Best Performing Hard Drive under $250 AUD.

[5days]

Hey Guys,

I've just had to RMA my Seagate 7200.7 160GB SATA Hard drive. So I need a replacement in the mean time. I was thinking of selling my 160GB off when I get a replacement and upgrading to faster / better performing HDD's.

Are the 7K80's worth the money?

Or should I invest in a Seagate 300GB with 16MB cache (although 11ms) or a WD 2500KS with 16MB cache and 8.9ms.

Whats the most important factor for performance?

I really want to go with Seagate because of their 5 Year Warranty.

Cheers.
- Sean.

[thegoatman]

most important HDD factor is the seek times. It's actually the single biggest bottleneck in computers today. I heard bad things about the geometry of the WD 2500KS (frequent head crashes, severe enough to grind away at the platter), which drove me away from it. I was waiting for the Seagate 300GB until the WD Raptor 150 came out. I got that instead. If you're willing to go up to $300, get that. otherwise, the BEST PERFORMING drive under $250 is the Raptor 74GB. All Raptors have a 5 year warranty. and because of the fast spindle speed, their seek times are more like 4 ms (I think). Call me a fanboy, but I love the idea behind the Raptor. (haven't gotten to test mine yet though...). If Raptors in general are too expensive for you, go with the seagate. From my experience in the data recovery field, they're the best, period.

[nn_step]

You can go two ways
First Buy two 74Gb raptors
Or 4 40Gb SATA hard drives and a good raid card
the Raptors for Raid0
The 40GB SATA for Raid5
They will perform about the same

[IYP]

dont run raid5 for performance, use it for reliable storage...its not a very fast array type