# Bare drive vs full drive?



## Russ88765 (Jan 19, 2011)

Have a couple questions regarding drives:

1. Do bare drives need to be formatted as well as full drives?
2. Is this a good drive to get? 
3. Is setup(formatting, installing windows 7, checking for doa, etc) more difficult on a bare drive as opposed to the full one?
4. If I get the bare drive, will I be able to connect it with just what came with my motherboard?


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## StrangleHold (Jan 19, 2011)

1. If you dont partition and format it, what else would you do with it. If you format a full drive it will erase everything on it (so to speak).

2. Dont like Hitachi drives. Better off getting a W/D black, Samsung F3 or Seagate 7200.12

3. No not really.

4. Just need a IDE/SATA cable and power connector Molex/SATA from the power supply.


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## voyagerfan99 (Jan 19, 2011)

Only difference between a full drive and a bare drive is the bare drive is just what it says. It doesn't come with cables, formatting software, screws,box, manual, etc.


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## Demilich (Jan 19, 2011)

I've never had a problem with Hitachi, but some people dislike them. Some people swear by Western Digital; some people dislike them. I have 1 of both of those brands. Never had a problem with either. It really depends on what you're looking for in a drive. What use does your computer serve?


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## Russ88765 (Jan 19, 2011)

voyagerfan99 said:


> Only difference between a full drive and a bare drive is the bare drive is just what it says. It doesn't come with cables, formatting software, screws,box, manual, etc.



That stuff sounds really important. How would I format and install it without these things? 



Demilich said:


> I've never had a problem with Hitachi, but some people dislike them. Some people swear by Western Digital; some people dislike them. I have 1 of both of those brands. Never had a problem with either. It really depends on what you're looking for in a drive. What use does your computer serve?



I'm building it for gaming, web browsing, music production, etc. A ssd isn't in the budget at the moment though, so I want one drive for everything. I think a terabyte will be more than big enough considering i'll be keeping music, movies, and game libraries on there. If I can find a better deal on a 2tb though I suppose I would go with that.


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## Demilich (Jan 19, 2011)

Well, I would go for that Hitach drive because, according to the Newegg website, the drive has a 3 year warranty, and it supports SATA 3. I don't know how you can go wrong with that. Maybe the other posters would disagree, that's fine. But for me, I would go with the Hitachi. Not too much of a risk with that warranty, and I'm sure you can send it back within a reasonable amount of time, if needed.

I believe some people can forget that the products are warranted, thus causing that customer to think that that particular brand is terrible.


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## FairDoos (Jan 19, 2011)

Id prefer a Samsung F3 drive i have many and they havent failed me once


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## voyagerfan99 (Jan 19, 2011)

Russ88765 said:


> That stuff sounds really important. How would I format and install it without these things?



It's not important at all. Motherboards come with plenty of cables (unless it's a pre-built machine. Then you can just buy a $2 cable), and if you wanted to formatting/diag software you can just download it from the manufacturer website.

As far as formatting, when you install an operating system, it asks to format the drive and it does. If you're just looking to add more storage space, you can go into the drive properties of the OS you're running and format it under the OS disk management.

And if you're worried about drive failure, go Western Digital. Scorpio Blue drives carry a three year warranty and Scorpio Black drives carry a five year warranty.


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## The_Other_One (Jan 19, 2011)

I have that drive in my NAS and a 500GB version in my desktop.  Both drives have been fine.  I know once my NAS was complaining the drive had degraded, but I scanned it and everything was fine.  After resetting everything, the drive has been running perfectly ever since.

I know most people aren't fond of "Deathstar" drives, but I've really got nothing bad to say about mine.  They're relatively fast, quite, don't run too hot...  If money permits, I'd probably suggest a Seagate 7200.12 or WD Caviar Black (NOT the blue or green!) but Hitachi does seem to have some pretty stable desktop drive.


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## JHM (Jan 21, 2011)

Here's my two cents on HDDs. The *BEST* was Maxtor. Maybe not the fastest, but from my experience by far the most reliable. What basis do I have to say that ? I setup SUPERPUPPY 3, which was an overclocked AT machine, using "WPCredit". For those of you who don't know it "WPCredit" is a program that allows you to access *ALL* of the "Chipset Settings", - about 20,000 of them. Using said program enables one to drastically speedup a computer in a number of ways, because the settings the mobo manufacturers use are geared more for stability and reliability no matter how crappy the various items of peripheral hardware being used might be. (RAM, HDDs, CD Drives, etc.). and they can't put all of them in the bios..

