Advantages: Fast Small and 80GB!
Disadvantages: Nothing really

...After getting myself into the whole iMovie and DV camcorder thang, I realised that the tiny hard drive (10 Gb) in my iBook was not enough (1 hour of DV footage takes up 13 Gb), so I started looking for alternatives. As Firewire is the only high speed connection on the laptop, I looked around. Most 30-40Gb Hard drives for Firewire (Also Sony i.Link) were £250, but I saw this one by Maxtor - 80 Gb for under £350. The Box is smaller than I thought, and Graphite and ice to match the iBook, but it does come with an ugly and propriety power supply. Very fast was my first reaction. It can stream DV footage without any dropped frames - and thats 5 Mbytes/s. So, unless you are doing pro DV or something really demanding there is no point in buying the 75Gb drives out there that cost over £700 - the extra little bit of speed is really... Read review

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Advantages: Fast read/write, 7200rpm spindle speed
Disadvantages: Only 2mb data buffer, Only supports upto ATA100

...Having already owned several western digital hard drives before, i knew these would be pretty reliable. Installation was fairly easy - four screws, one data cable, and one power cable connection. The bios on the motherboard recognised the drive perfectly. Once installed and setup, i noticed the difference over my old hard drive straight away. The boot up speed was a lot quicker and i once again had space for all my bits and pieces(after i had sorted windows out). (just for reference my old drive was a 20gb 2mb Cache 5400rpm). For any one not into the techie side of things, the faster the spindle speed and the bigger the cache size, the Faster the drive. Although 40gb doesnt sound very big compared to the other sizes available, you can still hold a lot of information on a drive of this size.... Read review

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Advantages: fair amount of storage space for price
Disadvantages: Can be a bit noisey at times

...with 80gb Hard drives being the norm in most entry level pc's the price of the 160gb hdd is dropping. If you are looking for a reliable Hard drive for storage of MP3s, video or even gameing then the 160gb will be up your street. The space on the Drive makes it ideal of an entry level "pvr" system. I am currently using one of these as a secondary drive. I have so far managed to record 8hrs of tv to it at decent quality and still have plenty of space left..... The drive Is sata 150 with 8mb cache and 7200rpm spindle. This enables faster reading and writing to the drive. You will need to have a System Board that supports sata 150 or purchase a sata pci card if you want to run the drive in an older machine. You can buy a convetor which will enable you to plug the drive into a normal 40 pin IDE port. Ther is a warning to this though... Read review

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Advantages: value for money
Disadvantages: jitters sometime, only 2mb cache

...I used to have this drive and back then when i was trying to build a low entry computer, and because i was on a tight budget so I brought this cheap Excelstor Jupiter J240 40GB. At first I was really impress with it because this hard drive was quick (running at 7200rpm) - it uses an ATA100 interface and it was quiet. But after using it for a couple of months the hard drive starting to make some funny noises, like a jittering sound inside the hard disk, at first I thought maybe the hard drive was overheating so I brought a hard drive cooler but the problem was still there (*made me waste £20 for a hard drive cooler for nothing*) - So I decided to sell it to a computer shop and man I didn't even get much of it, the guy working there said that this hard drive is rubbish, that it doesn't even last long. If anyone out there looking... Read review

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Advantages: fast and portable
Disadvantages: drains power

...The Buffalo Ministation Turbo USB 120GB is quite a small little storage device, hence the “ministation” in its name. Its size is great as its only 127 x 20 x 84 mm so it’ll hardly make a dent in your pocket. The 190 g weight on its also hardly anything and they have even managed to shed 20 g’s off this one compared to the previous 40 gb edition of this hard drive. It works directly off power from a laptop or computer and runs therefore directly off usb without the need for plugging in another power cable to run the device. This can be a problem if you need more battery life on your laptop as it will drain it a little if its plugged in all the time. This drain isn’t much though and you’ll hardly even notice the difference if its only plugged in for a short while. Its black plastic casing certainly... Read review

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Advantages: Quite a fast drive.
Disadvantages: One of the "Deathstar" drives.

