Livin' Large

Drive Reliability

Hard drive failures were common about a decade ago, but reliability has improved considerably since then. Most of today's drives are rated for many years of service, and in most cases the drives that do fail were damaged from a bump or a fall during shipping. Manufacturers have been working hard to protect drives from such hazards with shock-resistant designs and special packaging. Seagate's SeaShell, for example, is a plastic shell designed to offer extra bump-and-drop protection for a drive after you remove it from the foam packaging in its shipping box and before you install it in your PC.

But don't let the improved reliability of today's hard drives lull you into complacency about backing up your data. Drives still fail, and accidents do happen. To learn all about backup devices, media, and strategies, see " Hassle-Free Backups" in our October 2000 issue.

Inside the Box

If you decide to spring for a new hard drive, you'll probably have the pleasure of installing it yourself. Though the project isn't especially difficult, it does require patience, some tools, and intermediate-level familiarity with the innards of your computer. For step-by-step instructions, see our July 2000 Upgrade Guide.

The manufacturers represented in our roundup package their drives in upgrade kits that include step-by-step installation instructions, mounting brackets, a cable, and software that automates formatting the new drive and transferring data from the old one. We applaud one new trend: Every drive we tested this year had its all-important jumper settings clearly marked on the unit. And Seagate goes a step further, printing basic installation instructions right on the drive.

All the upgrade kits we examined provided good to excellent setup software, though Maxtor and Seagate had the best setup utilities. Maxtor's MaxBlast Plus runs from a bootable DOS floppy disk; Seagate's DiscWizard runs within Windows. Both utilities analyze your existing setup before you physically install the new hard drive, and they print out installation instructions based on the configuration of your PC (for example, the number of IDE devices you have). After you've installed the new drive, the software partitions and formats it when you restart your PC. (For more on partitioning, see " Managing Your Hard Drive.")

Seagate and IBM use a customized version of Ontrack's Disk Manager DiskGo. The utility runs in Windows before you install the drive, and it provides both graphics and text to guide you through setup. Like the Maxtor and Seagate utilities, DiskGo finishes the job after you hook up the drive and restart your computer. DiskGo is effective, but Maxtor's and Seagate's setup utilities are still slightly easier to use.

Western Digital's installation software, dubbed EZ-Install, is adequate, but it's not as helpful as the utilities from the other drive makers. For example, EZ-Install doesn't perform any preinstallation analysis of your system, and it doesn't provide customized instructions.

One caveat: If your computer was made before January 1998, its BIOS probably doesn't directly support drives larger than 8.4GB. Fortunately, the software packages with all the hard drives we tested include a driver that provides a workaround. Nevertheless, don't install this driver if you don't need it. The driver writes proprietary data to your Master Book Record and may prevent you from installing some other drive-management software, such as partitioning utilities. It may also prevent drive-imaging utilities from working correctly.

In addition to software, we also evaluated the documentation that came with each hard drive. Western Digital provides a very thorough printed installation manual, and Maxtor includes a handy foldout poster. Seagate provides both an installation guide and a manual to complement the basic instructions printed on the drive, and IBM includes a richly illustrated and comprehensive setup manual as well as complete technical reference documentation (although most users likely won't need the detailed information it contains).

If You Get Stuck

All the hard drive makers have come a long way in providing Web-based support. But just as with installation software, Maxtor and Seagate lead the competition with generous online offerings, including step-by-step troubleshooting guides, detailed answers to frequently asked questions, and advanced technical documents. Both also offer downloads of diagnostic software you can run if you suspect something is wrong with your new drive. Seagate adds online troubleshooting and automated phone- and fax-based support.

If you really get stuck, you can always pick up the phone and call tech support. All the companies except Seagate offer toll-free phone assistance from a live person. Seagate's support calls are on your dime (its automated phone support is toll-free). With only one of these drives do you pay a fee for tech support: Western Digital provides just 30 days of free support for its $119 WD Protégé drive, but you can purchase lifetime coverage for an additional $15. Hours and days for tech support vary (see our features chart).

We gauged each company's tech support with two calls. First we asked what IDE cable we should install the drive on and how we should set the jumper. Then we purposely failed to fully insert the IDE cable and asked why the drive was not functioning. We were pleased to find that, without exception, we got through quickly and received accurate answers.

Making Choices

How did we choose our Best Buys? The PC World Test Center's extensive evaluations did detect some differences in drive performance. We also compared the hard drives' price, upgrade-kit quality, and tech support policies. There isn't a drive here that we wouldn't recommend. But for overall value, Maxtor's DiamondMax Plus 60 ($300) wins our Best Buy among 7200-rpm drives, offering excellent performance and a good user experience for a fair price. Maxtor wins again in the 5400-rpm drive category with its 40.9GB DiamondMax VL 40 ($180). Both drives also offer a reasonable cost per gigabyte.

But it would be hard to go wrong with any of these drives. While our test results vary, the drives are more alike than different: All use similar components and the same basic technologies, which have proved to be very reliable. As IDC senior analyst David Reinsel sums it up: "Everyone is building a good-quality drive."