I'm going to be in the same situation in a couple months for a 750GB drive...it seems as you go up the models the WD's get horrendously loud, and the bigger Seagates have reliability issues

do you seriously have that much music??

Not...yet

With a 300MB average per album and 1GB easy for box sets and DVD-A's, it seems like good insurance for the future

I think I am going to great the Calvary 500gig before they "run out of stock" on this one too.

As someone that has probly... 12 HDDs to his name right now, over the years I've had every brand fail. My last oen just recently was my WD raptor. Before that was a Seagate, and before that was a Maxtor. Before that was 2 Wd's within a week of one another bought at the same time that I think was the fault of poor handling or something.

Seagate carries the longest warranty, as was said. The larger seagates, i.e. 750+ have SOME reliability issues, they are more expensive, and slower... at least the earlier series were. I just ordered my third WD 750 SE16 Drive; they are quick, quiet, don't seem to get too hot if you have ample cooling, and as for reliability, dunno yet obviously, they carry a 3 year warranty, but chances are they will fail in the first 3 years if they are going to. I don't put a lot of wear and tear on mine, they are there just to store data, my music drive after 3 years of adding music does still not need to be defragged bc I don't move files around a lot, they just sit there and get played. And I don't remember if it was said, but fyi, Maxtor is now owned by Seagate, so MOST of the newer maxtor models will also carry the 5 year warranty.

I don't know that I would go with an off brand myself. They may be just fine, but I will tell you that IF it fails, the RMA process is going to be much easier with one of the kings. I wrote up my WD RMA for my raptor in 5 minutes, and I can just about guarantee you when they get it, they will S.M.A.R.T. it to confirm it is indeed failing, destroy it, and ship out a new one probly that same day (though it make take them a few to get to it).

Some good deals mentioned though. Take a look here at the link I posted in the other thread.

http://dealnews.com/categories/Computer/St...Drives/301.html

Edited February 5, 200817 yr by InfinitePeace

I ended up with the seagate 750 on sale from best buy fyi

I picked up a Seagate a week ago as well

damn i need one...i have like 13K music but most isn't high bitrate stuff...probably around 65 gigs though

im running a seagate sata in a sata/usb2.0 case paid about 80 for 750gb external setup