Installation Of A Hard Drive
There is basically not much to say about the installation of a hard disc drive. Nonetheless, I want to emphasize some issues.
The faster your drive's rotation speed, the more will be its heat dissipation. Thus it is very important to install your drive properly. Make sure that the drive gets in close touch with your computer case. Or in other words, make sure both sides of the drive bay are in close contact with the drive by using all four screws. That's very important, as the case takes over the function of a heat sink.
Some of you may want to reduce the passing-on of the drive's vibrations to the computer case by putting some material between the drive and the case. Please be aware that this will take away the only option of passive heat derivation to the computer case. If you still want to use insulating materials, I'd strongly recommend using a hard drive cooling system for drives running at 7,200 or 10,000 rpm.
Conclusion
I think it is extremely difficult to give a recommendation for just one drive. After reading this article you should know now that every drive has both benefits and handicaps. The Seagate Barracuda ATA II is the fastest one, but will likely make your case vibrate as well. The Fujitsu drive is very quiet and provides short seek times, but gets almost as hot as the Seagate drives. Quantum builds a decent drive as well, With only the Windows 98 performance letting it down. Western Digital provides two great drives as well, but performance freaks will complain about their basic performance.
I hope you understand why I'm not going to recommend any particular drive at this time, as choosing the right one depends highly on your personal requirements. If you want performance or capacity in the first place, I'd go for the Seagate drive. But you should spend some money for a hard drive cooling kit as well. Windows 98 users should avoid the Quantum drive, while database applications will run fast with the Fujitsu drive. You should also take either the Fujitsu or the Quantum drive if you want to get a quiet model.
Finally, all users who just don't know what they want may take a look at the Western Digital drives. They are not the very fastest, but come with little CPU utilization, no annoying noises and acceptable temperatures.
