Which new internal HDD to buy?

I currently have a Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB UDMA/133 IDE HARD DRIVE. More information at the following link:

Code:

http://www.amazon.com/Maxtor-6Y080L0-80GB-UDMA-DRIVE/dp/B0012M4WZO

It can only store up to 80GB of data and its quite old now. I'm currently having, well i believe to be facing a big problem with this, the random clicks may mean the hard-drive may stop working at anytime. I've read up on the different types SATA/IDE. My PC doesnt currently have any SATA connections. I'm not looking for anything new, my current 80GB is more than enough to store my data, i'm probably looking at 160GB max. But not quite sure what to be looking out for or where i should look around. I'm just waiting for my current one to fail on me, and will replace it with the new one, so theres no issues about the drive bays, i can create a new partition which i currently have on this hard drive.

Any suggestions?

Cheers.
dan

I have a maxtor that was in one my older pc's, now it functions as a backup drive in my current pc, and it has been very reliable. But all of my others are Western Digital drives and very good drives. I would definitely avoid anything stamped with the Seagate name as I have read too many poor reviews there. Maybe they are better now, Gman or others may be able to add further, but I will not be purchasing one anytime soon. You are pretty well stuck with IDE unless you add a PCI Controller card for a SATA drive and even at that, I am not sure how that would work out being your primary and boot drive?? Other than that, shop around and read reviews at place like Newegg and Tiger Direct, whether or not you can purchase from them or are able to find better deals elsewhere, they will still have many customer reviews to read from. Cheers.

I sorta disagree with FERGUS here as the interface you are looking for is IDE. Seagate makes a good product but some are NOT as there is with all companies.

ATA100 IDE drives at the EGG

There is a link that should help you pick something. I have the WD 160Gb drive and it's still going after 6 years of service I think. I would try to make sure you get something with 8cache if you can... even tho one of the drives I linked to has 2cache.

Good luck to you.

Cheers Ferg and GM. I will look into it, i've just reformatted the harddrive and re-installed the OS again and to my suprise the clicking has stopped.

I knew someone would come along and straighten me out. So......are you saying that the IDE drives by Seagate are ok? But the SATA drives are not? Just want to be sure what you are disagreeing with me on.

Originally Posted by ferguj1

I knew someone would come along and straighten me out. So......are you saying that the IDE drives by Seagate are ok? But the SATA drives are not? Just want to be sure what you are disagreeing with me on.

It's not a full out bad SATA world for the Seagate HDD's. I have 3 of the 320GB Seagate drives and they are a treat!! I would do some research NO matter what you're gonna buy. I just purchased a Hitachi 1TB drive for $79.99 delivered but it's the C version (3rd) of the drive and is getting great reviews from what I've read.

NO need to straiten out FERGUS just give him some more info.