Sometimes you get what you pay for - and sometimes you get a lot more.

There is a staggering array of desktop hard drives on the market today with varying storage capacities, different interface technologies such as UltraATA/133, Serial ATA/150 or 300. There are also many different performance characteristics spanning a wide range of pricing.So how do you go about finding the best drive for your hard-earned money? Let's find out.

There isn't yet a magic metric that calculates storage capacity, performance and price to come up with a relative score. So what do you do? You look at the cost per GB and compare that against the performance of the drive relative to other drives. Then you make a decision based on how and where the hard drive will be used.

With the seemingly insatiable demand for storage, economies of scale are helping to push larger, faster drives out to market, while at the same time providing technology at price points that are almost unimaginable.

Two new hard drives from Hitachi and Samsung are cases in point. The 400 GB storage capacity milestone for 3.5" desktop drives wasn't achieved all that long ago. Samsung's SpinPoint T133 HD400LJ hits it at a price point that is unbelievably low at approximately 30 cents per GB! With 160 GB of storage capacity, Hitachi's DeskStar 7K160 (HDS721616PLA380) comes in at around 38 cents per GB.

And the performance of the drives isn't disappointing, either. In fact, they're downright respectable to say the least. Let's take a look and see how far your money can go with these two affordable desktop drives.

• SpinPoint T133 400GB...
• • BuyAAE
  • $188.99
• • BuyThisPart.com
  • $189.00

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