SUPERPUPPY 3 is a 618 MHz AT machine running a WIN98-SE -- WINXP-PRO dualboot and for practical purposes it seems to be almost as fast as this 2.4GHz Quadcore machine. When I was using "WPCredit" to mess with the chipset settings, to find out which ones I wanted to use, I must have abruptly crashed SP3 a couple of hundred times. Testing my HDDs afterwards, (1x20 Gig Maxtor 7200 RPM Boot Drive and 2x40 Gig WD 7200 RPM storage drives), with "TESTHDD" which is a program that shows you a graph of which sectors are damaged but still readable, (and showing the extent of damage as well), on the entire drive being tested, I found that both WDs were damaged, but NOT the Maxtor. It had no damage whatsoever.


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## Russ88765 (Jan 21, 2011)

JHM said:


> Here's my two cents on HDDs. The *BEST* was Maxtor. Maybe not the fastest, but from my experience by far the most reliable. What basis do I have to say that ? I setup SUPERPUPPY 3, which was an overclocked AT machine, using "WPCredit". For those of you who don't know it "WPCredit" is a program that allows you to access *ALL* of the "Chipset Settings", - about 20,000 of them. Using said program enables one to drastically speedup a computer in a number of ways, because the settings the mobo manufacturers use are geared more for stability and reliability no matter how crappy the various items of peripheral hardware being used might be. (RAM, HDDs, CD Drives, etc.). and they can't put all of them in the bios..
> 
> SUPERPUPPY 3 is a 618 MHz AT machine running a WIN98-SE -- WINXP-PRO dualboot and for practical purposes it seems to be almost as fast as this 2.4GHz Quadcore machine. When I was using "WPCredit" to mess with the chipset settings, to find out which ones I wanted to use, I must have abruptly crashed SP3 a couple of hundred times. Testing my HDDs afterwards, (1x20 Gig Maxtor 7200 RPM Boot Drive and 2x40 Gig WD 7200 RPM storage drives), with "TESTHDD" which is a program that shows you a graph of which sectors are damaged but still readable, (and showing the extent of damage as well), on the entire drive being tested, I found that both WDs were damaged, but NOT the Maxtor. It had no damage whatsoever.



I didn't understand most of that, but I think you were trying to say Maxtor is a good brand. Since Seagate bought them out I don't think I find one too easily, but if I see something in the future maybe i'll give it a try. Might try the Hitachi, and if it sucks I guess it doesn't matter because i'm putting my stuff in online storage anyway.


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## Demilich (Jan 21, 2011)

Russ88765 said:


> I didn't understand most of that, but I think you were trying to say Maxtor is a good brand. Since Seagate bought them out I don't think I find one too easily, but if I see something in the future maybe i'll give it a try. Might try the Hitachi, and if it sucks I guess it doesn't matter because i'm putting my stuff in online storage anyway.



Well remember, you should have a 30 day limited warranty, and if not, you always have that 3 year warranty.


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## 2048Megabytes (Jan 22, 2011)

In my opinion I would go with Seagate 12th generation, Western Digital, Samsung Spinpoint F3 or Samsung Spinpoint F4 hard drive.  Hitachi just is not as reliable as the a fore mentioned hard drives.

I think a hard drive should last longer than three years if it is decent quality and is not abused.


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## Demilich (Jan 22, 2011)

2048Megabytes said:


> In my opinion I would go with Seagate 12th generation, Western Digital, Samsung Spinpoint F3 or Samsung Spinpoint F4 hard drive.  Hitachi just is not as reliable as the a fore mentioned hard drives.
> 
> I think a hard drive should last longer than three years if it is decent quality and is not abused.



That's absolutely understandable. But where are your facts that Hitachi produces bad drives? (Or lower quality)


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## Drenlin (Jan 22, 2011)

Actually, the newer Hitachi drives with updated firmware are a big improvement over the older ones. I'd still take a Spinpoint F3/F4 or Caviar Black over one, though.


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## Russ88765 (Jan 22, 2011)

This one got some pretty good reviews:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145304

I'm just frustrated and want this build to be over so I can get on with things.


