Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Entry 35844
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2025/05/24 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
5/24    

2005/1/21-24 [Computer/HW/Drives] UID:35844 Activity:moderate
1/21    Some PC hardware questions, any advice much appreciated:
        1) Anyone have experience with Maxtor Diamond 250GB SATA drives?
        2) I read once that it's not smart to buy all drives in a RAID array
           from the same mfgr/vendor (batch).  Is this still the case?
           \_ What a bunch of rubbish. You are MORE likely to run into problems
              when mixing different drives which are more likely to have
              different disk geometries and other parameters. Not all
              controllers can deal with this well.
        3) On a RAID controller (in this case a 3Ware 9500-S) does the # of
           ports refer to how many drives can be attached, or does it have
           something to do with data transfer channels?  http://3ware.com is a bit
           vague on this.  Thanks for any clarifications!
        \_ I've been hearing bad things about the reliability of 250MB+ drives.
           Also, I hate maxtor drives because they all get noisy within a year
           or two.
           \_ Thanks.  Any drive model recommendations for SATA 200-250GB?
              \_ 8 port means 8 drives.  You may want to look into hitachi
                 300GB drives.  They're supposedly more stable compared to WD
                 and Maxtor 250GB drives.
        \_ Don't by CRASHtor drives unless you hate your data and love
           sending your drives in for RMA. I have had several 120GB
           drives and 250GB drives made by Maxtor die w/in six months
           of buying them. I switched to WD and Seagate and haven't
           had any problems with either.
           \_ Thanks for all your comments, it's nice to get 1st-person
              opinions.  This is a great help.
              \_ I've had a maxtor drive that's worked for over 6 years now.
                 I have a 120GB maxtor that's been working fine for over a
                 year. YMMV, in many cases it's just the luck of the draw.
2025/05/24 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
5/24    

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