Best Computer Hard Drives (HDD'S)

Seagate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagate may not be able to compete with Hitachi with a terabyte http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terabyte offering, but it was the first hard drive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive maker to offer a 750 GB drive. The Barracuda http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracuda 7200.10 still is a huge and fast hard drive, and it is available both with UltraATA and Serial ATA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA /300 interfaces. Its real advantage is the generous warranty: Seagate is the only drive maker to offer a full five-year warranty, which you typically find in the enterprise space. The terms and conditions allow Seagate to replace broken drives by a drive that may be available in the future, which is not helpful for enterprise users (they will want an identical replacement. Home users might even get a newer/faster/bigger drive if their 7200.10 crashes after four years. Make sure you double-check the warranty when you buy a Seagate drive, as the five years are only valid for retail products and do not necessarily apply to OEM shipments.

Samsung's Spinpoint T166 currently is one of the cheapest 500 GB Serial ATA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA hard drives. It carries 16 MB cache, supports Native Command Queuing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_queue (NCQ) and offers exceptionally high transfer rates, beating the other 500 GB hard drives. Although this drive comes with a standard three-year warranty, it's important to mention that Samsung offers the same guarantee for all Spinpoint hard drives, whether they are sold via retail or OEM channels. The sweetest part, however, is the price tag: We found it for as little as $119.99.

The Spinpoint T166 utilizes only three instead of four platters to store the 500 GB (T166 refers to the per-platter capacity of approximately 166 GB), which results in less heat dissipation and slightly less noise as well.

Only 79 dollars, this hard drive is a great buy.