My HDD took a dive (along w/ my motherboard yesterday). . .I think I had a voltage spike or something because it smelled aweful and didn't work. Anyway, enough of the crying. . .I bought a new MB which came in a combo w/ processor for 100$. So I'm happy there. Now finally for the question: Should I get a seagate barracuda 8MB seek cache drive or a Western Digital 8MB Caviar drive? I had a WD that was the one that got toasted, but I may be able to get it repaired under waranty (3 years. . .wow!) Regardless, I need a replacement as I use my comp for a lot of business things besides simming. So what do you all recommend? I need to buy it within in hour or so. Thanks!-drew-KLGB

I have just bought my first Maxtor HD, and would recommend it first behind the Raptor's. Never had a Seagate. Does your mobo support SATA? If so that is the way to go also.Jay__________________

Thanks for the quick reply, Jay! I actually also have a 40G Maxtor DiamondMax and it has been alive and kickin' for teh past 4 years. Unfortunately this temp mother board doesn't have SATA, so looks like I'm stuck without it for now. I sure hope that the "dead" drive can still be read as a slave disk so I can retrieve files off it. Weird thing was that it worked just long enough for me to burn all my really important stuff onto 2 CDs, then it started freezing, then it got stuck in a continual rebooting loop. (It would get to the windows "XP wasn't properly shut down. Press any key to not check your disk, otherwise you have 8...7...6...etc" screen but then would go to some REALLY weird blue screen for a second and then reboot. . .again and again.) -drew-KLGB

This is very simple:If your mobo supports SATA, get a Maxtor SATA drive. If not, get a Maxtor anyway.No one makes a drive like Maxtor. Go look at Newegg.

I had a friend who had tons of trouble with Western Digital, he then bought a Maxtor and is very happy, I bought a Maxtor and it is a great drive, its very quiet even when I make it work hard and just seems to run very well and the price was right, 80GB HD w ATA 133 card for around 200 CAD.