Maxtor vs. WD 200 GB

[dauss]

I've been looking at the WD2000JB for a while($185 OEM), but then I saw a great price on a Maxtor 200GB UDMA/133 hard drive with 8MB cache for $160 in a store. Is the extra $25 worth it for the WD or should I go for maxtor?

[Telexen]

I like Maxtors much better...WD drives have had short lives in the past for me, so I don't trust them.

[JPMiller]

both names are quality drives, both are the top companies in the hard drive industry...My suggestion is to go with the cheaper of the two in the same category.

Hard Drive technology is pretty much matured now and all companies make good drives. The actual manufacturing companies are very few and with the technology stabilised (both engineering and manufacturing), these days drives are pretty much generic or comodities.

Most drives have a MTBF (Mean Time Between failure) of around 170,000 hours of continuous operation.

That's like 15-20 years of continuous operations. I doubt you'd like to keep it that long.

So, my suggestion is go with the lowest prices. Right now prices are $0.80 per GB (at least that's the price I'm selling them for) so use that as a thumb rule. For example, my 120GB Maxtor 2MB/7200 go for $90 and no MIRs to deal with.

[dauss]

When you calculate out the price per gig, do you divide the price by how many gigs the box says, or how many actual gigs you get after you format?

What the box says. Easier.

[mvagal]

WDC drives are hopeless. My experience so far with 120GB and above has been worst. Drives fail like nobody's business and even within warrantY WDC repalces them with Refurb drives not new ones so youa re paying reatil for a new drive, fails in three months or so and then you get a refurb. which one can buy on ebay for half the retail price.
Maxtor has so far been good performers, slowly replacing my WDC's with Maxtors/ IBM. Stay away from WDC - no good drives.
BTW nothing wrong with my PC's my old IBM and 80GB WDC work fine since 8 years now, only the newer ones 120 GB up seem to fail nornally with "WRITE DELAYED CACHE " failure or similar message and drive just packs up.