...Whether you are thinking of buying this drive (2nd hand, most likely as it's a couple of years old) or own one of IBM's 60GXP, 75GXP or 120GXP models, read on for important information about issues with these drives and fixing them. ** THE DRIVE ** Capacity: 40 GB (38.3 GB as reported in windows) Rotational Speed: 7200 RPM Interface: ATA-100 Average seek time: 8.5 ms It's a fast enough drive. It seems to perform quite a bit better than the 5400 rpm 45 GB Western Digital drive I had, it's quite a bit quieter and this one's not dead ... yet. ** BORROWING NAMES FROM STAR WARS ** The main reason I thought I'd write a review on this drive, is to hopefully help a few others who have this or one of the other 60GXP, 75GXP or 120GXP models (as I've read these are equally affected). It didn't take long for a lot of people to start... Read review

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Advantages: Mega Storage, Quiet, Fast
Disadvantages: Heats up quickly needing extra cooling, Price

...My computer will never be the same again! After installing it I could already notice a major difference. I upgraded from a 250gb WesternDigital to the 750 gb Seagate Barracuda. Product Specification: Type: - Internal Hard drive Form Factor: 3.5" x 1/3H Dimensions (WxDxH): 10.2 cm x 14.7 cm x 2.6 cm Weight: 0.7 kg Capacity: 750 GB Interface Type: ATA-100 Connector: 40 PIN IDC Data Transfer Rate: 100 MBps Spindle Speed: 7200 rpm Buffer Size: 16 MB PROS/CONS: Although most people wont need a hardrive this size to do the basics of any office applications or internet use. This hard drive is for the people who run network drives and do alot of video editing and the like. Just make sure you remove the jumper before you use it as this limits it to standard SATA speed and is fitted by default. The storage capacity is brilliant and access... Read review

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Advantages: Lots of space for all your gaming needs.
Disadvantages: Price, Dust, Missing GB

...My personal experience with the Xbox 360 hard drive has been fairly positive. The ability to store music, films, videos and of course games saves is one that no Xbox gamer should be without. 120 GB of memory is more than enough for the average gamer. The hard drive is well designed to blend with the console perfectly. It is small and easy to store. However the price is pretty heavy compared to the cheaper 20GB versions. A problem with the memory is the fact that the hard drive does not actually have 120GB, obviously it wouldn't be exactly due to the need for the running files but several GB are actually missing. Regular cleaning is advised as dust tends to collect on the hard drive but a sharp blow into the docking port is sufficient to clear this. All in all this product is an incredibly useful addition to any Xbox 360 gamers arsenal... Read review

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Advantages: Quiet, fast, huge, reliable
Disadvantages: Seek times and RPM are not the best, but are still good

...I initially chose this drive because of its large capacity and reasonable cost. It was definitely worth it. The drive holds over 40GB of data, and is capable of burst transfer speeds of 66.6MB/second via Ultra ATA 66, or 33.3MB/second via Ultra ATA 33. If your computer supports neither of these standards you'll still be able to enjoy the drives speed, but you'll obviously lose out on the burst rates. The drive is very quiet when it is both idle, and active, it's sometimes very difficult to tell whether the drive is active or not because it is so quiet. I haven't had a single problem with the drive as of yet, and I've had it around 6 months, so there's time yet for things to go wrong. The drive does come with a 2 year guarantee though, which means that at least if something does go wrong you can get help.... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, reliable, and the prices are coming down
Disadvantages: Tape load time is still slow... typical DLT, though

...Enterprise backups are important... as we all know. I've long trusted DLT technology and the DLT-8000 doesn't disappoint. As long as you know how to get the most from a tape drive, and a SCSI subsystem in general, you won't have any problems, but you will have greatly shortened backups. I've obtained nearly 350MB/minute with this drive. On an 100GB server, that puts the backup window at less than 5 hours! There are two keys to getting the most out of these drives. First, ensure that your tape drive firmware is updated. There were at least 2 or 3 different versions that have been improved upon since these drives first came out. The update is really as simple as making the tape with a free utility, pushing a couple of buttons on the drive and inserting the update tape. Second, make sure your SCSI controller is able to handle the speed... Read review

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