Hard Drives > From 200 GB to 300 GB Hard Drives > Serial ATA-150

Advantages: High speed transfer, power consumption low, quiet
Disadvantages: usual HDD shock issues

The Hitachi TravelStar is the newly developed model from Hitachi Co. specifically designed for notebooks. It varies in storage capacity, but the important factors are: the rotation speed of 7200 RPM, S-ATA 1.5 GB/s interface, and what Hitachi says "a 22% performance increase". Let's see what are the improvements: -Having tested the model you get a random access time of 14ms which is extremely faster than it's predecessor and it's competitors; ...
...wow-it's very fast) -It's almost noiseless, you get a 42dB/A idle noise at 3mm distance from the HDD; -and it's power consumption was reduced(in full load it uses 3W and in idle mode only 1.1W), which means it is very economical. -the price is in reach; I think this motivates you in at least trying one ... Read review

Advantages: Fast, reliable and small
Disadvantages: None

The hard drive is meant to be used internally but I use mine as an external hard drive with an USB external enclosure. The drive might not be the fastest around but it is fast enough to use for those large files that makes life difficult. The fact that it uses SATA makes faster than IDE hard drives of the same size. The SATA also makes it very stable and up to date with the latest technology. I like the fact that you can buy it for such a low price ... Read review

Advantages: very good value for money, under 35p per GB
Disadvantages: need a SATA connector on motherboard and cables

this hard drive is very inexpensive for its size, its also very quiet. if your looking for an easy to install and cheap way of storing masses of data then this is the hard drive for you. the drive is very reliable and i have yet to experience a problem with it 6 months later. it can run practically non stop as well and shows no sign of performance loss. i have left it running for around 75% of the time i have had it. you do need a SATA slot on ... Read review

Advantages: Fast with large files, quiet fast with small files, quiet, doesn't struggle with large files.
Disadvantages: May need defragging alot.

I have this drive pre installed in my computer and the first thing i realised was that it was extremely FAST; i had tested the drive on a hard drive benchmarking program called 'HDTach'. This is as on my HP'm7635', using this drive i got a burst speed of 210 MB/s and a average read rate of 70MB/s; both are extremely fast. I also realised that this drive was extremely quiet; being installed in my media cennter PC it wasn't exactly a suprise though. ...
...the context of everyday computng this hard drive is very fast, windows loads up very quickly. You can force large files down the hard drive and it wont struggle; though i still recommend that you defragmentate the drive on a regular basis for optimal speed. To expand on my statement of what fast is, i mean to say that the drive is able to handle copying of large files such as movies very quickly. The drive is also fast in seeking files from a random ... Read review

Advantages: 120GB, Good price, Extremely easy to use.
Disadvantages: Takes up 2 USB slots.

...drive also comes with some Maxtor software designed to ease back-up and synching of data. For this purpose I would recommend just downloading Microsoft's SynchToy which is available as a free download and in my opinion is more powerful and easier to use than the software that comes with the drive. Another useful feature of the included software is the ability to encrypt and password-protect the data on the drive. I would definitely recommend this ... Read review