Seagate Vs. Western Digital

I'm looking at Seagate versus Western Digital to stick in my XPS in addition to the drive I have in there now, a 120 gig Seagate Momentus 7200 RPM. This is the drive I will stick my fastest running/biggest space-intensive programs/games onto. These are the drives I'm looking at currently, and I want 250 GB + and 7200 RPM:


Western Digital
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136279

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136280

Seagate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148364

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148336
(any ideas on this one? being a bare drive means I'll need what to make it work?)


None of the Seagates (or the WD's, from what I read) have g-force protection. What is this and should I seriously consider getting one with it?

 

I wouldnt go for either, get a Hitachi if you want reliability. The seagate 250gb drive is the fastest 7200rpm drive on the market. For some reason it is faster than 160 and 320gb models.
I have the 7K320's and they are the quietest 7200rpm drives I have ever heard. I wish they outperformed the seagate drives, but they do not, they come up very close, but the seagate firmware must be better on this series.

An bare drive means that it is just shipped in a esd bag. You dont get a harddrive box/manual/disc, but you can download the manual and harddrive tools online.
G-force protection is basically seagates way of stating if the drive has a free fall sensor/accelerometer built in. It basically works to shut the drive off when the drive sense that the laptop is falling to prevent damage to the disc
we dont know if the free fall sensors actually work, cause testing involves breaking a laptop, and nobody really wants to do tests cause of the results.

K-TRON

 

g-sensor is a built-in accelerometer. so when you move your laptop; the sensor detect the movement, and if it found that the movement is outside the limit; the HDD head will quickly 'park' itself, to avoid head-slap/crash.

dont get it if your notebook already equiped with a sensor; it could have caused incompatibility, if your notebook doesnt have one; it is a really plus feature (i dont think XPS 1730 has one). personally i think every harddrive should have one.

having bigger hdd space also means that it will be faster than its lower space counterpart. reason; more areal density and the spindle speed on the outer edge (is it? i cant remember) of the drive is faster.

 

lol i was looking at the same drives to occupy the second HD in my 7811 im going for the seagate though no questions asked best bang for the buck and reliable

 

Thanks for the info, K-tron. Added a poll now.

@ wobble, yes, it is the outer edge. This is specifically why I'm aiming for the max I can stick in my lappy, the whole areal density dilemma. I would never ever use up more than 50 GB on that drive anyways 10 years from now...

@ red dragon, if you take the hdd I want I'm going to punch you. I hate posting links on here because last time I did someone nabbed the drive I wanted in an hour

 

According to HDtune it is. According to PCMark05 the Seagate 7200.3 320GB is faster.

I recommend the Seagate 7200.3 320GB. It seems to be the fastest and most power efficient. It comes with 5 year warranty.

I think you can find it cheaper than at Newegg.

 

****, the 320Gb 7200.3 price has dropped...
Wish I could have bought it with that price :cry:

 

A Dell tech told me my Seagate drive I already have in there has the sensor for the free fall mechanism. Can anyone confirm this (look at my sig for model)? wobble, are you saying the next drive I buy shouldn't have the sensor?

 

I've gotta vote for the 320 Scorpio Black. Mainly because I'm biased towards it, as I have one. But my personal experience with it is that it's quiet, offers the same battery life, if not more, than my old 160 5400 Drive, and it's much peppier, especially on boot and load times.

 

all the drives in your computer should have the free-fall sensor. If only one drive has it, only one drive will park the head should your computer be involved in a fall accident.

 

wd is always my fav, seagate is second... i dont buy anything else normally than one or the other of those.. i LOVE my wd drives though and i own A LOT of them its usually all i buy to replace at my business' i own and at home

 

also you could always buy the simpletech black cherry and get the 320gb one it uses a wd bevt drive in it and i found them last time for around 80$ but they are 5400 rpm..

 

http://www.wiredzone.com/Itemdesc.asp?ic=32010331&eq=&Tp=

WD is also available around $100 bucks. Good to see laptop hard drives being this cheap.

 

Look in device manager for the model number, hopefully it is displayed fully. If you have a "G" at the end and not just AS, you have the one with G-Sensor.

 

K-TRON, regarding the free fall sensor, it reminds me back to the day (2005) when i was getting my t43p, i told people that there was a free fall sensor inside the HDD (it was a very new tech), and the reading head will move to safety zone when the HDD sense falling. you know what others reponded? they insisted that the free fall sensor was built on the mobo! and the reading head will never move! LMAO I was all alone against roughly 10 people. how could they so stupid? they were all thinkpad users and didn't even know the basic stuffs.

 

My friend has a T43P, and the accelerometer is actually built on the motherboard. I had to install a new keyboard for him a few weeks ago, and I stripped the system down, to find their was an accelerometer built onto the motherboard.

IBM used to incorporate this into a lot of their models, and now they have them in the harddrives, or some systems have both on the board and in the harddrive.

K-TRON

 

Oh now I am relieved, maybe I owe them an apology. good to know that.

 

I'll take either Hitachi or WD...

 

I use all three drives but if I had to choose, I would pick Western Digital. I use it on my desktops and for desktop builds of my friends. Runs fast, quiet and cool. Never had a problem with them for years.

I have a Seagate FreeAgent Pro external hdd, I have no complaints so far.

I use Hitachi in my laptop. Not as fast as I like it to be and it's also not as quiet as I wanted it to be, but it's worked for more than a year now so I have nothing against it.

 

It does in fact end in 'G'. Thanks for the links guys and the input. Good to hear what people have experience with, so keep the chat going.

 

http://www.wiredzone.com/Itemdesc.asp?ic=32010331&eq=&Tp=

^ This will in fact fit into my XPS 1730 under my first drive, correct? Specs say it's 9.5 mm. Just want to clarify before I buy that sucker.

 

Yes it will fit.

 

hey i just got a Maxtor and everyone is saying MAxtor doesnt last more than a year... but those are older posts.

since Seagate has acquired Maxtor..do u think its better?

why i ask is coz i ve never used maxtor before

 

I have had a few old Maxtor drives, and the ones like 10 yrs ago are still going strong today, but they were loud as anything. My brother bought a few about 2 years before the seagate acquisition, and all of them were junk. None of them lasted more than a few months. So rma after rma, and still bad drives, so we stopped using them.
I dont know if Seagate changed anything with Maxtor,cause I have not had any experience with their drives. I would think they are just seagates sold with maxtor stickers.

K-TRON

 

Thanks. I bought it Sunday. I also ordered HyperX 4 GB (2 x 2GB) RAM (4-4-4-12 latency) with it. Thank you to whoever posted the wiredzone.com link. Beat out the price of newegg's 320 GB by $46!

*Edit: sorry, here's the link to the RAM. I'm so excited!

http://www.wiredzone.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=32008495