What's The Best Hard Drive?

[Ninjastyle]

OK, I'm wanting to upgrade to a new hard drive but I know very little about them. I'm tired of hearing conflicting opinions on this -- one site tells me a certain hard drive is fast and reliable, the next tells me it's bad. Same with stores, the staff tell me the same thing and after months of searching and reading up on stuff I still have no clue.

I'm looking for a 120GB drive, it would be nice if it was quiet, but first and foremost is performace and reliability, as it's no use having a quiet drive that's gonna die or perform badly.

I currently own a 20GB SCSI drive that came with the PC and I need more space. Any help is appreciated on this one because I'm totally sick of not knowing which route to go down as no one can seem to agree on an overall best. Obviously, people's experiences are different, but there MUST BE a good, best all-round drive!

What you sayin'?

[abu_has_the_power]

well. 120 gb. hmm.... these are the good brands: maxtor, western digital, seagate, hitachi, and maybe some others. but those are the leading 3. do u want an ATA drive or a SCSI or S-ATA drive? need some details here bro

[raiserblade2003]

well, every single things on earth is going to have ppl react differently to them. not everybody is gonna like it and not everybody is gonna hate it.......ie dragonball z. but to your question. i find that western digital make very good hdd and at very low prices. you shoulda went shoppign at best buy during thanksgiving....coula picked a 120gb hdd for $50

[abu_has_the_power]

Originally posted by raiserblade2003@8 December 2003 - 22:34
well, every single things on earth is going to have ppl react differently to them. not everybody is gonna like it and not everybody is gonna hate it.......ie dragonball z. but to your question. i find that western digital make very good hdd and at very low prices. you shoulda went shoppign at best buy during thanksgiving....coula picked a 120gb hdd for $50

yea. a wd 120 gb 7200 rpm was 50 after rebate at best buy. oh well. and i think a 200 gb was 100 at office max or office depot. one of those

[raiserblade2003]

still waiting for rebates from officemax for my rams and cds. ram is free after rebates.

[_John_Lennon_]

Well, I got my Western Digital for 70 bucks after rebates, and its a 120GB, 8MB cache, 7200RPM drive, and its nice and quiet.

Also, all the drives over 137 are on ATA cards now adays, atleast im pretty sure according to the WD manual.

[abu_has_the_power]

wow. no one here likes seagate or maxtor huh? i've been using maxtor since my 1st pentium 2 comp bout 6-7 years ago. i still use maxtor until my old pc, an hp, which came with a wd. so far, i personally don't have a preference, i just get what i get. and i've gotten maxtor for a while for no reason at all. they're not bad. pretty quiet.

[Ninjastyle]

Originally posted by abu_has_the_power@9 December 2003 - 03:33
well. 120 gb. hmm.... these are the good brands: maxtor, western digital, seagate, hitachi, and maybe some others. but those are the leading 3. do u want an ATA drive or a SCSI or S-ATA drive? need some details here bro

Aw man... ATA, S-ATA, SCSI, I have no clue about all these numbers and abbreviations, that's why I'm asking! Well, put it this way, I want the best I can get for around £100 (I'm in the UK). All my current hardware (save for my Sony DRU510AK DVD RW) is pretty bad, low spec stuff right now, so I'm needing to fully upgrade everything and gradually build a whole new machine. I just wanna know what the best gear is! It doesn't even matter if the drive is compatible with the motherboard I currently use because that's gonna be upgraded too.

Some stuff *I think* I've pretty much settled on so far is:

Intel P4, 2.4 Ghz, 800 FSB CPU
MSI / Asus / Gigabyte motherboard (still undecided)
ATI 9600 graphics
M-Audio Revolution sound
512 Dual channel DDR RAM
Antec Sonata case w/ 380watt PSU

So, whatever drive is gonna work well with this kinda setup. I seem to be heading towards Western Digital drives, actually... mainly because I hear they're fast, but then again, two workers in separate stores told me they're bad earlier today... damn, I'm confused!

All I know is SCSI is fast but expensive and the storage capacity is too low unless I pay LOADS for a large drive! I think I need a S-ATA drive, right?

Thanks for the help so far anyway, this is most appreciated.

[raiserblade2003]

thats "low spec" ? but decided on the mobo and its spec then tell us what type of drives it support

[Ninjastyle]

Nah, the machine I have right now is low spec, real crappy. The stuff I listed is what I wanna buy. OK, say I went for an MSI 865PE Neo2-FIS2R... I *think* it has 4 SATA channels.