What Hard Drive should I get

[pmanson]

I'm after a second hard drive to work as a backup device in my PC.

20 or 40gb should be more than enough. (I want to back up things like photos, mp3's etc just in case my current HD fails.

Any ideas on what I should get? I can stretch to upto about £50. (Poor student!!)

Cheers,

Phill

[malman]

Ooohhh this one a tough one as everyone has their favourite manufacturers. I'll say either Seagate or Western Digital. Should be able to pick up a 40Gb for £40.

[davidd]

I'll say maxtor

[TheHobbit]

I'll second Western Digital and Seagate (in that order). IBM drives are also pretty good (although theya re now badged as Hitachi, as they recently bought the storage section from IBM.

As for Maxtor..... I've never had a Maxtor drive last more than 6 months and have heard many similar comments from friends and collegues.... personally I wouldn't touch one of their drives with someone elses barge pole now...... (all IMHO, of course).

[pdV6]

TheHobbit said:

I'll second Western Digital and Seagate (in that order). IBM drives are also pretty good (although theya re now badged as Hitachi, as they recently bought the storage section from IBM.

I've used several WD Caviar drives over the years and have yet to have one fail.
No personal experience of Seagate disks.
I've had plenty of IBM drives die on me.

I'll stick with WD...

[TheHobbit]

pdV6 said:

I've used several WD Caviar drives over the years and have yet to have one fail. No personal experience of Seagate disks. I've had plenty of IBM drives die on me. I'll stick with WD...

Future drives will be WD.... they seemt o get all good comments, and few bad. I should have said that the IBM drives I've used were SCSI...... so less helpful there, sorry.

[FourWheelDrift]

The biggest one you can find, you'll always find a way of filling it up.

I prefer Seagate btw :-)

[manek]

Get a quiet one -- a Seagate Barracuda. In terms of reliability, for the same spec they're all pretty much as good as each other these days.

[malman]

My system at home has a Seagate in and tonight its new friend is about to join it. A Western Digital special edition.

[robertuk]

I would recommend www.scan.co.uk

Click on the Today Only button to see if they have any special offers on Hard disks.
If your not in a rush keep checking until they do
(thats how I put systems together for myself.)


Shipping is extra around £7 I think.

Looking in the Hard Disks section
under Hard Drives IDE (the first section are notebook 2.5 hard disks)
there is a
Seagate 40Gb Barracuda (7200rpm, 2MB Cache) 1yr
for £45.11 inc shipping

Good Luck !

[Plotloss]

WD Caviar 80BB 80Gb £51.43 delivered UDMA100, 7200rpm, 2mb cache from Simply...

[DustyC]

I dont know what Diamondmax are like but you can get an 80GB one at Novatech, as well as good prices on the others listed in this thread
www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/Components/a2b15c0d0e0x1y0z1p0s0n0m0

[Xm5eR]

www.microdirect.co.uk/

40gb - £30 + £5 delivery Maxtoir or seagate

up to

80bg - £45 + £5 delivery Maxtor or Seagate

[manek]

My experience of scan.co.uk is not good, and I know I'm not alone. Slow delivery, problems if there are problems if you see what I mean...

[jam1et]

As previously mentioned steer clear of Maxtor. Of all the companies I've supported I have only ever had Maxtor hard drives fail. Not that many though - approx 4 in 7 years (out of a total of about 250 Maxtor drives, so about 1.5% failure rate). I've never had a single problem with a Seagate or WD drive.

[pmanson]

Ordered a 40 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 2MB Cache ATA100 from microdirect.

£42.89 delivered. Cheers for the advice guys.

[Pigeon]

I've had a Seagate fail after a couple of years, and I don't rate Maxtor at all. I'll add one to the voices saying "get WD".