Advice requested.......

[Kougar]

I don't mean testing it with a program, I had meant actually looking at the specific SMART values from the drive, sorry. From my experience all the drive diagnostic tools are pretty much either "works" or "doesn't work" since if they claim otherwise then they must give an RMA regardless. Speedfan presents the actual SMART data to you in a very convenient format for us lazy folk. They also compare the detected values to those values reported from identical drive models. It was much easier to understand than linux, IMHO!

The single CompUSA here closed down two weeks ago... I missed the last day for the best deals, but they were out of drives long long ago, despite having two walls of them to start with. Newegg still had better prices even after the discounts on them.

 

[sbrehm72255]

I've got speedfan (latest version) around here somewhere, I'll have to load it up and see what it says..............

Thanks for the tip.......

 

[Rob Williams]

You could also use smartctl if it's installed under Linux:

smartctl -a /dev/sda

That would need root though, or "sudo" preceding the command might work also. The full SMART information would be displayed near the end of the output.

 

[sbrehm72255]

I'll give that a try as well..............

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[sbrehm72255]

Quick question out there for all the HD experts.....

Has any of you used the 7200.11 ES series of Seagate HD, I'm wanting a 250gb drive with the 32mb cache and it seems that the only drive Seagate makes with that amount of cache and storage size is their ES series which is Seagates server class drives.

Anyways, I'm just wondering how loud the drive might be.

 

[Greg King]

I have used ES drives in the past. They are slightly louder from what I have noticed but nothing that should persuade you to not purchase one over another.

 

[sbrehm72255]

Cool, thanks.......

I think I'll order one later on today then.

 

[Rob Williams]

The 7200.11 series in itself is fantastic. The 32MB of cache can sometimes deliver noticeable results. There have been a few times when I've copied a reasonable file (50Mb), and it copied so fast that a prompt didn't even show face.

Why and how that happens, I'm unsure, but it's happened to me on more than one occasion.

 

[sbrehm72255]

Sounds great, my old WD (the one causing troubles) seems to take its sweet time writing, so there may be more issues with it than I'm aware of.
Replacing the drive just might improve the overall performance for my system.......

 

[Rob Williams]

If that's the case, you WILL notice a rather significant difference (I hope). I don't see a huge difference between a new 7200.10 and 7200.11, except for those light copies that I mentioned.