Need advice on an HDD

[Alistair]

The new WD Caviar 500GB are the quietest drives avaliable (source), and also perform fairly well. As a storage drive it looks like a fantastic choice as it also uses little power and produces low heat. Two 250GB drives would be cheaper though..

After reading this review I'm tempted to ditch my spinpoint & buy a 250 or 320Gb version of these for my HTPC

[whoatethepies]

After reading this review I'm tempted to ditch my spinpoint & buy a 250 or 320Gb version of these for my HTPC

Be aware that the other models in the lineup aren't necessarily the same... The review for the 250GB version (along with a Raptor) is here. The newest revisons of these drives may be as good as the 500GB version, but you'd likely have to make sure you got the newest revison.

[Alistair]

I think the newest revisions all end in 'KS' so should be safe enough - the 250GB one in the review ends in'JD'

[Rabs]

A Raptor 150GB and a Western Digital 320/400GB SATA would do you proud.

If you weren't too bothered about the Raptor - 2 x 320GB WD Raid Editions' in RAID 0 would give a nice performance boost as well as nice storage.

[Veles]

Right I think I've decided what I'm getting. Grabbing a 150GB raptor as unfortuneatly 74gig would be a little bit of a squeeze.

For my data I'm gonna get 2 320GB 7200.10s.

Any afvice on how to partition them?

I'm intending on putting windows, progs and games on the raptor so they all run nice and quick, and obviously the reast on my 2 320gig HDDs.