Best Serial ATA Hard Drives

Hard drive sizes keep growing, but the highest capacity available right now is 2TB. There are a variety of drives from several companies available, but the Seagate Barracuda LP offers the best mix of price and capacity. Rather than the full 7200rpm spin rate of most desktop drives, this drive spins at a lower 5900rpm but the higher data density makes up for some of the performance loss. The slower spin rate also helps reduce power consumption. It comes with a three year warranty and can be found for around $180. An alternative to the Seagate drive is the first drive available at 2TB, the WD Caviar Green 2TB shares the same capacity but a variable spin rate and a slightly higher price at $200.

The highest capacity drives generally do not have the best overall price when using the cost per gigabyte calculations. This falls to the slightly lower capacity 1.5TB size drives such as the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB. With prices as low as $120, the price per gigabyte comes out to roughly 7.3 cents compared to the 9 cents for 2TB drives. This is a slightly older drive but spins at a very fast 7200rpm rate for great performance and comes with a three year warranty. If you don't mind sacrificing performance a bit, the Seagate Barracuda LP 1.5TB is a suitable alternative with a lower $110 tag but a slower 5900rpm spin rate.

Performance is generally determined by how quickly data can be read from a drive. This is a factor of the drive density and the spin rate. The Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB currently holds the top honors for best performance thanks to its high capacity and the 7200rpm spin rate. Most of the 2TB drives spin at slower rates because of the energy and heat costs. It is a bit expensive at $300 but it does come with a longer 5 year warranty. For those not requiring such a huge amount of space, the Western Digital VelociRaptor offers a very high speed 10,000rpm speed drive with 300GB of storage space for around $250. It is actually a 2.5-inch drive but comes in a special 3.5-inch heatsink frame for installing in desktop systems.

RAID is a configuration that uses multiple drives to enhance performance, data reliability or both. Because the drives work in tandem and rely on having similar specs to ensure the best overall performance in the array, the drives require a bit more. Those looking to put together a RAID array would be well served by looking at Western Digital's Enterprise RE4-GP drives. These drives are specially designed to be put into RAID arrays. The 2TB versions are currently the largest available and offer improved power consumption and 5 year warranties. Prices are around $300. If size isn't as much of an issue as cost, then the Samsung F1 RAID Class drive with its 1TB size, 7200rpm spin rate, 7 year warranty and $150 price is a good alternative.

If you don't need a huge hard drive but are looking for a solid performing drive that is a bit more affordable, then the Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB is the choice. The drive actually uses the same platters used by the terabyte Caviar Black version, but instead uses two rather than three platters. The result, a drive with the same level of performance but uses a bit less energy and is more affordable to those that don't necessarily need to store as much data. Priced around $75. If you want to save a bit more and don't need as much space, then the Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB drive is a suitable alternative with a price tag as low as $50.