New SATA HDD purchase

[Mandachuva]

If someone could help me out here. I have a choice of several HDD to buy, and I'm searching for a quiet/reliable/fast HDD. Could you please help me in picking one of these?

Samsung 80GB SATA-II, 7200rpm, 8MB NCQ SpinPoin P Series
Maxtor 80GB, SATA, 7200RPM, 8MB DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ (RoHS)
WD 80GB, SATA, 7200RPM, 8M, Caviar Special Edition
Seagate 80GB, SATA, 7200RPM, 8M
Hitachi Deskstar 7K80 80GB SATA300 7200 8MB

WD 160GB, SATA-II, 7200RPM, 8M, Caviar
Maxtor 160GB, SATA-II, 7200RPM, 8MB DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ (RoHS)
Samsung 160GB SATA-II, 7200rpm, 8MB NCQ SpinPoin P Series

I'll be using them on either a Asus K8N-E or a Asus K8N4-E Deluxe mobo, neither of which have SATA-II (at least to my knowledge). Alas, a larger HDD would be better, as long as it's not a lot noisier or a lot less reliable.

 

[Bullnettles]

I have that WD 80gig and I love it. So much I ordered another and it's coming today. Quiet, fast bootup for windows, and no SMART errors to date. I must say I'm partial to WD because of previous experiences though.

 

[rlemieux]

I have had WD's, Seagates, Maxtors, Samsung and Hitachi's. I am running a 250GB and an 80GB ATA 133 Maxtor in the computer I am using now. I also just purchased two 300GB 16MB cache SATA 3.0 Seagates for my new system that I am building.

In my experience Seagate is next to none when it comes to hard drives. After that I do recomend Maxtors. I would never buy a Hitachi again, have had all bad experiences and as much as people like WD, I have not been that impressed (have had several bad WD's).

I try to stick with Seagate, although I went with the Maxtor's I have now because I got some very good deals on them.

 

[JCLW]

Seagate bought Maxtor (for US$2bn) at the end of last year, so really they are the same company now. But that only happened very recently so the drives are still different.

I think that the price difference between the 80s and the 120s/160s is so small you might just want to go for a larger drive.

Over the years I've found Seagate drives to be quiet and very reliable (only consumer level drive with 5yr warranty), but not the fastest.

Usually I go with WD drives, as they have always proven to be a good balance of everything in my eyes.

I have not had any personal experience with the Hitachi drives, but people say they a very quick compared to the other 7.2k offerings.

Right now I'm using Seagate drives in my file server, and WD drives in my workstation.

 

[Mandachuva]

Thanks for the info! I think I'll go for a Seagate 80Gb. Don't have any more money ATM for a bigger one. Nor will I in the near future...