It's been a while since I bought a hard drive.

Since Vista doesn't like new programs (and some old ones) i've decided to get a new hard drive - I was originally waiting until Win7 but I can't be arsed with it.

What's the best hard drive at the moment? I'm thinking price/performance, but I want it as fast as I can afford. Not TOO fussed about size, but preferably 250GB at least.

Either that... or... Anyone know how to stop the "X PROGRAM has stopped working, Windows is checking for a solution to the problem". >.<

What size you after?

PC Pro sing the praises of the 750GB Samsung Spinpoint F1 (£64).

Sounds good.

Though if there's something in the same price range i'd sacrifice 500GB of disk space for more performance!

i have the 750GB spinpoint in mine... [link]

though the 1TB version is only a couple of quid more [link]

You'd struggle to find much faster than the Spinpoint F1 unless you looked at SSDs, Seagate Cheetahs and WD Velociraptors.

You need to go 750GB minimum to get the F1 with 32mb Cache which I would recommend too....

I have the Samsung Spinpoint 400, 500 and 750 in my system. If the last three drives I bought were not only the same manufacturer, but the same exact range, I'd say that's an endorsement! Not one issue. They are quiet and very quick! Get the 1TB though, 750 is a false economy with prices at the moment.

if your looking for a bit of extra performance, you might want to have a look at the 1TB seagate 7200.12. it has 2 500GB platters, in stead of the more classic 3 333GB. i have one as my backup drive, and its pretty nippy in sandra (120MB/s read compared to about 80MB/s for my 0.5TB spinpoint), havent done many other tests though, and its a bit more pricey, obv, but still worth having a look at

Righty i've bought the 1TB Spinpoint from Ebuyer =) Made it cheaper than scan with their free shipping at £70!

What would you guys recommend? Saving it as a 1TB drive, or partitioning to two 500GB drives?

Bear in mind I currently have 3 HDDs in my PC - 250GB (OS), 250GB (Music/Videos/Porn), 160GB (Games).

It depends if you want best performance...If the drive uses 3x333GB platters then splitting it up as such would probably work out better, if it's 2x500GB then do that (though this would probably have to be done a little intelligently, bearing in mind that values won't be exact), also, if you want maximum performance and you have multiple partitions, put the most commonly used partitions next to each other.

That's so unbelievably complicated >.<

Sorry, I've been talking to a guy who tunes systems most of this morning...If you want to squeeze a few more kb/s then do that, else do whatever the heck you want to

Well £69.99 I thought was good.

And this morning I wake up to find an email from Ebuyer saying that it's been reduced to £59.99!

Naturally I have cancelled the order and re-bought it >.<

Thereby saving £10; the extra day delivery I can live with.

What a bargain, I just bought one too.

Bit-tech are currently liking the Seagate Barracuda 7200.12
Clicky

I have the 500gb one myself. So far so good.