• Caviar SE 250GB Hard...
• • pcRUSH.com
  • $71.96
• • ServerSupply.com
  • $90.00
• • Memory4Less.com
  • $130.50
• • MicroPartsUSA.com
  • $48.00
• • BuyAAE
  • $60.87

Ten years ago, you were still well off with storage capacities of 250 MB. And no one had even dared to dream that hard drives would grow by a factor of 1000 within the span of a decade. In fact, this growth has not even been achieved by microprocessors - if you start out with a 486 with 66 MHz, you'd theoretically end up with 66 GHz today. With this in mind, the two new storage giants do deserve a certain amount of respect, because high growth of this kind is a rarity - even in the IT industry.

With regard to the latter, hard drive manufacturers haven't exactly gained any good publicity lately, due to the fact that the warranties on the mainstream models were suddenly reduced to one year last fall. Maxtor makes up for this with its MaXLine series; Western Digital, in order to avoid a similarly awkward situation, had never reduced the three-year warranties on its "Special Edition" models (8 MB buffer) to begin with.

With the two 250 GB monsters, it has once more become a neck-and-neck race. Here, we'll give you some insight as to which of the manufacturers manages to best distinguish itself.