New HD: Seagate or Western Digital?

Question

Level 1

55 points

New HD: Seagate or Western Digital?

Seasons greeting to you all.

One of my Xmas pressies this year is a new (and MUCH bigger) hard drive. My local computer stores stock Seagate and Western Digital. For the same size drive, both the tech standards and price are virtually identical.

The only difference from my perspective is that WD claim their drives run "cool", and I live in a hot humid climate so that could be an advantage (though the computer is in air-con almost all the time).

Any recommendations either way?

Thanks

eMac 1.25 GHz, OS 10.3.9, 768 MB RAM, 40 GB HD, Combo Drive, Logitech 2300 Speakers.

Posted on Dec 19, 2007 10:45 PM

Reply

Answer 1

PT

Level 7

20,894 points

Dec 20, 2007 12:09 PM in response to Skibbee

The problem with hard drives is everyone has favorites and villians. So it is hard to get unbiased advice.
That said, Seagates normally come with 5-year warranties. What does the WD come with? I would be inclined to go with which ever has the higher warranty.
But a warranty will only get you a replacement drive if it fails and won't get your data back. So which ever one you decide to get, I would strongly suggest a backup of some sort. If you are removing your old hard drive from the computer, then get an external drive enclosure and put it in that. Your old drive will be very useful to backup your data files in case of a problem.
Patrick

Reply

Answer 2

Skibbee Author

Level 1

55 points

Dec 20, 2007 11:56 PM in response to PT

Thanks for that, PT. I've decided to go with WD, and also get an external drive enclosure.

And don't worry about backup, I am a backup freak: I have at least 6 separate, regularly updated electronic copies of everything, including a bootable clone drive. I cannot afford to lose several years of work stuff!

Cheers.

Reply

Answer 3

Dec 22, 2007 4:43 PM in response to Skibbee

I also swear by Seagate drives. They have the best warranties in the industry and the greatest mean time between failures. I've been running two Seagate external drives, daily, on my system for over two years now three plus years with no problems at all.

Reply

Answer 4

MacMan 71

Level 2

300 points

Dec 23, 2007 11:28 AM in response to Skibbee

as long as it's not Maxtor.

Also , I'm pretty sure that your emac won't recognize more than 200GB internal, so don't bother getting those HUGE drives, unless you want to go external.

Reply

Answer 5

PT

Level 7

20,894 points

Dec 23, 2007 12:35 PM in response to MacMan 71

MacMan 71 wrote:
Also , I'm pretty sure that your emac won't recognize more than 200GB internal, so don't bother getting those HUGE drives, unless you want to go external.

No, the eMac has no problems accessing drives larger than 200GB, so if you are going to open it anyway to put a drive in, might as well go with a large one if the eMac is going to be in use for a while longer.
Patrick

Reply

Answer 6

Skibbee Author

Level 1

55 points

Dec 24, 2007 12:04 AM in response to Skibbee

Thanks for the responses.

My eMac can definitely go above 200GB. See Apples doc:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86178

I plan on keeping my eMac for a while yet, and the cost difference between a 160 GB and 320 GB drive is only about $30 bucks, so might as well go for the bigger one. The other reason for going for the Western Digital 320 GB is that it uses 16 MB of RAM cache. The equivalent size Seagate, and all other smaller dirves, WD or Seagate, use 8 MB.

After asking around quite a few people and places, I get the clear impression there is nothing much between a Seagate and a Western Digital drive. Nobody had anything bad to say about either of them. Comes down to which one you can get the better price on, and even then they are so close you could barely slip a piece of paper between them.

Happy Xmas.

Reply

Answer 7

MacMan 71

Level 2

300 points

Dec 24, 2007 8:49 PM in response to Skibbee

Mine can't 😟

Reply