Hard drive...

[ash_rm]

Deskstar/deathstar do have a reputation I must admit. I like the WD recovery rate youve had, although the data probably wont be all that important im storing on it.

What about more of the feature wise, such as how it deals with failure recovery etc, access rates and the like. And propriety technology that might give a drive a edge.

I did look at the samsungs, but they have a apparent total lack of 16meg cache in their range. I was hoping for one with that little tidbit.

Just to update, IBM/Hitachi have definitely come a long way since the old deathstars and have very reliable and fast drives now with great access times.

I almost wish I bought Deskstar T7K250 250GB for my primary machine instead of my Samsung Spinpoint. From the sounds of it they're not much louder but a hell of a lot quicker performance wise.

I used to always buy Western Digital pretty much since I had two WD800JD's that never let me down since I bought them, around 3-4 yrs ago and were very fast at the time. Not so sure since my 2500JD failure, although they were very quick with the turnaround of the replacement drive and they give you two weeks to ship the faulty one back after you receive the replacement, so I was able to do a straight transfer from the faulty one to the working one. I suppose there could of just been a problem with that model?

One of my mates just got a WD2500KS and that is very quick and gives excellent XBench scores.

[Veles]

Im considering one of the new .10 seagates 320Gb on just two platters, they have had some good reviews.

I've got two of them, well had 2, one of them was obviously dodgey stock and has died after a couple of weeks of very light use, I can safely say that they are pretty speedy though (but I would do a backup just in case).

The bad deskstar rumors are from when IBM made them, heard nothing bad about the new Hitachi ones.

Samsungs I've heard a re good, pretty good performers (won't win awards for it though) but very quiet.

WDs, Maxtors, all good. I can say that nothing beats a raptor ATM, I have a 150GB one as my system drive and 1 320GB 7200.10 (was 2 untill the aforementioned incedent) as my data drive.

[UniRecovery]

If the machine is 24/7, I would even rule out the use of SATA, instead SCSI drives are the ones designed to withstand extreme temperature changes, capable to handle multiple tasks at any given time, however they are expensive and designed for servers.

[Vrt]

Had a couple of Maxtors fail recently, I won't be going with them again in the near future, going to get a spinpoint for my new pc