Hitachi vs Maxtor

Mankey · Post by **Mankey** » Sun Jun 27, 2004 9:26 pm

i know that neither of these are too popular, but which of the two is better?

davidstone28 · Post by **davidstone28** » Mon Jun 28, 2004 2:01 am

You don't say what models you're referring to but.....

Both are quieter - depending on what you prefer.

At idle, the Maxtor (Diamond Max 9) is quieter.

When the heads are reading / seeking, the Hitachi (Deskstar) is quieter as the Maxtor tends to make a muffled clickety clack sound.

hyperslug · Post by **hyperslug** » Mon Jun 28, 2004 12:51 pm

Better at what? SR claims the Hitachi 7k250 line is the fastest 7200 RPM hard drive available.

It is also known to meow at intervals that, while consistent per drive are inconsistent per user experience, presumably moving the heads to keep the drive from overheating. (A firmware update - created by Hitachi but not officially released - will silence the meow. MikeC has speculated that this may in fact reintroduce the reliability "features" of the 75 GXP.)

BTW, most agree there is no hard drive manufacturer that is undisputably reliable over all. Everyone's had good/bad runs.

Chris.Day · Post by **Chris.Day** » Wed Jul 07, 2004 7:47 am

I have the 200GB Hitachi 7K250 and it is a quiet and fast drive, except for the cat's meow sound. I thought that this feature was designed to avoid the problems of the 75GXP which itself later on got a firmware update to do the thing which causes this noise.

I've not done any extensive speed tests with it yet, but a quick test with the nForce2 IDE driver gives:
60.5MB/s sustained read
85.2MB/s burst

In comparison my Western Digital 1200JB with 8MB cache gives:
49.3MB/s sustained read
75.1MB/s burst

In both cases, the sustained is more important than burst. The Hitachi's also have excellent SMART support so you can monitor temperatures etc. I have a Maxtor with temperature sensor, but the Western Digital only has very basic SMART attributes. The Hitachi runs at around 38C maximum while in use.

kai · Post by **kai** » Wed Jul 07, 2004 1:10 pm

I use a 160 gig Hitachi 7k250 and love it. Mine exhibits no meowing sound, though that is probably because I fold for team SPCR and folding@home accesses the disk regularly.

Get the 7k250 and solve the meowing by folding for team SPCR!