New hard drive?

So yeah, the hard drive on my comp's dying. It crashes after around 15 minutes, and won't finishe chkdsk (tried twice).

I need suggestions on a new hard drive. I want something that'll last for more than a year (the piece of shit I'm replacing was brand new last summer). It has to be around 300 GB, minimum. I do a LOT of computer games, so SATA and at least 7200 RPM is a must.

Any suggestions?

THIS JUST HAD TO FUCKING HAPPEN THE NIGHT I DOWNLOADED CALL OF DUTY 4.

I'd recommend the the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 drives (with perpendicular recording) at the 500GB and up level. Five year warranty, fast access, and those see some sales as well so if you wait for 'em you'll certainly find a good price.

Note:
I'm in the midst of HDD woes as well so you might find this of interest. Two HDD's were clunking along, would alternately show up as corrupt and working or just fail to boot to Windows at all. I took them out of the case, popped 'em both in an enclosure and tested them on another machine and they both run fine and quiet and chkdsk passed both. Could mean a few things, but at least they aren't trashed and remain usable.

BlindMonk, were you using SATA or IDE?

While we're at it, how is Windows Vista? I'm going to be buying a new OS with my hard drive (fucking TIRED of dealing with installing SP2 on an ancient pirated disk) and I've been hearing that Vista isn't 100% terrible anymore.

Stick with XP.

The next Windows OS will be out by the time Vista is optimized.

Originally Posted by ^-^

BlindMonk, were you using SATA or IDE?

Still using IDE. Both drives are currently running fine with a new cable, though performance feels a little slower than I remember.

Originally Posted by The_Griffin

While we're at it, how is Windows Vista? I'm going to be buying a new OS with my hard drive (fucking TIRED of dealing with installing SP2 on an ancient pirated disk) and I've been hearing that Vista isn't 100% terrible anymore.

I like Vista. I won't go out of my way to install it on older hardware, but I won't uninstall from current hardware.

Seagate has a 5 year warranty, which makes it a bit marginally more expensive than other manufactures at the same hard drive size. That warranty may be useful for gaming, due to all the disk thrashing you'll be doing.

I personally prefer Western Digital, because 3 year warranty is decent enough for me. I prefer having more space than a longer warranty.

Spinpoints are known for being pretty quiet, if you're into that.

Best Buy is currently selling a 1 TB Seagate for 190. Not a bad deal.

Originally Posted by BlindMonk

Still using IDE. Both drives are currently running fine with a new cable, though performance feels a little slower than I remember.

Are your drivers okay? My hard drive controller drivers got fucked once and I had to reinstall them.

You could always get a Raptor.

::nomeaning::

I just like to buy whatever's cheapest and throw them into a RAID 1 array... redundancy = peace of mind.