fast big hard drive needed

having previously got as far as the 'buy now' button for an ssd and been told they were all out of stock i have decided against it (price and capacity ) and now looking for a fast big hard drive.
i have seen the new seagate momentus xt with its adaptive 4 gb memory. not sure exactly how it works but as i multiboot 5 os's will that be of no use?

 

5 OS's may limit the value of the 4GB SSD cache.

So you may as well get the Hitachi 7K500 500GB, the fastest hard drive to date.

 

or seagate momentus XT which is faster but more expensive and long wait time but really 7K500 is a super upgrade already

 

agreed on
Hitachi 7k500

 

Another vote for Hitachi 7k500, jnr had it $69 a couple of days ago, but i think already went back up to regular price

 

The Hitachi 7k500 500GB is a very good choice. I am not sure what kind of hard drives you are using right now, but the 7K500 will be an upgrade regardless, especially if your current drives are 5400RPM.

 

Hi, thanks for the replies guys. i have a 500gb toshiba main and a 320 wd scorpio blue in the dvd bay which are both 5400rpm.
i will start my search for the hitachi.
i will need to find a dealer which:
a) has it in stock (quite easy)
and
b) will ship to the middle east (thats the hard part)
er.... anyone?

 

Ebay sellers can be quite flexible with shipping to foreign countries as long as you pay for it.

travelstar 7K500 items on eBay.com

You may need to contact them for shipping to your country.

 

ok, took longer than i thought but finally ordered hitachi 500gb 7200rpm off ebay. was more than $100 in the end
nearly bought a 250gb (thought it seemed cheap), then an older 5400rpm, then a 3.5" then still had more clicks to find one who would ship to dubai.
hopefully all ok when it arrives
it will replace my main drive with 5 os's and lots of data on, so that should be fun

 

Too bad, I was just planning on selling mine for 65 euro.

Shipping to Dubai may be expensive though.

 

Well I should have a new sealed 240GB Vertex 2 up for grabs in a few days as well!
But as Phil just said above, its the shipping to Dubai that may not make it such a great deal for you!!

Nevertheless, Ive always preferred Seagate Momentus 7200rpm drives over Hitachi. I just feel they run quieter, and also run cooler then the Hitachi drives. Although I have read the Momentus XT does vibrate a little!

 

er... for the same price as the hitachi

 

Is it just me, or does a 500GB HDD for five separate OS installations seem rather small where capacity is concerned?

 

hi garetjax, drifting off topic.....
no, plenty of room. an os only requires about 30-40GB with some programs. i have a working windows 7 (biggest), my old faithful xp for older stuff and games, a server 2003 for CAD (boring work stuff), and a cut down windows 7 and server 2008 which i use for games (install is much smaller as no office or multimedia stuff). i also have another one which i dont mention here. i simply change partition sizes as one grows or swap an os to another bigger/smaller partition as necessary.
i share bigger program files (mainly games) on a separate partition, and keep all data and personal stuff an another partition. i also have a 320GB backup disc in the dvd bay. i keep images of all partitions on a usb drive and if (when) an os falls over i just replace one image. good thing is i always have several working systems when one is broken.

 

Well, not really. You asked for recommendations on a big, fast, hard drive. There are hard drives with larger capacities, including WD's 1TB monster notebook HDD. My point is with five installed OSes, including programs and software, capacity might be a problem with a 500GB hard drive which is why I was thinking of a HDD with larger capacity.

 

@garetjax: ok point taken, but the 1tb is fairly slow and i will think about that for a backup some time further on. i have ordered the hitachi and that will give me a fast 500gb inside + 320 backup and my existing slower 500gb as an external backup
if i get around to some house keeping i am sure i would not even need all of the 500gb