[Pc_Support] a new hard drive. so... -- I avoid retail (consumer) hard drives, only buy 24x7 enterprise ...

[Bryan J. Smith]

In general, I've been avoiding _all_ retail hard drives (sans one**)
because they are _consumer_ grade hard drives.  No, I don't buy
consumer OEM hard drives either, I buy _enterprise_ OEM hard drives.

What are those?  Basically they are the cream of the consumer models,
tested to better tolerances, thermal, vibration, etc... for 24x7
operation (instead of the 8x5 of their consumer models).  Here are
some example models ...
- Hitachi T7K (based on consumer-grade 7K)
- Seagate NL35/Barracuda ES (based on consumer-grade Barracuda 7200.x)
- Western Digital Caviar RE/RE2 (based on consumer-grade SE/SE2)

Hitachi charges a premium on the T7K.

Seagate charges even more of a premium on the NL35 which is now being
replaced by the Barracuda ES that isn't so pricey.

But by far the best buy is the Western Digital Caviar RE/RE2 series --
typically only 15-30% more than the consumer SE/SE2.

You can get a 320GB Western Digital Caviar RE/RE2 for just over $100
-- no rebates, no non-sense.  Enterprise-rated 24x7.

-- Bryan

**NOTE:  I still _do_ buy the consumer-grade, retail 200GB Seagate
7200.7 ST3200822A when I see it, and have been for over 2 years.  I
now own 14 of them (8 on a 3Ware Escalade 7800 and 5 on a NetCell
SR5000).  Nearly all of them had rebates -- typically from Seagate,
possibly via Circuit City or CompUSA.  They have _all_ been honored
(although I'm just filling one out now and 2 more are coming).  As
long as I don't buy them the same week/under the same rebate offer,
they have honor them -- even if it's on-sale subsequent weeks.