Description
What To Look For
Recommendations

Recommendations:

• IDE Hard Drives
• SCSI Hard Drives

IDE Hard Drives:
There are quite a few good hard drive options depending on your budget.  IDE hard drives are usually fairly comparable in price for the same size, same rpm, so I generally suggest just going for the best performing drive with a good reliability record. Since the 7200 rpm drives aren't much more expensive than their slower 5400 rpm brothers, I suggest getting at least a 7200 rpm drive. I also suggest going for an 8 MB cache hard drive.  They also aren't much more expensive anymore, and if you can be satisfied with a smaller amount of disk space (i.e. 80 GB), you can get an 8 MB cache drive for pretty cheap. Here are my specific recommendations:

• #1:  Western Digital Raptor series (model WD740GD or WD360GD) - These drives are currently the fastest drives available unless you look at SCSI drives (and it even rivals some of the fastest SCSI drives).  Unfortunately, they're fairly expensive and small.  The largest one only holds 74 GB, and the smaller one only 36 GB.  Nevertheless, this is sufficient for the typical home user.  If you play a lot of games or have large MP3 or video collections, you'll need a different drive or a secondary drive for the large amount of data. These drives are Serial ATA only, spin at a fast 10,000 rpm, and have the large 8 MB cache buffer.
• #2:  Hitachi (formerly IBM) Deskstar HDS7225*:  The * represents the rest of the model number, which usually determines the size and whether it's parallel or serial ATA.  Either one makes a good choice, but if you have serial ATA available on your motherboard, you might as well take advantage of it.  Aside from the 10,000 rpm Raptors, these 7200 rpm drives are the fastest IDE drives available, plus they're quiet and inexpensive.  They are available with a 2 or 8 MB cache, but make sure you get the 8 MB cache version (which also has a 3 year warranty instead of a 1 year warranty on the 2 MB version).  The 160 GB version is a good choice since it's still relatively inexpensive.
• #3:  Western Digital JB series drives - They range from 40 GB to 200 GB (and from less than $70 to about $400). Get whichever one fits your budget.  I suggest the 120 GB version - model # WD1200JB.  These all spin at 7200 rpms.  The larger drives tend to be a little faster than the smaller ones.  The only negative is that it's an ATA-100 drive (the Maxtor drives are ATA-133), but that's not a big deal at all. If you want a Serial ATA drive, the WD2500JD is as good as it gets (also with 8 MB cache). The Western Digital drives are actually faster and in many cases cheaper than the Maxtors and IBMs.
• #4:  Maxtor 8MB cache drives: These are a little slower than the Western Digital and IBM drives, but a good choice if that's all that's available. Model numbers are written like this: 6Y120P0 or 6Y120M0 where 120 is the size in gigabytes and PO means IDE and MO means Serial ATA.
• #5:  Western Digital Caviar BB series - These are about the same as the ones listed above, but without the 8 MB cache memory (instead it has 2 MB).  Good choice for those on a budget.

SCSI Hard Drives:
SCSI hard drives are going to cost you a lot more, but the performance difference can be significant. IDE has really caught up in speed lately though, so it may be a better choice nowadays.  Here are my recommendations for SCSI drives.  All of the drives below are Ultra320 rated:

• Fujitsu MAS3735: This is currently the fastest hard drive available for server use, period.  It's a 15,000 rpm drive with a seek time of only 3.6 ms and 8 MB cache.
• Maxtor's Atlas 15k is another great choice for a 15,000 rpm drive. It's a little slower in server applications, but for general desktop use, it is about as good as the Fujitsu. It has seek times of around 3.4 ms for the 73 GB version and 3.2 ms for the smaller drives.
• Maxtor Atlas 10k IV - This drive is a great option because it is the fastest 10,000 rpm drive and it is also reasonably priced (relatively).  It has a very large 8 MB cache buffer and seek time of only 4.4 ms.

More Info:
Description
What To Look For