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ken2580

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Fry's Outpost.com has some bargining deal this week.. I dont have when it will be expire... so act fast when they still have it.

Hitachi/IBM Hard drive on sale! Rebates info for Hard Drive download here

Hitachi (IBM) 160GB UATA100 8MB Buffer Hard Drive - Retail Hard Drive Kit.
$65.00 Rebate
Boxed Hard Drives Kits - 160GB - 250GB - 7200 RPM:
For your MAC or PC
Outpost #: 3885187
Capacity: 160GB
Seek Time: 8.5ms
7200RPM
8MB Buffer
3 Year Limited Manufacturer Warranty
Price: $ 134.99
After Rebate: $ 69.99

Hitachi (IBM) 250GB UATA100 8MB Buffer Hard Drive - Retail Hard Drive Kit
$140.00 Rebate
Boxed Hard Drives Kits - 160GB - 250GB - 7200 RPM:
For your MAC or PC
Outpost #: 3983238
Capacity: 250GB
Seek Time: 8.5ms
7200RPM
8MB Buffer
3 Year Limited Manufacturer Warranty
Price: $ 249.99
After Rebate: $ 109.99

PNY 256MB Secure Digital Card - Lifetime Warranty $29.99 After Mail-In Rebate
$20.00 Rebate
Secure Digital Cards:
Outpost #: 3748906
100% compatible with all devices designed to use Secure Digital cards as standard or extended data storage
Price: $ 49.99
After Rebate: $ 29.99
Rebates Info can download here

These are the hottest deal i found lately.

Ken
 
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Got the 160. Just returned it. It doesn't support cable select and it ran way too slow to be of any use.

I'll stick with Westen Digital.
 
I've also noticed @ Fry's a lot of Hitachi HD's with return stickers on them.. Most of them tho are the drives with 2MB buffer.. It's deceiving IMO to stack the 250GB 8MB drives next to the 80GB & 160GB 2MB drives.. From the reviews I've read, the 250GB 8MB drive is a nice speedy drive and it seems that Hitachi has resolved the 'issues' that IBM gave the Deskstar series.. One should also note that IBM no longer has their HD division, Hitachi bought them out.. Similar to Maxtor & Quantum (which really t'ed me off).. Tho I'm glad IBM is out of the picture... They may make descent Laptops, but I wouldn't want much from them these days... <eof>
 
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It had an 8MB buffer.

It ran slow becaue I was adding it to a cable-select channel. You can't mix cable-select & master/slave on the same channel. I was furious when I found out that it didn't support cable-select. What a piece of junk!

From now on I will stick with Western Digital. They have been supporting cable-select for quite some time now. They seem to the "cream of the crop".
 
"I was furious when I found out that it didn't support cable-select. What a piece of junk!"


Just wondering what the big deal is if it doesn't support cable-select. Why can't you just set the jumpers to master and slave yourself? Or are you just peeved at the thought of having to.
 
Yes, I could have set my C drive to Mster. But then I would had to swap out cables, since you can't use a cable-select cable with a master/slave setup.

And there would be no guarantee that it would have worked. The drive itself may have been bad. Dell speciically says to set the new drive to cable-select. I don't care that IBM (Hitachi) sets the default on their jumpers to master, but they don't even have a setting for cable-select. In this day & age, they're just using old parts to save a buck.

Oh, and one thing I didn't mention was that the drive occasionally made a strange squeaking sound. Somehow I just wasn't getting a "warm & fuzzy" feeling if you know what I mean.
 
I got news for you.. C/S is OLD..... Not to mention it was flawed and only occasionally worked... And since when do you listen to what Dell or any other "big name" Tech Support line tells you?

"Trying to save a buck".. I don't see how that's true.. They took the POS that IBM churned out as "Quality" and made it something worth having... Who is really trying to 'save a buck' here is Dell...

I should also point out that WD 'used' to be quality, now I'm talking MANY years ago... Then they had a bad run (your 'trying to save a buck'), and IBM came to their aid.. Never noticed how alike the WD & IBM drives looked did ya?

Now to address your silly main problem... It doesn't matter which drive is Pri/Sec in the Bios anymore as WinNT/2K/XP all have their own HD Management system which will assign any drive any letter you want.. So worst case is you swap the drives on the cable, hit the bios to boot to D (Seconday) to get into Winblows, then use the management system to change the letters around.. Huge Whoop!

Also, I'll re-itterate what I said earlier... IBM is out of the picture... They're Hitachi drives... Unlike what Maxtor did with Quantum (which was good imo cuz I nabbed a few) which was take all the stocked Quantums and re-silkscreen to Maxtor and sell them off even tho they were actually Quantum made drives..

well, that's all for now...
 
There is no difference between IDE cables used for cable-select or master/slave.
 
Then explain why the drive was so slow. I tried copying a 1 gig file from a dvd to both my C drive (came with the Dell) and to the newly added K drive. With the WD it took less thn 2 minutes, but with the Hitachi it took over 10?

BTW - there is a difference between cable-select and "regular" IDE cables. Check the pin-out for pin 23 (I think it's that one). It's shorted out for the black connector and not for the gray connecter. On a regulare IDE cable no pins are shorted out.

As for listening to Dell tech support - I didn't even attempt to talk to them - gimmie a break! Bottom line is the drive didn't work - so I sent it back. I wasn't gonnna spend all day devugging it. Not that important. I'll find another good deal soon enough.

I've had good luck with WD & Seagate over the years.
 
What you're refering to is 40-pin vs 80-pin IDE cables. On the 80-pin cables, every other trace is a ground path to isolate noise between traces. This has nothing to do with cable-select but does facilitate error-free data date transmission on the IDE buss. This may have to do with your slow data exchange.
 
You are correct. By the way the pin is 28, not 23. But since 40 & 80 pin cables look basically alike, you have to take this into account.

Still dumbfounded why the drive was so slow. Came up as UDMA mode 5. Bios was right. Showed all 160 gigs, but slow as s**T!

Anyway, its in UPs's hands now.
 
If you think 40 & 80 pin cables look alike, you're blind.... Now you 'might' could use that comparison for 40pin IDE & Floppy cable, however the floppy is narrower and shorter along with the twisted bits on the end.. Also, bubbalou is correct, it has nothing to do with C/S.. It is mearly added ground paths on the cable to help against cross traffic on the wires..

Perhaps you just got a Lemon... They happen, as with all things. There's bound to be a few that are duds...
 
To the uninformed, a 40 pin dual connector ide cable could easily be confused with the 80 pin variety. Take the "chip" that's on your shoulder and put it in a PC.

I was merely informing people that the IBM/Hitachi drive does not support cable-select. No one is forcing you to use cable-select or the drive.

And yes, I'm sure I got a lemon. The noise I head was definitely the beginnings of a bearing failure.
 
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Installed a WD yesterday. Works great, same price!
 
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