We at Digit often become victims of storage concerns-we stockpile our DVD content, inevitably led to a sudden dearth orage space. A trip to Lamington was in order: we needed to pick up pie of large hard drives, as well as ternal 2.5-inch solution. 2.5 inch notebook HDD is the de preference for any sort of portable
because they function with just B connection and don't require an tional power connection like their mch siblings-which are also bulkier.

In hunting for a portable drive, you ither buy an external solution from cend or Western Digital, (the. two widespread brands), or you can buy tebook hard drive and a separate nal chassis for it. Such a chassis ailable from brands like Transcend 00), to smaller brands like Zippy Tech-Com (as low as 00). I also saw an E-SATA mal from Zippy, priced at 800, although this n't feature USB. book hard drives selves are available Hitachi and WD nearly identically, WD enjoying a small mium in the range of Rs 200 Hitachi. The prices of Hitachi's 20 and 160 GB 2.5 inch HDDs are Rs , 2,400, and 2,850 respectively. For r sizes 250 and 320 GB HDDs are able from WD for Rs 4,200 and Rs . A better option according to me simply buy a readymade external tion like Transcend's StoreJet series or My Passport series. Of the two I pre¬WD solutions for being more depend¬as well as better. looking. They also an Elite series, which features a better finish, a capacity gauge, auto sync and data encryption, automatic data backups and remote access software, although these conm1and a premium of around Rs 3,000 over the regular WD series of the same storage capacity. A 160 GB WD My Passport drive costs around Rs 3,200, while the 250 GB version is priced at Rs 4,600. The 320 GB version is priced at Rs 6,650 and makes sense for only monstrous data hogs. Comparatively, Transcend's solutions are available in capacities of up to 250 GB, and the prices are around Rs 400 less than WD.

For the 3.5 inch solutions, the mar¬ket leaders are Seagate and WD (not in that order). Now for the prices-the new Seagate 500 GB .7200.11 series, with 32 MB of buffer was available for as low as Rs 3,900-amazing! WDs own 500 GB (WD5000AAKS) was avail¬able for as low as Rs 3,650, although the Seagate is much faster. The slim 250 GB Seagate (7200.10 family) was available for as low as Rs 2,300, and with a single platter, this HDD is cool and fast-ideal for gaming PCs or even HTPCs. WD's 320 GB (WD3200AAKS) is also available for Rs 2,750 and is an alternative to the 250 GB Seagate. Their 250 GB offering is a mere Rs 2,400, but the cheaper Seagate 250 GB is also much faster, so this one is largely redundant. WDs 640 GB offering is something new, and built using two 320 GB platters offers one of the highest areal densities available, and is a stunning performer. At Rs 4,600 its very affordable for someone looking for a high-end PC this is a must buy. WD also has a 750 GB offering, that although a bit slower than their 640 GB version offers 110 GB more storage for a mere Rs 900 more (Rs 5500).

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Seagate has a 750 GB offering of their own, which is supposed to be as fast as the WD 640 GB drive but much costlier at Rs 6,500-not worth the Rs 1,000 premium. 1 terabyte drives have also arrived with WDs 1 TB version costing Rs 9,100, and Seagate 7200.11 series costing around 9,550, although very obviously price per GB is not in favour of such drives, and buying two 500 GB HDDs makes more sense monetari¬ly. WD does have a fast performance series titled black (the other two families of drives being blue and green series), however the black series available in only 750 GB and 1 TB capacities with caches of 32 MB wasn't available in our markets at the time of my visit. Maxtor and Hitachi aren't sell¬ing much, therefore prices aren't too competitive. I did get the pricing of a Hitachi 750 GB-Rs 6,000.

The cost perGB of the WD6400AAKS is the lowest (best) at Rs 7.19, while the WD7500AAKS comes second at Rs 7.49. Seagate's nearest entrant is their 500 GB 7200.11 series at Rs 7.8 per GB. The 1 TB drives are totally not worth the premium you pay for the extra 250 odd GB.

I picked up 2 WD7500AAKS drives (blue versions)-l.5 terabytes of storage ought to be enough for now, and speed wasn't really that important since these were for backups. I also chose the WD My Passport 160 GB from the same vendor. I managed to get the lot for Rs 13,200. For personal use, I'll wait for the prices of the Seagate 750 GB to fall; that, and the entry of the WD Black series.