I don't think they are... It's cheaper to not format them.
What I"m doing is getting the crappy Maxtor 40GB out of my Classic G3. It's been making clanking noises and really loud high pitch sounds. Seems like a good time to replace it before it dies. Then I'll have a back up drive also just incase something would happen to the WD, which I don' think will because there drives are pretty top notch.
In an old Beige G3 running a hard drive off the motherboard IDE controller a fast "Special Edition" drive won't make a great deal of difference, the bus just can't deal with that much data that fast.
Samsung drives are really cheap and have a three year warranty.
The drive should work fine, on my machines it works fine using cable select on the ide jumper setting(except on the cube, for some reason, that required it to be set to master).
It's simple: if it's not formatted Finder will ask you if you want to format it when you plug it in. WD is high quality, especially the ones with 8meg cache, and they're the best value at usually a dollar a gig.
Make sure you have a backup, though. WD drives are fairly good, but not the best. I would say they are about on par with Maxtor, with IBM/Hitachi being better and Seagate being the best, among consumer IDE drives.
that's were I'm confussed too. I've always though of seagate being the worst next to maxtor. IBM, i'd never stick on of those in my mac. I"ve always heard of Western of being the best. Very confusing. I guess I've decided to get a WD 80GB 8MB HD.
HD companies are always playing musical chairs in terms of reliability and reputation.
A few years ago, Maxtor was trash, Seagate was OK, Quantum was better, and WD was king. Then, a bit later, IBM was trash (the DeathStar 75GXP series), Quantum was dead, WD sucked (noisy unreliable drives), Seagate was OK, and Maxtor was king.
Now, Seagate has the best drives (the smooth and silent Barracuda IV, for example), IBM and Hitachi merged and make pretty good drives, and Maxtor and WD are battling it out in the 'bargain drive' segment.
Keeps changing. As long as you don't get one of the bad models (IBM 75GXP, older Maxtors and WDs etc), you're probably ok, though.
There is absolutly no point in putting a drive with 8MB of cache or some insane RPM in any computer Mac or PC unless it has an ATA-100 or better interface. The same goes for Firewire, original firewire just does not have the umph to service these high end drives.
The computer in question here, a beige G3 will derive absolutly no benefit from a special high end drive because of it's ancient IDE interface.
It's like putting high octane gas in your lawn mower, it isn't going to make the slightest differance.
I thought the original IDE ATA1 (or whatever) interface supports 33MB/sec? If so, I think Altivec_2.0 will see a performance gain going from and old 40GB drive to a new 60GB/bigger cache one.
As far as the Hardware manufactures go. IBM used to be the best, but after the Deskstar fiasco it's hard to trust their quality. Seagate is the best now in my opinion. With Western Digital right behind and Maxtor and IBM bringing up the rear. Granted, I've only had one HD crash on me ... ever. It was a 2GB no-name brand that was in my Packard Hell. I currently have a bunch of drives too. I have a 60GB Western Digital, a 80GB Seagate, a 10GB Maxtor, and two 10GB Seagates, and a 15GB that I can't remember the manufacture of off the top of my head.
Comments
What I"m doing is getting the crappy Maxtor 40GB out of my Classic G3. It's been making clanking noises and really loud high pitch sounds. Seems like a good time to replace it before it dies. Then I'll have a back up drive also just incase something would happen to the WD, which I don' think will because there drives are pretty top notch.
Samsung drives are really cheap and have a three year warranty.
Highly recommended
Make sure you have a backup, though. WD drives are fairly good, but not the best. I would say they are about on par with Maxtor, with IBM/Hitachi being better and Seagate being the best, among consumer IDE drives.
Don't know about Samsung, never used one.
A few years ago, Maxtor was trash, Seagate was OK, Quantum was better, and WD was king. Then, a bit later, IBM was trash (the DeathStar 75GXP series), Quantum was dead, WD sucked (noisy unreliable drives), Seagate was OK, and Maxtor was king.
Now, Seagate has the best drives (the smooth and silent Barracuda IV, for example), IBM and Hitachi merged and make pretty good drives, and Maxtor and WD are battling it out in the 'bargain drive' segment.
Keeps changing. As long as you don't get one of the bad models (IBM 75GXP, older Maxtors and WDs etc), you're probably ok, though.
-robo
The computer in question here, a beige G3 will derive absolutly no benefit from a special high end drive because of it's ancient IDE interface.
It's like putting high octane gas in your lawn mower, it isn't going to make the slightest differance.
Originally posted by Gargoyle
you do realise that maxtor bought quantum and still use the "good stuff" from the quantum drives?
Yes. That's part of the reason that Maxtor went from being 'teh suck' to being 'teh win', or at least, 'teh not so suck'
-robo
- ATA-66 supports 66MB/sec (ATA mode 3)
- ATA-100 supports 100MB/sec (ATA mode 5)
- Etc.
I'm not 100% sure of the modes though.
As far as the Hardware manufactures go. IBM used to be the best, but after the Deskstar fiasco it's hard to trust their quality. Seagate is the best now in my opinion. With Western Digital right behind and Maxtor and IBM bringing up the rear. Granted, I've only had one HD crash on me ... ever. It was a 2GB no-name brand that was in my Packard Hell. I currently have a bunch of drives too. I have a 60GB Western Digital, a 80GB Seagate, a 10GB Maxtor, and two 10GB Seagates, and a 15GB that I can't remember the manufacture of off the top of my head.