hard drives

[antec74]

i am thinking about which hd to use in my new build, i want 3/4 inc the main o/s drive i do alot of photography as a hobby so i want back up storage, i am looking at wd, hitachi, samsung would these be a good choice i am not sure what size prob above 500gb for each!

[jim]

To be honest, not much difference between manufacturers. Some people have bad experiences with each brand, that's just how it is. Personally, I'd just look at price.

Can't really help you on size, obviously that's up to you. So the only things to look at:

Price
Speed

Some drives will be 7200rpm, which are designed for you to run your OS/Games/Applications on. Others will be slower (5400rpm or 5900rpm usually), and those are designed for data. They're marginally slower, but most importantly run cooler and quieter. If you want to use drives for backups or long term data storage, I would recommend the slower drives.

[Sputnik]

I agree with Snootyjim but, would recommend having fewer 1TB drives rather than 3 or 4 500GB ones. There are two reasons,

1, Fewer drives use less electric and have less demand on your PSU

2, the cost of a 1TB drive is approx. 1.5x the cost of a 500GB.

[jim]

Yeah, definitely. No reason not to go 2TB to be honest, if you need the space.

[Sputnik]

Yeah, definitely. No reason not to go 2TB to be honest, if you need the space.

I didn't realise the 2TB was so cheap now

[jim]

They've seriously dropped in price since release, quite spectacular really considering there's still nothing bigger.

One of the benefits of a healthy, competitive market I guess.

[marktime]

There are a lot of very cheap 1TB drives around at the minute - went for a Spinpoint F3 myself just recently. Be careful you don't unknowingly pick up a 'grey' import though, the warranty will only be something like a year instead of the standard 3 years most manufacturers offer.