Hitachi Hard drive 146 GB

Advantages: Value for money, great performance, additional drive utilities , SATA 300Gb/s
Disadvantages: Little noisy

...Product Description Hitachi DeskStar T7K250 - hard drive - 160 GB - SATA II Type Hard drive - internal Form Factor 3.5" x 1/3H Dimensions (WxDxH) 10.2 cm x 14.6 cm x 2.5 cm Weight 0.6 kg Capacity 160 GB Interface Type Serial ATA II Connector 22-position Serial ATA (SATA) plug Data Transfer Rate 300 MBps Average Seek Time 8.5 ms Spindle Speed 7200 rpm Buffer Size 8 MB This is one of the cheapest SATA 300Gb/s capable hard disk available in this capacity range. The hard disk has a SATA interface, regular 12v power connector, and also a SATA power interface. If your computer has the new SATA power connectors, you... Read review

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Advantages: Fast and Silent, Easy SATA installation, Two flavours to choose from
Disadvantages: Dismal performance

...Maxtor are one of the 3 leading hard drive manufacturers in the personal and business computing market at the moment along with Western Digital and Hitachi. They are also the cheapest. Unfortunately, the saying that price doesn't equals quality is true here. Too true. The 160GB version of the DiamondMax Plus9 can be purchased online from around £51.00 onwards. And with the way hard drive prices have fallen recently, that's not bad at all. But as I said, you're getting cheap quality to match the cheap price. The drive itself looks very similar to any other hard drive, and comes in both IDE ATA/133 and SATA 150 flavours, with the SATA ones easier to configure due to their jumperless installations. My personal experience with this drive has been short. I first purchased this drive to use in my first ever custom-built computer... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, high capacity storage. Well built, looks good. 2 year warranty, No fan.
Disadvantages: No fan.

...Freecom before as they've always looked a bit cheap and nasty so this would be an interesting experience. The box did feel reassuringly heavy though, a good start. ############### # What's in the Box? ############### Apart from the drive, the box contained a small light external PSU, a USB lead and a CD with some backup software. The case is made of extremly solid and heavy aluminium with a silver plastic front piece with a sexy blue '400GB' light (yes, you can have sexy lights. Really.) at the front just to prove how big it was. The finish is excellent and I have to say, if this is anything to go by, I'm converted to Freecom. Unlike the picture here, my unit has the aluminium finished in matt black which looks really nice on top of my black PC. It's also surprisingly compact - not that much bigger than a hard drive at 20x11.5x4 cms... Read review

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