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: Plug and Play, Really Fast Doesn't Overheat
Disadvantages: Nothing =D

...Freecom External 3.5" 160GB Hard Drive I first got the Freecom external hard 160GB hard drive when my internal one on my computer started to get clogged up with applications and other junk. So I decided to go and buy a Freecom external hard drive which is 160 Gigabytes in size. Since this hard drive is external, it does have to look good and not look like a tack bit of plastic with wires hanging out of it. With Freecom though, performance and design is everything. The hard drive enclosure itself is made of high quality, heat absorbing aluminium which is 20 x 11.5 x 4.5 cm ( or 7.9 x 4.5 x 1.6 inches ) in size. On the front of the hard drive enclosure is a storage LED indicator and on the back there is one ' rocker' power on/off switch, a usb port and a power adapter port. This hard drive has been givin five awards including... Read review

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Advantages: Huge capacity, reasonably fast, 5 year warranty
Disadvantages: Not the fastest

...My laptop, a Dell 5150 is a fine machine (see review elsewhere on Ciao) but the 80Gb hard drive whilst big for a laptop is starting to get a bit cramped now I have both Windows XP and Vista on it so I've started looking around for a second hard drive so I can put Vista on one and leave XP on the other and then swap drives as needed. Luckily, following a previous hard drive failure, I have a spare caddy that the laptop needs so swapping drives would be a quick task, assuming I keep the tiny screwdriver needed handy in my rucksack! Laptop hard drives are smaller than normal - 2.5inch as opposed to 3.5 inch and tend to be at a price premium compared to the 'normal' sized drives, especially the bigger ones. They also tend to be much slower as they run at 4200RPM instead of 5600 or even 7200RPM that desktop ones run at. The reason being... Read review

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Advantages: Fast, Sata, Quite Cheap, Reliable
Disadvantages: Have to use Hitachi Software to Enable Sata II

...I was looking for something fast with a lot of storage for my new gaming PC that most of all I could rely on; I chose this drive because Hitachi is a big brand and one that has a good reputation for reliability. I managed to pick up this drive for £44 inc. VAT which is a complete steal for a Hitachi drive. If you buy the retail version you will get a 130 page instruction manual with every little detail about the drive in it as well as all the screws, cables etc but to be honest your much better off buying a OEM version which is identical but doesn't have all the nice packaging and screws etc so you end up saving about £15 or more. The installation is as easy as any other hard drive, just plug in the power and S-ata cables and your away. The only downside with this is to enable s-ata II which gives you a much faster transfer speed... Read review

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Advantages: Extremely Reliable
Disadvantages: A little noisy, but you'd need a decimeter to prove it!

...The Hitachi 160GB (SATA Version) is truly an exceptional drive. Whereas Maxtor are known for their low prices and Western Digital for their performance, Hitachi have truly captured the market as a result of the reliability of their products. And so it is with the 160GB Hard Drive. As far as hard drives go, it's pretty standard. It installs the same way, works the same way, even looks the same way, unless you count the different logo. I personally have 2 of these drives, having bought them as a replacement for my previous Maxtor drives, after one o them failed irrecoverably and the other failed but did not have guarenteed reliability. I have found that the Hitachi drive is slightly noisier than the Maxtor, although this is only really noticeable if you are lyying next to your case with it lying open, and even then only... Read review

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Advantages: Reliable, Quick, Quite, Good value for money
Disadvantages: Not a very high capasity

...If you are looking for an 80 GB hard disk for your PC, you have found the one to buy! I have been using 2 of these Hitachi Deskstar's in my PC for a long time now. I have had no problems with them. For the price you pay to buy one, you are getting cheap and reliable hard disk, witch has a good capacity to price ratio (around 2GB per pound). I would recommend this hard disk to anyone whom it is making up a new computer, or just needs more storage space. This hard disk is probable one of the quickest disks I have used, its read speed is good, but I must say, the SATA (serial ATA) version is about twice as quick, but for them that don't intend to go down the path of SATA Can just stick with the ATA-100 version (or IDE as it is more commonly known). Instillation of this disk is like every other hard disk on this planet, if you know... Read review

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Advantages: Raw speed and power
Disadvantages: none

...Well i needed a new hard disk for my new pc, and i'd been told that SATA drives were the way to go... I decided on purchasing two of these drives to create a RAID 0 setup (2 hard disks working as one, twice as fast) after hearing nothing but good things, and i can back this up from experience. They're quiet, fast and reliable, and coupled with a relatively new system they make for a killer PC setup. One thing i must note is that if you are planning buying a hard disk for an existing pc, then this size should be fine. However if you are building a new pc i recommend you look to buy a drive twice as big as you think you need (or buy two of the same drive for a RAID 0 array), as many game installs are upwards of 5Gig each, which quickly adds up along with applications and media. I have been running this (well these) drives... Read review

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Advantages: Reliable
Disadvantages: Non

...First of all, I did not buy this hard drive. I had a cheaper Western Digital Hard drive but it broke. Lucky it was still in the warranty so i went to the post office.....to my horror it was £11.00 to send as i think it was going to germany. I thought this was awful as i had paid for the thing. I waited about a week and it was returned to me, apart from it was not the item i had sent to them. Because of my trouble they sent me a much better hard drive with about 50gb more than my old one. Because of this i think their customer services are pretty good, yeh they could have given me my £11.00 back but i gained a much better hard drive for £11.00. I use this hard drive on a Mac, because of this i have not bothered with the one touch backup button or timed backup button but to be honest i do not want all of my hard drive backed up... 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... Read review

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