On 23 Apr 98 at 23:27, Roxanne Pierce wrote:

> So, what should the average consumer-level person be told to look for when
> scanning advertisements for "great deals" on hard drives?

  My top requirement is that the specs (heads, tracks, etc.) and
jumper settings be printed on the drive itself.  I've had too many
components get separated from scraps of paper during their
lifetimes....

  I'm usually on a limited budget, so I'm usually looking at EIDE,
and a larger drive means postponing the day I need to buy the next
one.  So I tend to look at size/$ -- at any given time, hard drives
will be available at 4 or 5 size points, and usually the third or
fourth offers the best "bang for the buck".

  All else being equal, I might then look at access speeds, and (more
importantly, IMHO) cache sizes.  I'm very unlikely to buy a brand
that I haven't used before, or one that I've seen lots of people
(such as on PCBUILD...) report problems with.
  At the moment, I have drives from Seagate, Maxtor, Samsung,
Fujitsu, IBM and Quantum, and am happy with all of them.  I've had
bad experience with Micropolis[*], and heard bad reports of JTS.

[*] Micropolis is no longer in business, but you may still find hot
deals on close-out stock....

David G