New Hard drive

[amplid]

Hey guys,

I'm getting a new Hard Drive for a friend of mine and am going to build it into his pc. However, I must admit that I do not really know what is important when choosing a hard drive (in the specs I mean...) 7200 rpm is about all I think that is necessary... Hard drive for about 100 bucks...

Cheers,

Amplid

 

[stormy13]

IDE or SATA? Ideally you want as large a onboard cache (8 MB, 16 MB, 32 MB), and as large a capacity as the budget will allow. As far as the RPM's go the faster the better, with 7200 RPM pretty much the standard. You could look at the WD Raptor's that are 10,000 RPM drives, but unless you are a real speed freak the cost just isn't there for them (too high a per/GB ratio compared to the 7200 RPM drives).

If a SATA drive something like this would do the trick,

Seagate 500GB Barracuda 7200.11 32MB SataII [Seagate 500GB Barracuda 7200.11 32MB SataII] - €68.35 : Compu-squ@re

If IDE then the options are less as there aren't as many IDE drive made any more.

 

[amplid]

SATA that is

Ok, so just as high as possible on everything...

Thanks mate,

Amplid

 

[vw151]

Number of platters is something to consider as well. I have always like the samsung drives because they generally have a lower number of platters. 1TB drives have 3 platters as apposed to 4 or 5 from the other manufacturers. This helps reduce power and can increase reliability.

Otherwise, like he said, RPM, higher the better but for the most part everything will be 7200rpm unless you are going with WD velociraptors. So look at seek and access times as well. Warranty is also something to consider and if it's SATA 3.0 or 1.5 or PATA. SCSI is probably not a consideration but is out there as well. Other than the obvious compatibility stuff I'd look at toms hardware benchmarks and look at which perform the best and have the best warranty and price.

 

[wormtail]

Everyone else pretty much summed up what to look for a HD.

You can get a good HD for $100 these days and I would suggest this for your friend:

Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives

$79.99 640 gig, 7200 RPM, 16 MB, SATA

Tell your friend to enjoy