Dell HD Replacement - Seagate Cuda for WD Caviar

Question

Yesterday I received a replacement from Dell for my orignal hard drive (WD 120GB Caviar SATA) that was vibrating so much so it rattled the case and made huge amounts of noise . I've only had the Dimension 8300 since mid-March, so it's fairly new. The drive exhibited the same symptoms when installed in a similar Dim8300 - so clearly it was defective. The replacement drive is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120GB SATA, already installed, cloned from the old drive, and running perfectly (thanks to Casper XP) . No vibration, and little noise other than 'rumbling' sound when the drive is active. Rumbling is the only way I can describe it. Does anyone have an opinion on whether the replacement Barracuda is a downgrade from the Caviar? Or are they equal drives in terms of relative quality and performance? And, how about that rumble? I'm assuming it's just standard for Seagate drives when performing seek operations. Thanks for any advice/opinions!

shesagordie · Answer

EliseR. The Seagate Barracuda HD is equal to the Western Digital. Bev.

TomXPS · Answer

I think the Seagate may be a bit better.   Both are good, but have two Seagates SATA drives in my XPS and they work great.   I think both the WD and Seagate have a 8 MB buffer.

EliseR · Answer

Yep TomXPS, the Cuda does has an 8MB buffer. Unlike the WD, the Seagate definitely makes the idle seek grinding sound that much has been written about. Nevertheless, I'm happy with the replacement.

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