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## Demilich (Jan 22, 2011)

All companies mentioned are BBB accredited companies, and all have an A+ ,except Samsung with an A-. So, if you trust in BBB ratings, then I'm sure any drive you pick will work just fine. And if it doesn't, then any company will be more than willing to help you out, hence why they have an A+ or A-. BBB doesn't just hand A's out. As such, that tells me that if you're looking at the Hitachi, then go for the Hitachi. Or you can believe in the superstition that one brand is better than the other, (not telling you not too) and get one of the other drives. In my opinion, each brand probably use close to the same parts, and each brand will most likely last as long as the other; it's just what YOU are looking for in a hard drive that is important.

An article that agrees with what I stated, but puts it into much better terms: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000260.htm


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## 2048Megabytes (Jan 22, 2011)

I do not have facts that I can produce that show Hitachi produces lower quality hard drives, but I talk to experienced members of this forum that build computers and are very familiar with computer technology.  Whenever I have listened to them they have not lead me wrong.  I have also been reading in the NewEgg feedback on Hitachi hard drives and there are some people complaining about failed drives.  There are also people complaining that Hitachi is not honoring their three year warranty.  

Think what you want but I would take the experienced technicians advice over other information.

1 terabyte hard drives seem to have higher failure rates than lower capacity hard drives. Take a look at this hard drive.  It would have about 595 gigabytes of storage space after formatting:

Western Digital Caviar Black Model WD6401AALS 640 gigabyte 7200 RPM 32 megabytes Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive - $65
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...al_hard_drive_internal-_-22-136-319-_-Product


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## Demilich (Jan 22, 2011)

2048Megabytes said:


> I do not have facts that I can produce that show Hitachi produces lower quality hard drives, but I talk to experienced members of this forum that build computers and are very familiar with computer technology.  Whenever I have listened to them they have not lead me wrong.  I have also been reading in the NewEgg feedback on Hitachi hard drives and there are some people complaining about failed drives.  There are also people complaining that Hitachi is not honoring their three year warranty.
> 
> Think what you want but I would take the experienced technicians advice over other information.
> 
> ...



Wait, you went on Newegg, and there are some people complaining about failed Hitachi disk drives? Strange, I went on some Western Digital disk drives, and found the same issues. I also found the same issues on the Samsung disk drives. As with Seagate. You just proved to me exactly what I posted earlier:

Is one hard disk drive better than another?

"This can be a debated question; however, all answers generated are based on the user's experience that you ask. Users that tend to like one manufacturer when compared to another generally have had a better experience with that manufacturer."

"Computer Hope has had good and bad luck with almost every manufacturer and does not believe that one manufacturer is better than another. We believe that every company can experience issues with their products regardless of the name of that manufacturer. *When purchasing a hard disk drive, you can base your purchase off of other individual's experience or the overall specifications and available options of the hard disk drive you may be interested in*."


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## Drenlin (Jan 23, 2011)

Regardless of the reliability of the drive, Hitachi drives ARE slower than Samsung F3 and WD Black drives. So are Seagate 7200.12's, though not by as much. Given that the hard drive's speed has the biggest impact on everyday computer use, I'd say it's well worth the extra $10 for the much faster Spinoint F3 drive.


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## Demilich (Jan 23, 2011)

Drenlin said:


> Regardless of the reliability of the drive, Hitachi drives ARE slower than Samsung F3 and WD Black drives. So are Seagate 7200.12's, though not by as much. Given that the hard drive's speed has the biggest impact on everyday computer use, I'd say it's well worth the extra $10 for the much faster Spinoint F3 drive.



That is a valid point.


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## FuryRosewood (Jan 23, 2011)

ive owned quite a few hitachi drives...honestly only WD drives i own are in my laptop, and now ill be booting off a WD Blue, replacing my 3 year old Hitachi Sata 1 Drive when i change out my motherboard and ram, ive found their drives pretty reliable, only lost 1 drive in the 5 years i have worked on computers...they replaced it and now i have it running in a clients machine along with another 500 gig hitachi, in a raid 1 just to be certain if it does bust, i can replace and get him rolling without any downtime, or at least data loss. but the sata 1 hitachi im replacing is not unreliable, just some of the data coming from the drive says its reaching some undesirable limits, its power on hours count exceeded the average limits according to speedfan...but im not really concerned about the drive failing, it has no bad sectors or anything alarming.


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## Russ88765 (Jan 23, 2011)

I guess I could give the Samsung a shot, even though it's a bare drive. Just thought I could save some money with Hitachi, but I read a rather alarming article on the Deskstar series so that kinda gave me a push in another direction. Samsung appears to be the next cheapest drive so what do I have to lose eh.


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