New HDs

[Liquid Snake]

I'm going to be doing a major upgrade of my system soon. I currently have an IBM 60GXP 20GB as my system drive and a Maxtor D740X 40GB as my data drive. The IBM drive is definitely going; I don't want to deal with it if it fails. Not sure about the Maxtor drive though.

So I need a very fast 40GB drive to serve as my system drive. The OS and all my applications and games will go there. I was going to use the Maxtor drive as my new system drive, but I don't know if there are any faster 40GB drives that have come out since I bought it. I've seen the WD 400JB for sale; anyone know how fast this drive is? For the data drive, speed is not as important, but I'd like it to be as fast as the D740X or faster. Capacity of 80GB - 120GB should be enough. Any suggestions?

[Liquid Snake]

And about drive warranties: it seems only WD's SE drives have three year warranties these days My D740X still has 2 years and a month left of the warranty period.

[Wombat]

No, the Maxtor MaxLine drives also have a 3 year.

[Liquid Snake]

I know, but 250GB is far too big for my purposes.

Another thing, the OEM WD1200JB my friend got from Newegg has no warranty according to the WD site. But then Newegg's product description states "3 Year Manufacturer Warranty"

[Paulr]

Hummm.
I purchased an OEM WD1200JB here in the UK from a company called scan.co.uk
They promised my three years warranty with that too.
It is installed now and I can't really be bothered to go find the serial number to check my warranty status.
If this fails after a year and there is no warranty here then there will be trouble!

[Nowhere]

Liquid Snake, maybe new 10k rpm wd's sata drive will be interesting to you? :P

and seriously: some time ago I've heard about maxtor's 7200 ide geared more towards cheap servers (higher reliabilty/warranty). where are they?

[Ribbit]

Originally posted by Paulr
Hummm.
I purchased an OEM WD1200JB here in the UK from a company called scan.co.uk
They promised my three years warranty with that too.
It is installed now and I can't really be bothered to go find the serial number to check my warranty status.
If this fails after a year and there is no warranty here then there will be trouble!

I also bought a WD1200JB from Scan last year. I've just checked my serial number (as reported by the drive - I'm not about to open my case for that either) on WD's site, and they say the warranty expires in 2005. So you're probably ok.

[Paulr]

Ah!
Great, thanks for that.
I really didn't fancy going serial number hunting just to find out.
Although I usually make note of all my serial numbers before fitting components just incase of issues like this.

[Liquid Snake]

Newegg is definitely a reputable dealer though, so hopefully the warranty with all the WD SEs they've been selling is OK.

I did a bit of research, and it seems the WD400JB is similar to the WD800JB in performance. So it's a bit faster than my D740X but I don't know if that difference is really noticeable in most situations. Still unsure about the data drive.

[K6-III]

All Samsung drives still have 3year warranties.

The upcoming Western Digital 10k S-ATA drives will have 5 year warranties...

[Kurt]

Originally posted by Liquid Snake
Newegg is definitely a reputable dealer though, so hopefully the warranty with all the WD SEs they've been selling is OK.

I did a bit of research, and it seems the WD400JB is similar to the WD800JB in performance. So it's a bit faster than my D740X but I don't know if that difference is really noticeable in most situations. Still unsure about the data drive.

it's a good lot faster. you will notice the difference as your system will be snappier (given your ata controller is fast enough). all the se/jb carry 3 yr warranty - plus it's pretty cheap too...