whats the best HDD?

[Nerwin]

i need to know what is the best hard drive becasue i need a new 160gb or 200gb and it needs to be a ATA-133 interface.

[ripken204]

how much can u spend?

get this if u can spend the money, the 16mb cache helps:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16822144422

otherwise get this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16822144233

[Andromeda43]

Maxtor? Good Call!

I'd make one max change to that though.

I'd change that ATA 133 drive to a SATA drive and

install it onto a Buslink SATA controller card (about $30)

Your data throughput will be about ten times faster.

And for only about $30 more than the cost of the drive.

You can buy SATA drives for under $100 all day.

With the SATA controller card installed, you can get an adaptor that will let you plug in your old IDE drive to the SATA controller for MUCH faster data transfer.

*************************************

Here's what I've done.....and anyone can do it.

I installed my first SATA controller and bought my first SATA drive about five months ago. The speed was absolutely fabulous! I just couldn't believe 1500 Mb/Min.

That first SATA drive was a WD 120 gig 7200 rpm. I've RMA'd it twice since then.

(I've really lost my faith in WD drives)

After the first RMA began to fail I replaced it with a Maxtor 160 gig SATA 7200 rpm drive.

I just got my second WD RMA drive back from WD and decided to create a RAID 0 setup with my two SATA drives. So I set them up on the Buslink controller card, FDISK'd them and Restored my last Ghost image file. I'm running the two drives now, in RAID 0 configuration

...nice and fast!

That left my old 60 gig Maxtor ATA 100 drive, out of work. I just use it for backups.

SO, I installed my second Buslink controller card; installed a sata-to-ide adaptor on the back of the Maxtor ATA drive and plugged it into the second controller card with a SATA drive cable.

Would you believe?....that old IDE drive now runs at near SATA speed?

I couldn't believe it myself till I saw it with my own eyes.

Maybe the world just isn't ready for that one yet!

So lets just keep that one a secret.

SATA Speed on an IDE budget......just a thought

Cheers,

Andromeda43

[rendrag]

With the SATA controller card installed, you can get an adaptor that will let you plug in your old IDE drive to the SATA controller for MUCH faster data transfer.

are you sure about that? If the drive wasn't built to use sata, and you have an IDE to sata converter, what speeds up the data transfer? It certainly isn't the IDE/SATA converter.