Hard drive recommendations?

[Emirzan]

Western Digital 640GB AAKS is £48.99 on ebuyer, a little cheaper than scan.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/144339

I'm so so tempted to get 3 and create a nice little RAID 5 array. Must resist.

You have quite a few options in the cheap 3.5" SATA enclosures, personally I'd spend a little more and get an eSATA enabled one but if all you want is USB and your aim is as cheap as possible:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143544

[Hicks12]

now if only you gave me a link for that at scan , shame ebuyer have that £50+=free delivery. Looks like a very good value drive and sumvision havent let me down yet . Just noticed its on SVP website for £11 so ill wait for them to get it instock and order from them

Thanks again guys , will order the drive tomorrow.

[looney]

Well for the same price of the 320gb seagate i can get the samsung 500gb, i would go for the WD but its like £50 and the samsung has the second most out of the lot and a pretty good price. Not that im saying the seagate are bad its just that value for money is with the samsung, they are dual platter as far as google says as one is a full 320gb(or 334gb to be exact) and the other is the same but only put on the outside so it should perform just as good as a 320gb(so google says ).
Thanks for your help.

Now can anyone recommend a very cheap enclosure for a 3.5" Sata drive?(perhaps ide to) thats around £10 , needs to be usb.

Thanks again.

Its only 3pound more and the seagate has better performance, anyway the wd640aaks is much better value then the samsung, cos you get 140gb more and proven performance for only a fiver more.

a for sata enclosure is that sumvision any good? looks cheapish and might have limits??

scan have a dual sata and ide newlink enclosure for £15, i plan on getting that myself

[Hicks12]

not £3 its £8 lol(samsung=today only). But i may go for it, is it really better than the samsung? and would it be better than my current 250gbaaks? I think ill leave the box till later because it would be one of them 1 time uses.

[NovaSphere]

WD6400AAKS is one of the greatest HDD's out there today

[Hicks12]

Well i think ill order it from scan then as its only £1 more and i have the added benefit of the forums here , also gettin a sharkoon silencer kit.

Thanks guys.

[ionicle]

why has nobody bothered to recomend hitachi?
they're all i use
they're quick
they do run rather warm, but they're neer silent

they're damn fine drives

[Hicks12]

Well i already ordered the 640gb AAKS , i never remember hitachi as a good brand(in temrs of hd) and that their minimum speeds were much less than every other drive meaning an unstable speed.

[looney]

^ good choice with WD

and yeh hitachi's performance is below par compared to others and they dont have the best reliability record either, there sort of the cheap hdd manufacturer. But they are a good electronics brand tho.

[peterb]

The Sumvision enclosures are OK (I have four of them!) - not the mopst stylish - the Akasa look better - but cost nearly twice as much!

I used to use Hitaachi drives, but they went through a bad reliability phase a few years ago, so I went to Samsung. The Hitachis were much noisier, but they may have improved since I last bought one.

[Hicks12]

Well the drive should be here tomorrow and i got a few hours off tomorrow so... how should i arrange my setup? i have a 250gb AAKS and soon the 640AAKS, what one should i use for OS installs etc? And what partition sizes would you recommend?. This PC is mainly a gaming pc so ways to increase gaming speeds would be best .



Thanks,

[Hicks12]

Any ideas? just installed it, not being detected so ima quickly sort that out.

Will be formating soon so if anyone can give me some advice/tips it would help greatly .

[sleepyhead]

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=616032 that works really well (I have one in black).

But it is twice your budget at £22/23.

Do you mean windows isn't picking up the HDD or your BIOS?

[Hicks12]

Think it was a lose connection, bios sees it and windows does but only when im on hard ware manager, do i need to format it to see it? If so, what size partitons should i use, 320gb for games? 320 for the rest and use the 250gb drive for XP?

[sleepyhead]

Use Disk Manager (In win XP) to add the partitions you want and format the drive.

If you are using the drive as OS and Data, I'd split it to two, give your OS 100GB partition and the rest to data. That's how I've set my 750GB Samsung as. Boot times are good and game loading times are not an issue. Just keep it well maintained (defragged) and you should be fine; unless you are after speed bench marks at which point, I hand you over to more knowledgeable people.

You will like the WD drive; very quiet, I have the 500GB AAKS that I need to re-partition.

PS The Samsung drive is also very quiet and quick. My Maxtors were still going strong after 7 odd years of abuse. I think one of them is on the way out though or is too full.

[Hicks12]

Well i decided to format it in half basicly, 320gb for games and the rest for data. Will be formatting the 250gb hard drive shortly and putting it as the OS.

Thanks.