)
I hear over and over that people have more problems with Maxtor drives,
but if the majority of small-user drives are indeed the inexpensive ones
from Maxtor then since they have a large market share it makes sense
that they would have the largest share of "bad" drives too.
By the way, for anybody buying a 120 GB drive, Fry's has Western Digital
120 GB drives on sale for $189 through Tuesday. That's $10 cheaper than
the Maxtor 120 GB drives they were selling a week ago, and the Western
Digital drives are 7200rpm (afaik) while the Maxtor drives are only
5400rpm. Note that there's a rumor that WD is getting out of the hard
drive business.
The IBM drives have a curious spec (thanks Steve Carter for printing the
data sheet for me) -- "Recommended power-on hours (monthly): 333".
There are 168 hours in a week, 4-2/7 weeks in a month, 22 business days
in a month. Where did they ever get 333 hr/mo? Did somebody at IBM
flip a coin and just decide that "4,000 hours per year sounds like a
good number"? Regarding usage and life expectancy, none of the
manufacturers gave a MTBF spec.
As for heat, the Maxtor drive uses less power than the IBM drive (5.2
watts vs. 6.7 watts) so the Maxtor would run cooler than the IBM. To
give you an idea of how much heat that is (it's hot), the old-style
little night lights that plug directly into a wall socket use 7-1/2 watt
bulbs. Western Digital doesn't give a power spec. You may want to use
a drive fan (about $15 and they take up a drive slot).
I've heard that 7200rpm drives are noisier than 5400rpm drives. The IBM
(7200rpm) drive is rated 3.1 bel at idle (spinning but no arm motion)
while the Maxtor (5400rpm) drive is rated at 3.6 bel while seeking (the
arm is moving). That's a 6 decibel difference _but_ the measurements
are of different things. Ratings in the 31-36 decibel (dB) range aren't
"noisy" (15 dB is _very_ quiet while an office with "light typing" might
be 65 dB) but I've heard that the 7200rpm and 10,000rpm drives make
their noise at a high frequency so the result is an audible "whine"
which some people find annoying. (For techies: dBA is the likely
unit.)
IBM gives a shock spec. In the old days an earthquake could really zap
your spinning drive, but IBM says their drive can absorb 55G while
spinning or 400G while stopped. I don't think my house will take that
much. Can any physicist out there tell me how far I would have to drop
my house to get a 55G (or 400G) impact?
- Peter
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