SATAII Hard drive... which one?

[JoshSpence]

I was looking at buying 2x 300GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 SATAII hard drives only to discover that all shops around me only stock the 120, 160 and 500GB versions, and it is more efficient for me to buy 2x 300's as opposed to 1x 500 so I am not gonna get the 500GB and 160GB is not enough...

Also I read that the 7200.9's aren't great hard drives but rather merely average...

Anyone ahve any other suggestions as in what brand and model hard drives that are: 250GB or 300GB, SATAII, preferably with NCQ.

Thanks in advance,
Josh

 

[~Rob]

Maxtor do a 250GB SATAII drive.. Over here (UK) it can be had for a couple of quid more than a Seagate Barracuda 200GB SATA150. According to the place I saw it, it has NCQ aswell.

HTH

 

[JoshSpence]

Hmm... I've never particarly liked Maxtor, but I'll check it out... Any others?

 

[MooseMan1]

i like this 1! http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136003 i think it would do u well, i was planning on buying that 1 but it's a little over the price i paid for my maxtor i had 2 do an RMA on and don't have the extra money 2 get it but it's got NCQ and all that

 

[prosser13]

Take a look at the Samsung P120S series. They will beat that Western Digital by around 15%!

 

[kev]

Seagates are great harddrives. If you are looking for real fast though go with WD Raptor. Although they only go up to 74gb.

 

[d_source]

I have 2 WD SATA II hard drives and they are great. My system runs faster, noticebly faster than when i had my older HDD's. The drive that Mooseman pointed out looks faster still. I'd go for that. I have never had a problem with WD HDDs. I did have some problems with my old Samsung HDD. I would stick with WD.

 

[JoshSpence]

Hmm... after reading all this I am looking at the following drives:

Seagate 7200.8 250GB SATA hard drive, NCQ, 8MB cache (Down side: Is only SATA, not SATAII)

Western Digital 2400KS 250GB SATAII hard drive, 16MB cache (Down side: Average reviews, no NCQ)

Seagate 7200.9 500GB SATAII hard drive, 16MB cache, NCQ (Downside: Expensive, I would prefer 2x smaller drives in RAID than one larger drive)

Maxtor 6L300S0 300GB SATA hard drive, NCQ, 16MB cache (Downside: is only SATA not SATAII, and personally I don't like Maxtor a whole lot)

Samsung SP2504C 250GB SATAII hard drive, NCQ, 8MB cache (Downside: 8MB cache, is cheaply priced? is it flimsy or something?)

 

[kchi55]

Hitachi Deskstar 250GB SATAII.. checkout newegg

 

[JoshSpence]

New plan.... originally I was thinking 2x 250GB SATAII 16MB cache NCQ hdd's but now I'm starting to opt to go for 1x 74GB Raptor and one 250GB SATAII 16MB cache NCQ hdd... although the Raptor specs don't look great to me (only SATA 1.5GB/s, only 8MB cache) but according to reviews they are great? So I was thinking use one of those as my main hard drive (programs and stuff, although I'm not sure if 74GB will b enough but if I ever run out I will RAID another Raptor in with it. I will use the 250GB SATAII 16MB cache NCQ hdd for music and videos and documents, etc.

Is this a better plan?