Need a bigger hard drive. Advice please

After a quick google, I found these under $100 dollar drives. All 80 gig. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

HITACHI Deskstar 7K80 HDS728080PLA380 -0A30356 80GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA II Hard Drive - OEM

Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM

SAMSUNG SpinPoint P Series SP0812C 80GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM

Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L080P0 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA133 Hard Drive - OEM

Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST380817AS 80GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM

Almost forgot:
Compaq Desk Pro (5 yrs old)
Win XP
256mb ram

I have a Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 120GB EIDE drive in my machine and it's definitely very speedy. Also, it is perhaps the quietest drive I have ever owned, but that could also have something to do with the rubber mounts on my drive cage. Others tell me that the Seagate Barracudas are pretty quiet but not the quietest ones out there.

Just wondering -- with drives so inexpensive now, why just 80GB? I doubt the price differential between an 80GB and a 120GB or even a 200GB would be that much. Must admit, I haven't really drive shopped in about a year though.

The reason I only want an 80 gig is this Compaq is five years old. I want to build my own next time. Right now, with a 20 gig oem, I have to grovel for every mb I can get. I have to transfer every audio book and music mp3 to cd before I can download another. It's a real pain in the ass. The western model is $55 and I think it will hold me over until I build the new one.
I know I can move it to my new machine so maybe Seagate would be a better choice.

Stay away from Maxtor. I'm sure there is someone out there who has never had a problem with a Maxtor drive, but I don't know any. Of course, no hard drive company is perfect, but your odds are better, imo, with the above mentioned companies.

About the interface: You have two basic, and very different, interfaces mentioned in the drives you listed, IDE and Serial ATA. If your machine is five years old, I doubt it has a Serial ATA interface on the motherboard. If you know that it does, then you're okay because the Serial ATA is better/faster, but if you don't have one and get one of those drives, you won't be able to install it.

Echoing salvorhardin's comments, if under $100 is your price point, get a 120GB. I just bought a 250GB for $125.

As a specific recommendation, assuming you don't have a Serial ATA interface, I've installed this drive in four separate machines, and none have reported problems:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148022

Specs:

Capacity -- 120GB
Cache -- 8MB
RPM -- 7200 RPM
Average Seek Time -- 8.5ms
Average Latency -- 4.16ms
Interface -- IDE Ultra ATA100

With shipping, you're looking at $85, and it has a 5 year manufacturers warranty.

Thanks again guys.

for making the sacrificial but obligatory Maxtor sucks comment. I didn't want to be the one to do it this time. :-)

Oh BOY do they suck.

Over a period of many years, I've owned 3 and those 3 all failed within one year.

Seagate OTOH is one of the best.

a 160 gig Western Digital EIDE 8Mb buffer 7200 rpm drive for 99.99 cash with 2 #30 mail-in rebates on sale this week. As far as what brand of drive, I've had good luck with all of them. I had one Maxtor fail after 2 weeks, they sent me a new one. I've also had Seagate, Western Digital and Hitachi fail me at one time or another. The good news was that they all failed within the warranty and were replaced. I'm running 5 computers here and my drives get a workout.

I have bought several components from Newegg and their prices are good and the delivery time is fast. If you aren't in any hurry, watch their sales for a while and you can get a good deal.


FWIW. If you are running XP with 256 Meg of RAM you might want to check their RAM sales too. What you have is just borderline to get XP running. Sometimes Newegg has bundle deals where they sell two or more items (ie HDD & RAM) at a discount.

I have had them all at one time or another, but my Western Digitals have been the most reliable. I'm running two 120 gig WD on my primary machine and two 80 gig Seagate on my secondary. They are both good drives, but probably the best thing I can say about them is that they are not Maxtor.

Based on the info in this thread, I went for a Seagate 250GB SATA from TigerDirect for $109 plus shipping.

To the OP, if you haven't purchased yet, consider getting a larger drive. The cost per GB seems optimal at about 200-250GB, and when you build your machine, you can always move the drive from your old machine into the new one...

Not sure if it's the same model, but it's probably close. Excellent drive so far, extremely fast and quiet.

$140.
Free shipping.
I got 2.
http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=150360

Cletus