I have a few questions about hard drives.

1) What are the best hard drives in the $50-60 range? I am looking for something with at least 500GB, but would prefer 640GB or so.

I don't need one right now. Does anyone know if the prices will drop a lot during early 2010? The prices seem to be the same from 8 or so months ago. Was hoping to find 750GB hard drives in the $60 range by now.


2) I am just wondering if the issues with the Seagate 7200.11 finally resolved?

I have one but never used it for more than a few hours after reading about how they were failing. Heard something about firmware fixing it... and then heard that the firmware update caused more problems.

Has there since been another firmware update that works?

Or anyone else have one of these hard drives with no issues?

I scanned it with HD tune and found no errors or bad sectors.

3) I will be adding a new hard drive as a secondary drive. Any way I should format it (partitions, ect.)?

It will mainly be used as a data back up drive and for non-programs.

I bought one of these early this year from Newegg. I read the same things you did but figured it was worth the risk.

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931
(info in case you haven't seen it)

There is a tool there you can run that will tell you what you have and the firmware version it has now.
The one I got did not need the update applied, it came from the factory good to go. No issues to date. Might use tha tool to see if your drive may have the update applied already.

edit: looked it up, got the 1TB last March, and it had the update from the factory.

I have a Seagate 500gb 7200.11 it runs fine but I had some issues with it when first purchased,in that I could not boot into the operating system,after a clean install,and showing the word "yooyoo" I kid you not just after the first boot screen.The update did`nt seem to make much sense either.Eventually I discovered that by using "Ghost" and making an image of the OS.then re-installing useing that everything was OK.Another cure was to partion the drive and add another OS.then install "Boot Magic"[old software Admittedly] I could then boot into the partion of my choice.All a bit of a pain and I`ve no idea why this happened but its been working fine now for several months.If you want to use it as a backup drive just format it to NTFS and everything should be OK.

I would stay away from the 11 series Seagates as there are still some that have the old bad firmware floating around.

http://www.frys-electronics-ads.com/ads/...-300-Hard-Drive

Come to think of it, this is purely a storage drive, my OS is not on it. That may make a difference here.

Thanks a lot for that link. Forgot to check out Frys... they often have some good deals.

Only thing is that Green or Black? Probably green, but does anyone know how Green compares to Black?

I know it is supposed to be a bit slower and save some power, but just how much slower is it?

Tom's Hardware has some articles about the differences between the green and black drives. I saw 640Gb Hitachi's at Fry's the other day for 39 bucks apiece. I prefer WD or Seagate's though. I've read some really good articles about the speed of those new Samsung F3 drives.

Looked at some benchmarks and the Desktars seem to be a bit slower than the WDs.

So I'll probably stick to WD. Might try out Samsung.

I have a Samsung F3 and can't fault it yet (new drive in a new system with new OS, W7) and have read reviews saying it's fast. Cheaper, and faster, than the Seagate and WD anyways.

I'm no expert.

I had 5 Seagate drives in my system (plus others in my wife's computer). I replaced the firmware in two of them -- all was well. The Seagate provided HD checkout software said I did NOT have to replace the firmware in the others. However, one of those failed hard on bootup -- I lost some valuable data and a lot of time (I backup more frequently now).

Now, I look at the very reasonable Seagate prices -- and am afraid to buy. Since the failure, I've been buying Western Digital. FWIW.