What hdd should I go for?

I'm thinking about adding a second hd to my dell and I was just wondering which one I should tell santa to get?. I'd like to go for something around the 300gb mark but I dont have a clue what brands are good and which are not so good. Price isn't a hugh issue but probably around the £100-£150 mark (dont know what that is in USD but I think its around $130-$200 but not totally sure). Whats everyones experience with hdds?.

Also I live in Scotland so If anyone can recomend a good UK based company to buy from that would be excellent too .

 

You might have more success posting this in the Hardware forum

Btw...you are looking at $180-$270 USD

 

Ok thanks Lev. Wasn't too sure where to post since I don't have any kind of technical problem.

 

Might be a good idea to post what type Dell....

Some of my decision to upgrade was purely price! Also my older Dimension 4100 would not handle SATA so it had to be IDE. I bought a Seagate 160 for $139 with a pair of $40 rebates. I think I botched one rebate, but still happy with going from 20 Gig to 160 for $89. Also I loaded Kubuntu on this drive and left the XP in place for dual boot. Easy to switch back and forth as both have Firefox and Thunderbird. added PCI 2.0 USB and the last upgrades before I have to start all over.

You may be able to buy a 40 Gig drive. and be as happy..... I understand you have Costco there in Scotland. They may have some bargains available.

Welcome to MG.

 

Thanks for your comments BoredOutOfMyMind. Its a Dell Dimension 2400. Its got an 80 gig drive in there at the moment but its always brimming with stuff so I'd really like something bigger along side it. I Back up a lot of films/tv shows and music on my pc and I store all of my digital camera pics and movies on it too so I need something with alot of space. I've seen places online selling 300 gig drives for just over £100 which seems very cheap but I dont really know what brands I should be aiming for. I heard seagate barracudas were meant to be good?.

The other reason I started thinking about putting in a second drive was because I had the lid off the pc case the other night and noticed there was already a spare power connector, bracket and extra plug on the IDE cable (is that what its called? Im a bit of a noob ) ready for a second drive. Is it pretty easy to install from a software point of view? how do you format the drive etc. I'm not looking for any detailed answers but a link to any websites or tuts would be much appreciated.

Thanks for any advice!

 

On the software side of things installing the new hard drive is very easy, I bought one a couple of months ago and managed it no problem, and I am quite dim tbh
I bought a 200gb for about £50-60 cant remember exactly

As far as brands go, some people might disagree with me but I dont think that it really matters what brand your hdd is, if your on a budget then just go for the cheapest 7200rpm hdd with the highest storage you can find!

 

Maxtor DiamondMax 10 with 16 MB cache aren't too expensive, and are very fast and quiet.

 

Get ether a maxtor hard drive or a western digital (they're both good hdd's).