Lots of computer geeks tend to be fanatical about certain brands. We call them fanboys.

Have you checked to see if maybe he's a Samsung retailer/repairer?

I don't know the total absolute ins and outs of hardware, but I do have a friend who's finished his masters in computer science and is working on his PhD in it. He's head IT for a large hospital, and any time he builds a computer or replaces an HD, he uses WD drives, even in his own computers.

FWIW, I just pulled a 60GB WD out of my old Dell, to move it to my gaming rig as a second drive. It's still going strong after 5 years of heavy use. It was only reformatted once, and defragged maybe once a year.

WHY???

What's his experience with those drives? Has he only used Samsung/ld and loved them or did he only use Maxtor/Plextor/wd and have bad experiences with them?

Is he backing up his suggestions with any sort of data or does he say that "he's heard bad things" from other ppl?

Plextor? I love that company. They've been tops for many years in the burning category.

These days, drives are so damn cheap, I say buy one of each. Record onto one of them and back that data up on the other two or three. When the first one crashes, replace it with one of the brands that hasn't crashed.

I'm with McCheese. For no particularly good reason, I've used Maxtors and WD drives for over a decade with no worry and never needing to replace-- only changing drives to change storage capacity.

Also for no particularly good reason, I've had better luck with Sony burners than with anything else. My dad's LG that I got him for Christmas last year has been fine, though, so no complaints about LG either.

Hard drives have silly-long warranties for the most part (3 to 5 years, and some with a 1-year quick-replacement clause), and the old advice is true: If it's going to fail outside of normal wear-and-tear, it'll happen within the first month anyhow.

Hard drive technology is fairly equally developed throughout the different companies. If the price difference is substantial, don't bother being swayed by his advice. But if the price is the same, then Samsung certainly isn't a "bad" company... you could just get it to keep him off your back. LG burners are in the lower price (not quality, just price) bracket, too, so I wouldn't sweat it for that, either.

Greg

i am not an IT expert at all... but somehow agree with Mc Cheese...

i do not think that samsung or LG are particular bad and totally unsusable brands, but WD, Maxtor and especially Plextor are brands which are in millions of comps worldwide since decades...

i mean that i can say from myself that minimum 70% of people i know do have one of those (including Seagate) brands in their mashines... working.

and definetely, to me undoubtly Plextor burners are not to be beaten at all... that doesn't mean that others not being able to burn a disk ;-)

my 2cents.

you should ask the dealer if he gets some sort of points or interest when he sells up certain brands... maybee they have to many of them in stock and need clearance...

p.s. i have one maxtor system HD in an old mac being over 7 years old performing fantastic under heavy daily use... no lie!!

hehehe, last I checked, Sony burners are rebranded Lite-On products. You're paying extra for the Sony tag. Yet another reason to hate Sony.

I've been using maxtors for probably 10 years with no issuses- to me they are just fine- :D

McCheese wrote: hehehe, last I checked, Sony burners are rebranded Lite-On products. You're paying extra for the Sony tag. Yet another reason to hate Sony.

Heheh! No big surprise. Didn't pay extra, though, it was one of the cheapest burners they had at the store!

Lite-on is now part of Gateway...seems like everyone is "in bed."

Oh, I just went into a computer store and the "expert" there was all-knowing. When I asked him why his 512 MB notebook RAM cost $200 but the same RAM at NewEgg costs $39 he stated:

"Well, they buy in bulk" (I'd hate to point out to this faithful Best Buy employee that his company is like 30 trillion times the size of NewEgg - I'm certain Best Buy gets a "bulk discount" too... Well, I did point this out to him."

Furthermore, he went on to reply:

"Well, NewEgg probably buys "Second-Tier" RAM, not like our premium RAM."

I looked crossly at this half-testicled nit-wit and said...
"Hmmm, I don't know about that."

To which he replied:
"Oh, I worked at IBM for 8 years. I DO know about that."

I let the conversation die there because it was obvious that JP22 was now working at this Best Buy and pointing out to this creton that he was nothing more than a fart stain in the underpants of life would be a waste of breath!

My point is - people who work at computer stores aren't experts at computers. They're great tag readers. If they were experts at computers, they would be engineers at my government contracting firm or any of countless other public and private corporations. They're in sales because of their education? Nope. Last time I checked, MIT didn't have a BS in Sales.

I will say, I like my Samsung quiet drives. However, I've got no less than 30 hard drives in my studio ranging in size from 800 MB to 400 GB and ranging in age from just under 10 years to still in the box. I've only ever had a problem with one - an IBM deskstar (which at the time was considered the SHIZ-NIT). One of the chips on the paddle blew. New paddle and I was back up and running.

As for the Plextor thing - now I know he's a nitwit. Plextors are still great drives - they're not outsourced as rumor has it (I contacted Plextor directly - they handed me off to their PR firm who confirmed that their drives are made in house to the same exacting tolerances that they always have been.)

Just my obviously humble thoughts...

J.

Yeah, I went to best buy looking for a flash drive, they wanted $80 for a 1GB ON SALE. I got a Viking 1GB off newegg for $40 with the $20 mail-in rebate. The only thing I bought at Best Buy was a PC game and some CD's.

