Buying a hard drives

[Matthew Hawkins]

On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Simon Haddon wrote:
>  Cougar told me that the IBM hard disks are the best performing at the 
> moment.

The 75GXP series (and any later model) - basically your DTLA-xxxx disks,
are _one_ of the fastest IDE drives.  Another is the Quantum Fireball LM.
The LM is actually faster on the outer tracks, but overall the 75GXP
beats it (it's almost consistently 30Mb/s).

Personally I'd order it over the web from Cougar and pick it up.  Sure,
you can get things cheaper at the markets, but I've already seen one guy
try to get warranty from _there_, and it's turned me off buying anything
I'd like to trust from the markets.  I guess the other way of looking at
it is the drive isn't more expensive at Cougar, you're just paying a
little bit extra for some warranty.

Oh, and I would NEVER buy a Maxtor drive if they were the last
manufacturer on earth.  I'd rather etch my data in sand with a stick,
it's safer that way (even in this weather).  Seagate are alright for
SCSI, don't bother with their IDE.  Western Digital (owned by IBM) make
the "fish that John West reject" so to speak.  Believe me it's worth the
little extra to get a genuine 75GXP.

-- 
Matt