Rigid Storage

[StarBob]

Or Hard Drives for the laymen.

What's a good hard drive these days? I'm looking for a fairly cheap hard drive that's reliable. It doesn't have to be massive or anything, maybe 500gb or so would be sufficient. Internal of course. I just have a lot of Steam games not installed because I've quickly filled my old 250gb hard drive.

 

[No Limit]

If you want good reliability set up a raid 1 using 2 sata drives.

 

[Dinnesch]

Samsung Spinpoint F3 or F1(in a capacity of your choice). Fast, cheap and quiet.

 

[Vegeta897]

Western Digital all the way.

 

[Viperidae]

Western Digital all the way.

Seconded. Seagate's hard to trust these days, and you can't beat a 5 year warranty.

 

[No Limit]

Seconded. Seagate's hard to trust these days, and you can't beat a 5 year warranty.

The warranty doesn't mean anything when your drive craps out and you lose all your data, in my opinion atleast.

 

[Asus]

1) WD 640GB (a hair faster than WD's own 750 and 500GB drives)
2) Samsung F3 (HD754JJ)

You should back up then. Then a bad drive would just mean down time instead of loss of data. I'm sure others do too but I know first hand WD will send you a drive in the mail ASAP first and then you mail yours back in that box once it comes.

 

[No Limit]

1) WD 640GB (a hair faster than WD's own 750 and 500GB drives)
2) Samsung F3 (HD754JJ)

You should back up then. Then a bad drive would just mean down time instead of loss of data. I'm sure others do too but I know first hand WD will send you a drive in the mail ASAP first and then you mail yours back in that box once it comes.

A true backup that will backup all your system configuration is harder said than done. I'm thinking about getting Acronis true image and buying a second drive to do a regular image back up on. But the storage requirements for doing something like that are fairly extensive.

 

[Asus]

Could do 2 parts. 1 back up files and when you first installed the OS make a image of your HDD so menu changes, drivers installed, apps installed etc all get included on that backup image.

So when you restore a system you do the image first and then plop your data back in the right folders (game folder, docs folder etc).

 

[AtomicSpark]

Samsung Spinpoint F3 or F1(in a capacity of your choice). Fast, cheap and quiet.

This. They're pretty high up on the benchmarks too:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...s/h2benchw-3.12-Avg-Read-Throughput,1010.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/.../h2benchw-3.12-Avg-Write-Throughput,1013.html

 

[No Limit]

That's a good idea. But in my case I would like to have a recent backup of everything, not just the OS installation. I work with a lot of proprietary software or software which is a total bitch licensing wise so losing it would be a huge headache for me. And I must admit I'm a total slacker when it comes to my own personal back ups.

 

[VirusType2]

Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

This one has a 5 year warranty, so it should be very reliable. $75 w/free shipping @ newegg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319&cm_re=wd-_-22-136-319-_-Product


Personally, I'd just get a 1-2 TB. Never had any problems with WD or Samsung.

 

[Asus]

Yeah, I'd say go for a 1TB even if you just use 500gb worth. It will be faster if all the data is on the outside of the drive (data goes there first).

 

[VirusType2]

I've got a promo code for this drive @ $69.99 w/free shipping (normally $79.99)

Western Digital Caviar Black WD6402AAEX 640GB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5"

(nice cache size)

Promo Code: EMCYPPY46

Must be a brand new model. Only 5 reviews but so far, but they are positive.

Pros: Got two of them and raided them oboy are they fast hell ya
Cons: none
Other Thoughts: Wish i got one more of them

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-EMC-033010-Index-_-HardDrives-_-22136544-L0C

Don't know how it compares to others in that price range, I haven't researched it.

 

[unozero]

I had 2 external WD drives fail on me this year however the internal drives are doing fine.