Our local Best Buy use to have a lot of "know it alls" working there. They knew EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING and when you would ask a simple question they would look at you like you were something that stuck to their shoe at the local mall parking lot. I have to say they have a new management team and all those people are slowly going away. They are being replaced by people that you can talk to and will answer questions. They also have a new rule 30 feet/30 seconds which basically means that if they are within 30 feet of a customer they have to greet that customer within 30 seconds. There is a very nice attitude at the store and I hope it continues. I talked to one of the mangers and he told me that this is a company wide thing and that they are "trying to be a knowledgeable friend" to the customers.

Only time and the bottom line will tell if this new scenario is working well.

On the other hand all the salesman from Best Buys all got jobs at the local CompUSA and they are so snooty they won't even condescend to talk to you unless you are going to buy something. Talk about a really bad attitude....

I use Plextors and WD drives and Samsung Drives and even have a couple of Maxtor's around somewhere and just purchased a new Seagate drive for a computer I built for my niece. Keep the drives cool, keep them well defragged and they all seem to work well.

If anything I could see him talking about Plextors just being plain loud when loading a CD. That they are notorious for but otherwise no performance issues in any regards.

I work for Sony Pictures now as an IT guy and we use WD drives in just about all systems with no problems.

Typically IBM deskstar drives(nicknamed Deathstar) are notorious for simply becoming useless but some people have had no problems with them. I guess it's just a matter of luck but in the long run any drive should work fine as long as your system is working ok and there's no power issues or what not.

Everybody has a preference as others have stated as to what drives they like and recommend.

Maxtors are unpopular amongst computer enthousiasts for a couple of "reasons".

They are loud. Why do I see so many DAWs with Maxtors?
They have short warranty. Yes they did for a couple of years, but it is now 36 months.
They fail often. My Maxtors have lasted longer than a WD and Seagate that failed on me.

If I go over to Anandtech or so, you can see the vibe in any of the comments on a storage review.

Mr. Cheese is right.

This audio tech guy I know was saying one time that he didn't like Plextor, but I think he just didn't like all the extra options that have a possibility to mess things up if the operator doesn't know what they are doing. Mainly referring to that SecuRec copy protection thing, I believe. I love mine. I have a Sony that has done me well, but you can't beat having Plextools handy.
It seems like that last CD drive that died in one of my computers was a Samsung, but I'm not sure. I use a tower full of them, though, and it has been pretty good.
I use WD and Seagate harddrives. I am a bit wary of Maxtors, but I have no logical reason to be that way. :?

Maxtors are loud?

News to me. When I first got into building my own DAW, the computer I was putting together had just its system drive, which was a Maxtor. After moving to a "silent" case (nothing miraculous, just an Antec Sonata and a few key tweaks) I decided it was time to add my second drive, which turned out to be a WD.

No joke, the WD was twice as loud (OK, OK, I didn't measure) as the Maxtor. I tried it with the Maxtor turned off (so that I wasn't just being fooled by there being 2 drives running at once) and reached the same conclusion.

With only the Maxtor, I wouldn't have bothered with doing an elastic suspension system for my drives. I liked the Antec drive trays plenty! But with the addition of the WD, there was no choice.

A while ago when I added an external drive enclosure to house a desktop HDD, I just grabbed whatever they had. Can't even remember what it was... lessee here... ... a Seagate. It's the noisiest drive of all, but I can't put it into an elastic suspension so that might be an unfair comparison. ;)

Greg

note on the side, news from last month:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/21/1311235&from=rss

it seems to me that the lifetime of a hdd depends on the production series.
i ve got 2 ibm deskstars both 120 gig. one of them just died recently, seems to be stuck :/
anyway, the other one works fine. i bought the drives with a gap of year or something (is this english?). well, i never cared which one was the newer one and now i dont even know which died...
but i guess those deathstars could be from one productions series which had some sort of production errors (or just more errors than other series) thus causing all those ibm drives to crash so fast....
well, just a theory i thought of five minutes :D

anyways, as said before, all the hdd manufacturers are at the same level. they differ from each other only in detail and warranty, so it comes down on the personal taste.
i prefer WD because they have the fastest sata drives out at the moment. now up to 140gb (?) of 10k rotations,but beware the noiselevel. they are awfully loud.....but fast :D

Attitude wrote: Hi Guys. Happy new year.

I was about to buy a new computer yesterday but that guy in the shop, he seems to know what he is saying, did not recommend me maxtor and wd as hd's and even said that i should stay away from plextor burners. He recommended samsung drives and lg burners. I provided him with all the info on this forum, told him what Guy and Scott say, but still he says he would have pangs of concience if he sold me maxtor or wd.

whast do you guys say to that?

thanx

Hello,

go to another dealer as fast as you can!

a few thounsand computers later and building them since September 9, 1991 I can tell you that WD, Maxtor and Plextor make great equipment.

Plextor get the 716 and up.
Anything WD works great.
The Maxtor 300GB drives with 16MB cache are just great.
Also Pioneer, SONY and NEC optical drives are good.

My best,

Guy Cefalu

Sonica Audio Labs