SATA internal cables....and what sata drives are great?

[Coaster]

my PC has 4 SATA ports and a courtesy IDE port inside. the lowly western digital 40 gig drive has got to go, or be devoted to windows only and i buy another storage drive.

 

i've actually been trying to figure all this out since my days of the 120gig western digital and the 80 gig seagate drives being king of the hill are now over, i realize i dont know what the good sata drives are. my reading indicates that the seagate 1TB drives are a crapshoot at best, and the green western digitals are to be avoided as well as the blue ones.

 

it seems the cheapest drive that doesnt have a lot of flak posted about it is the western digital caviar black 1TB. (?)

 

of course it seems that no hard drive comes with a sata cable, and the only place in fargo to get one is "best" buy, a cheezy dynex for $20. its a $0.45 cable at best.

 

i already had to order a second lightscribe burner from amazon (yea! 2 week shipping!) since no one in town has a lite on lightscribe that is identical to the one a bought a short while ago.

 

what is the good sata drive?

 

where are you buying cables? if i have to order a $0.45 cable and pay $11 shipping on it i will kill.

[MikeRivers]

These days, the only "good" drive is a "server grade" drive. The rest of them are designed and built with the idea that the computer that they're installed in will only last a couple of years, so why should the drive last forever?

 

I'm just mirroring the opinion of others who sound like they know what they're talking about. I wish I could tell you how to identify a "server grade" drive, though. I've always found Western Digital's phone support to be reasonably prompt and knowledgeable. Why not give them a call and ask them what series drives have the highest reliability, and ask where to find them.

 

As far as cables, I've never bought a cable, I've only bought drives or computers that come with cables. If I needed one, I'd go to my local Micro Center store and pick one off the rack. It would probably cost more than 45 cents, but at least I wouldn't have to pay $11 for shipping.

[Alndln2]

Western Digital Black series. The other colors(blue/green) spin down when not in use for power saving. I'm not sure about Seagates models as I've given up on them.