I got a free hard drive at work today, an 80 GB Seagate.

Gawd, I love my job!

( Besides, this forum doesn't get that many posts to begin with )

You just... got... a free drive. <tries to take this in> A free Seagate drive...

Spear, I think I'll have you kidnapped and I'll take your place in your job. <grin>

Or you can always ask me to send you a 400GB one

Well congratulations on the Hard Drive, I hope you will find a good use for it - which I guess you will, considering that software has become more and more bloated the last year. Especially after the DVD has had its breakthrough. I know for a fact that games are some of the worst offenders here:

“Final Fantasy XI” had what, 7 CD’s?
“Deus Ex: Invisible War” was only released on a DVD in Europe, and I bet that “Hafl-Life 2”´takes up at least 4 CD’s.

cool. where do you work?

Elsa, aren't the only 400GB drives available so far Maxtors? I can't say I'm too overly fond of Maxtors, but there's some people who like them. O.o

And mikhail, I work at an OEM computer parts store in Oregon. It's a really laid back job, and even though the pay isn't stellar I still love it. I mean, not every job lets you sit in the back and play Halo 2 on one of the employee's Xbox.

Hell... I'd be happy having anything over this 12.6 piece of $#!% I have in my compy...

Hey, I have a Maxtor 12.6 gig. Seagates aren't that great, but they're better than Maxtors. A free 80 gig....

I'm saving up for my dream computer, by the time all the parts I want, starting with the mother board, hit the market I'll have the few grand I'll need to pay for all of them. I' just going to slap in a 250 gig Western Digital and never worry about hard drive space again.

:: looks at the remnants of his arrays - which had some 300+Gb of space at the peak ::

250Gb will fill up. It's inevitable. Software expands to fill any and all available space...

True, however, if someone keeps an eye on that and cleans up their hard drives on a weekly/daily basis they won't have much trouble. I've never even filled up my 12.6 gig.

Actually Seagates are the best and they have a 400GB hard drive with SATA NCQ technology!

Seagates are awesome. Just tells you something about their confidence level when they give you a FIVE-YEAR warranty!

SATA eh? Meh, there's not that much performance difference yet for me to go converting everything. In due time though, in due time.

I'm waiting for an nForce4 board to come out before I put together my system. Hopefully by then, 939's drop down in price somewhat so I can afford one. I mean, I'd love to get an FX-55 and all, but that just ain't gonna happen.

Although if I got one for free through my job, I wouldn't be complaining.

Just because something has 400 gig doesn't mean it's good. Maxtors have gotten huge, but they still quiet on you. From what I've been told from everyone I know who uses Seagates, they work well enough but are a pain to install and get working. And I'll tell you something, my father's old job had external terebyte hard drives for PCs. We're talking one unit, not a bunch hooked together. They're not even talking about them yet for a few reasons. One is that they haven't gotten the bugs worked out yet, the size can't be properly used yet. I trust Western Digital, I've never heard of one dying or having the problems the other two big brands have had.

PW, I actually see more Western Digitals come back than Seagates. But that's still not an awful lot anyways; definitely not like Maxtors. Maxtors come back left and right. We even got one back that literally caught on fire while we were testing it to see if it was bad, and it melted several transistors on the bottom. :-/

And no, Seagates aren't hard to install and get working. I've never had a problem getting them installed, and neither has any of my coworkers. Most of them use Western Digital and Seagates, with no problems. There's even a couple who prefer Seagates over WD, saying that the Seagates run quiter and cooler. Can't say I know any facts on this, but that's their preference. As for me, I have a WD 20 gig in my computer, and a Seagate 120 gig. And now I've got a Seagate 80 gig in addition. Maybe I'll make a file server and share the wealth with my family.

I'm only using reliable second hand info about seagates, so this is one of those blue moon deals where I'm going to let that go.

Maxtors are just cheap. Just from normal use mine got a "Funnel Seek" error on one of it's data clusters. I had to format it to repair the problem and data shread the thing once a month to keep other problems from occuring.

Data Shreading = using a program that writes all 0s to free space on the hard drive. This prevents deleted files from being undeleted and improves performance.