Maxors are good. You'll get step by step instructions and a disk with the HD. It will show you how to format and partition the HD. Is the HD gonna be a 5400 or 7200 rpm drive? 100 bucks for a 40 GB sounds a little high for me unless it's 7200 rpm. I got an 80 GB 5400 rpm Diamondmax for 100 bucks w/rebates from CompUSA few months ago.

I used a Western Digital Hard drive I got from best buyb about a yea ago when I was setting up my first win2k server (replacing some shit linux box) while making alot of changes to my network.

I spent a few days of midnight ops, as the net couldn't be down during daylight and preferably after 9 at night.  

A few days later,
I sat back and marveled at my creation, and how everyting now worked.

The 4 day old drive went click click click click click click.....[pissed]

Not that I go around talkin smack about hard drives all the time, but I will never again buy a Western Digital hardrive...

I hear al the time that Maxtor and WD Drives are good, but I have seen manny a maxtor and WD drives go bad, however, I have seen very few seagate or IBM drives go bad...

I woudln't worry about 5400 vs 7200 RPM drives, I have used both, and see no real difference, other than numbers in benchmarkin tests.
Same with the higher speced RAM...unless you are runnign some realy time-sensitive software...stick with the tried and true...

I got all this shit for my home machine, and didn't really notice much of a dfference.

That last 15-20% of performance is always the most expensive.

Just my .03 cents (I get an extra cent cuz I work in this feild [:D])

www.newegg.com

usually the cheapest (reputable) place to find most computer related stuff.

You should be able to get 40GB easily for less than $100.

If the drive crashed after 2 years, contact maxtor and see if it is still under warranty. Most drives before october of this year had 3 or 5 year warranties on them.

One thing to note, as of October this year... only the manufacturers special edition (higher priced or better features) drives will now carry more than 1 year warranty. I'd go with western digital "special edition" 8MB buffered drive so that you get the 3 year warranty, instead  of 1 year.

Also, what are the symptoms of the dead drive? Is it making a clicking noise, or just failing to spin up? There may be a chance maxtor or a HD repair company can recover the platters (and your data).

Good luck!

to add to bign's post:

Our network where I work (and manage) consists of a mere 22 computers now...

In that time, I've had 2 IBM failures, and at home I've had one Segate and one Maxtor fail. One of the ones at home was my fault for taking it apart and trying to put a clear plexiglass cover on...heh.

Hard drives nowadays aren't very reliable to begin with. Especially if you don't keep them cool (have a case intake fan right in front of it to keep air circulating).

The clicking noise is most often caused by a chip on the circuit board overheating and dying... it then can't tell the arm where to go on the platter(s)... so the arm just bangs against the side of the HD, and bounces back repeatedly.

My suggestion is that if you actually need to keep some vital piece(s) of information, either have a mirrored drive, or back up frequently to zip/jaz/cd/dvd. Cause (IM0) hard drives aren't that reliable. Plus, you sometimes have to worry about corruption/viruses/friends kids messing up your data.

Anyhow... I'll give you another $0.01, bign... make that 4 cents!

I use Maxtor's almost exclusively. Never had a problem with one (well, just one problem, but I caused it - I broke off the power connector).



You can get great prices on HDD's at [url]www.gogocity.com[/url]

Edited to add: they currently have 30GB for $61 and a 40GB for $77.

Bign, You sure it wasn't Win2K that pooped on Your hard drive ?? [}:D]

Actually, 100 bucks for a 40 Gig DOES sound a bit high. And, as for My home use, as well as the machines I manage, I don't really see any advantage to one brand over another. IMHO, I don't really think there's any one brand that's fail proof. I usually buy what's cheapest at the time. I would suggest buying the cheapest brand You can find, then take that extra money You saved, buy some cd-rw's, and back up that data. Just My 1 1/2 cents.

Before buying anything computer related I always check here for rebates and coupons.  I've gotten a few bucks off here and there up to like 200 bucks off the dig cam I bought 2 years ago.

[url]http://www.techbargains.com/[/url]

Near the bottom of the page is a Maxtor 80G 7200 8M cache drive for 140 minus a $20 rebate plus free shipping.

As for what brand?  This is one of those things that everyone will have different experiences on.  I've never had a problem with my WD and it's 3 maybe 4 years old now.  Then again I build my own comps so the drives are cooled well and taken care of.  There's a lot to be said for just keeping the vents clean on your system.

But any of the suggestions already given would do.  Maxtor or WD will do ya.

Yeah its more of a Ford chevy argument when it comes down to it.

My shop in the Corps had about 130+ machines and WD and Maxtors seemed to be the worst, but that was 3+ years ago, I'm sure the quality changes with each design.

Glad cooling came up, my last home machine sounded like a 747 taking off with scsi drives, a pull fan in the front, push fan back, and video card fan, and a small fan between the drives...and a HUGE 3 fan heatsink and fan on the slot 1 celeron 300 that was overclocked to 450...When I got a 500 mhz PIII cheap from a friend, it ran the same, my gaming experience was just about the same. Negligible differnce.

Asfor 5400 vs 7200, my neighbor spends a shitload of money on a regular basis on his machines, and has tried both drives in the same machine, and noticed no difference in his loading, including his gaming experience.  I felt kinda guilty cuz I'm the one that told him about the 7200s being faster.  

The 2k server I was talking about was a file server/ VPN server/norton server/dns/print server/etc... Tha network is about 20 clients give or take depending on the contracts we're on at any given time...plus several regular VPN clients...Not high stress being that hardly anyone uses file server...The IBM drives in it has been perfect, as well as the 7 IBM drives in my raid array on my linux pop3 mailserver...

But back to the subject, I would spring for one of those drive fans either that mounts on the bottom the drive or the one that mounts in front.  I gots em on my scsi drives at the house.  To be honest I'm kinda disappointed in the u160 drives, both 10K rpms...  For the money I would've gone with the 133 ata 5400 or 7200.  Good thing the u160 card was given to me by a friend.

But cool the whole damn case, and make sure there is a processor fan on that thing while you're at it...I've seen several gateways that just have a fan blowing from the rear of the case kinda over the heatsink...

ramble mode off.....[:d]

Actually CDRWs are nortoriously proned to fail...I've had several folks try and use them for backup applications, and quit because they constantly get corrupted and need re-formatting...
I've heard many cases of this....   I'd just make sure I had important data in more than one place...I do use CDR's for "milestone" type backups of important data even the good ones are cheaper than dirt...and of course tape on the severs...

Hmm.....I've never had a cd-rw fail.I've tried a few brands, and found them all reliable. Now that the prices are coming down on DVD +/- RW drives and discs, that becomes another option.

But, I agree....2 copies whenever You can (stored in 2 seperate locations). And bit for bit, tape is the way to go.

I'm waiting on those DVDs to get cheaper myself.

Right now I'm in software quality/database admin for my gubmint client and in networking for my contractor; our configuration management department (read offical software library) has specifically prohibited CDRW media for reliability issues!  We do DOD software...