Affordable and Reliable 80 and 160 GB Hard Drives
Conclusion
Our comparative tests did not yield a loser as all four candidates performed almost flawlessly and could be booted up with ease. Moreover, none of the drives produced any annoying humming noises. Seagate stands out for its unparalleled quietness. The other models produce discernibly more vibration.
With the J360, ExcelStor offers a hard drive that's excellent for souping up older systems in a cost-efficient way. It features state-of-the-art performance at a winning price - unfortunately, though, with only a one-year guarantee.
The low-end model from Western Digital is obviously meant to scare the pants off the retail competition, since at the time of the test, the WD800JB is the cheapest high-performance drive with mid-range capacity. While things can change in a jiffy, the "little" WD is an outstanding drive that is ideally suited as a system hard drive, for example, especially if a second hard drive is to be used to store larger volumes of operating data.
But the real winner in terms of price/performance ratio is Samsung. The SP1604N offers a whopping 160 GB and 7,200 rpm while costing mo more than the 120 GB drives from the competition. Considering that, it's quite tempting. Especially if you have to get your hands on two hard drives for a RAID 1, cost is a disproportionately major factor.
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