Best 500GB HD Under £100

megatron said:
I got some of those adaptor things with an Abit nforce2, I tried to use it to make an IDE drive run on an SATA port not so long ago and it didnt work. So they are for making Sata drives run on an IDE controller?

Abit serillel 2 its called.
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Hmm... that adaptor is designed to make IDE devices connect to SATA ports, so it should have worked. Were you using it with your Abit nforce2?
 
I also want to know the best 500GB drive, I'm planning to buy one and I'm leaning towards the WD AAKS one because it's cheapest on this week only. But if any one is really outstanding I would go for that over the WD.

I was originally going for the 7200.10 but I don't want to take a gamble and get a non pink glue one because the IDE Maxtor I've already got is loud enough as it is.
 
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I will be buying another hd shortly and it will be another Seagate 7200.10. I have used one for os and one for storage. Can't fault them, quick and quiet.
 
I have two 500gb Seagate 7200.10 running in a d-link NAS enclosure and they sit next to my desk. I can hardly hear them when I'm NOT using my computer and once I switch the portable on then they cannot be heard at all. Not had a problem with them yet so don't know about their warrenty support, but they can with 5-years.

Cheers
 
Samsung are the best. Very quiet and superbly reliable as far as i am concerned. SATA is probably the way to go these days.
 
the wd aaks are currently the fastest drives <750gb. the single fastest 7200rpm drive of them all is the 1tb hitachi which is will soon be available in retail.

ive got a 500gb 7200.10 and its a lovely drive. little loud when seeking, but motor noise is minimal and it runs cool. the wd's edge them out in synthetic and real world benchmarks. i've got a 500gb aaks coming tomorrow. 1.25tb of storage :cool:
 
I have 2 WD 500gb AAKS and 1 Seagate 7200.10 running on this PC and I can safely say the WD AAKS is quieter during intense seeking and is also 4-5C cooler idling according to speedfan
 
Got 2x samsung 500giggers, nice and silent and although can hear the seek its not as bad as all my previous Seagates and ive had the seagate 300-400giggers satas before.

Not only that but the Samsungs are quieter/less seek noise and they are still a lot cooler running compared then the Seagate :)
 
WD is way less noisy than samsung, I own all brands of hdd's atm, in terms of noise its like this in my experiance:

Seek noise, top= noisy, down = silent
Maxtor (dmax9&10) (noisiest)
Samsung (spinpoint)
Seagate (7200.10 series, dont know about older ones)
Hitachi (dekstar)
Western digital (caviar) (most silent drive in my pc)

Spin noise
Maxtor dmax10/9 (noisiest)
Seagate 7200.10 (depends on motor)
Hitachi dekstar
Western digital caviar
Samsung spinpoint (most silent spin)


As for heat: My hitachi and WD are usually very cool, sub 35, my maxtors are around 35c, and i can't measure the seagates as smart doesnt work on raided hdd's, but they are hot to the touch, my guess is 45 C.

Get sata as its more future proof and new mobos have more sata's than ide's these days, in terms of performance it doesn't make the tiniest bit of difference with a single drive if its ata133 or sata (be it sata 150 or 300) , its the generation of the drive that matters, ie. 7200.10 is faster as 7200.7 series baracudda's.
 
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the wd aaks are currently the fastest drives <750gb. the single fastest 7200rpm drive of them all is the 1tb hitachi which is will soon be available in retail.
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Link about wd being fastest < 750gig please ? The only site I trust consistently is storage review and they still have the Hitachi as the leader (after the raptor of course) in the desktop/single user scenario.

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/leaderboard.html

The Hitachi T7K500 wins in almost every test over the WD, Maxtor and Seagate drives.
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200511/HDS725050KLA360_3.html
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200511/HDS725050KLA360_2.html

It's also a nice bit ahead of the 750gig seagate 7200.10 ES edition
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200611/ST3750640NS_3.html

Runs a bit hot though.

If you look on Anadtech he rates the WD's very highly especially the RE2 ones designed for Raid.

On Toms Hardware in one of his most recent shootouts (which I don't like much these days) the Samsung drives seem to do very well.

Personally I don't think you can go wrong on either hitachi, wd, samsung or seagate, but I think storagereview are well respected so would follow their advice if you want the best.
 
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not one of those links you posted tests a x000AAKS drive, wd's newest drives. the wd4000yr's and such are western digitals last drives, and as much as i DO trust storage review (thank you), they havent even reviewed the drives yet. Storage review are always very slow at getting the reviews out the door.
 
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not mine, but here's a benchmark for you :)

wd500gbrx5.png


http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17696129&highlight=5000aaks

faster than my 500gb 7200.10

500gb%20seagate%207200.10%20vs%20250gb%20hitachi.jpg



(the st3500630as is a 250gb hitachi deskstar)
 
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