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Hard Disks

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PCQ Bureau
New Update
Year Winner
2000 Seagate
1999 Seagate
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This year has seen major price cuts in hard drives, along

with increase in capacity and performance. 5,400 rpm drives remained the

standard for most of the year, but that seems to be changing with prices of

7,200 rpm drives also coming down. This jump in speed automatically boosts your

PC’s performance. Hard disk capacities have been doubling in the

Hard Disks

User's Choice Club  UPI
Seagate 100
Samsung 18

past year. The entry level started off at 2 GB, quickly moved

to 4 GB and is now at 8 GB. Home PCs are already shipping with 10 GB drives.

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We introduced hard drives into the User’s Choice Club for

the first time last year. At that time, many new players had entered the market.

The winner then was Seagate, and it continues to top the charts this year as

well. Samsung continues to be the runner up as well, though its UPI rating has

slipped down a few points.

Strangely, other brands which are quite popular the world

over–like IBM, Maxtor, Quantum, etc, haven’t been able to rake up enough

points to enter the User’s Choice Club.

Seagate is also the brand that showed the highest number

among the hard disks currently owned by the respondents–both among the

corporate community and in households. Samsung was a very distant second.

Quality, service or support, and reliability seem to be the

top selection criteria for hard drives. Perhaps this has been triggered by

continuous innovation in hard drives. Last year, it was the jump from UltraATA/33

to the UltraATA/66 interface, which gave burst transfer rates of 66 MB/sec to a

hard drive. Then, there was the transition from glass to aluminum for platters.

This year, we’ve heard that even the aluminum platter will be replaced by

plastic, which in turn will reduce the cost of hard drives even further. Wonder

what they’ll use next.

Last year, service or support was not such a major issue. However, it seems

to be an important criterion for choosing hard drives this year. Wonder what

will "spin up" next year.

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