor Fireball 3
Maxtor DM740
Any Fujitsu desktop drive
Caviar SE
Connor
Hitachi 60/75 GXP "Deathstars"

I'm not talking a few drives here and there... I'm talking thousands of drives.

Take it for whatever you feel it's worth.

 

[PC eye]

That is such BS, I have installed hundreds of WD HDD in the last 8 years and had only one fail.

Yep, they are garbage.

The only one that finally quit here used on different builds in fact was due to loaning to a friend who never uses a can of air cleaner. I also had to replace his video card later after pulling a blanket of dust and debris off the board there! The ori ginal card was seeing all kinds of jagged lines and distortions on the screen there.

Other then that unnecessary mishap I get asked to help on various builds by several people over the last deacde all using WD SE drives in fact not seeing one fail. Now you see why I mentioned earlier that some just want to make a lot of noise.

Now for drive sizes a 250gb 7,200 drive seems faster while the read/write have to travel further across the drive's platters being less dense in capcity there. With a larger drive holding more data you have to expect that it will take longer simply because there is more information to access while a practically bare 500gb drive will actually seem faster then a 250gb loaded with programs and files.

Nothing beats a new clean install of Windows since that is free of the accumilated garbage that can easily build up as far as useless temp install folders and leftover entries in the system registry as well as a long list of startup items. A clean install of Windows here on a 500gb sata moved like lightning when seeing Vista go there after having been run on a 250gb ide drive. It was the clean install not sata over ide or drive size there.

 

[SirKenin]

Well, the way I see it is this. An obvious fraud that's been so badly hammered in the forum for obviously not knowing what they're talking about... Repeatedly beaten into submission for the lies and bs.. and not providing any proof that they're even close to what they say they are, irrelevant screenshots included.. And the increasingly obvious fact that they claim one thing, yet everything they say or do proves something ENTIRELY different (ie "I'm a tech" when everything they say proves "I'm a search-engine hack").

See, in cases like this you know that a person actually has very little real life experience, despite any claims they might make. Yeah, they might be a hobbyist, or they might putter around on one while they watch the 2000 left turn show on TSN and drink their Budweiser (or rubbing alcohol, depending on their budget)... But in reality it's blatantly obvious that they don't have anywhere near the practical experience they claim to have.. Which makes claims as seen in the previous post irrelevant, perhaps even borderline fraudulent...and at the very, very least primarily argumentitive.

"I've only seen such and such" means nothing when it's disturbingly obvious that their experience is not even close to some of the more recognized posters on the forum.....which brings me back to the point that someone citing a sample size of a dozen is far less pertinent with their observations than someone with a sample size of hundreds or thousands of the unit in question.

As opposed to people that have consistenly proven fair, unbiased, factual and reliable and have repeatedly demonstrated through their words and their supporting documentation, photographs, etc, that they are who they say they are..

It's not too hard to figure out who exactly is "blowing smoke".

But, we leave it up to the members.. and many of the members have already publicly stated that a certain someone who shall remain nameless is a useless contributor to this board and needs to just go away.. Thankfully for a while they did and with any luck at all they will do so again in short order.

The board was peaceful during that time.. .and with any luck at all will return there soon enough.

 

[StrangleHold]

Its amazing some of the stuff he has said. Anywhere from mysterious extra wide IDE cables - Some type of memory controller on a XP Athlon 3200 for DDR memory(it doesnt have one) - Uninstalling your USB drivers it will trash Windows - Didnt even know his own processor doesnt run memory at full speed - Ran his own processor at 107c for a few (hours) before he thought something might be wrong - Didnt even know his own case didnt have a speaker and even told someone where it was - Thinks the 8mb of unallocated space left by the Windows partition and formatting tool was a flaw in Windows.

It goes on and on but its starting to make my head hurt!

 

[SirKenin]

lmao!! zomg, I forgot all about the extra wide IDE cables. roflmao. Quite possibly the most infamous line of crap ever spouted on this forum, and I FORGOT!!!!

Oh man.. The serial ATA jumper debacle, where he mouthed off The Other One and got totally pwned in the process, even by his very own screenshots (which was, funny enough, a shot of a WD Caviar SE SATA II drive).. If he doesn't even know that his beloved drive has jumpers, even when his own photo shoves them right in his puss... How the hell would he be able to comment on something like reliability?

lmao. Classic stuff. Mr. "I know everything about the Antec 900... Mines sitting right over there in the corner, not even opened yet".

Or what about the Knoppix thing where he was bashing me about knowing nothing about it, or not even using it, in the same thread where I showed a photograph with it sitting there on the screen with an error message? That one pickled me tink.

Come to think of it, there was another pic I posted in that thread with 3 or 4 dead Caviars in the shot.. From my office.. Has he ever posted a pic to back up ANYTHING he's ever claimed besides some useless screencaptures of Newegg, a bunch of irrelevant photos from image searches and some hacked tombstones? And there are people still actually LISTENING to this guy? haha.

Oh god.. My sides are starting to hurt and my cheeks are sore as hell now. Man, we've had some good times on here thanks to that asshat. I'm starting to second guess myself about wishing he'd just disappear. It's way more fun having someone to laugh at.

 

[PC eye]

Talking to yourselves again? What did I tell you guys before you need some professional therapy! The both of you keep wondering into your own world of delusions apparently. That needs to be seen to.

 

[StrangleHold]

I really have come to the conclusion that you have had a Excerebration performed!

 

[PC eye]

So that's your excuse then? You had your brains...? Well that seems about the best you can do since you haven't been posting anything worthwhile and subject related. I would likely expect the adolescent remarks to eventually wear out but not with some apparently.

 

[SirKenin]

 

[SirKenin]

 

[PC eye]

Sorry 911aaron you had to see the typical thread hijack with nothing but the limited mentality instead of anything useful information being posted by some people experiencing some deep personal problems apparently.