I'm in the market for a new HDD

[Felix The Assassin]

Since the mid 1990's when I began building PCs for a hobby, Western Digital has always been first choice for HDDs. Today there are two WDs still in operation that are greater than eight years of age. The main one in question is in this rig, which is dated by WD March 1998. It's beginning to express itself with bearing whine, and platter shimmy. It's days are surely limited. Looking for opinions on other drive manufactures, cost and durability.

The reasons WD is first choice:
1. Inexpensive.
2. Fluid dynamic bearings (quiet).
3. Service life.
4. Durability.

That OS from Redmond has not been booted since my recent departure from college this past summer. Therefore, no need for blazing speed, ginormous capacity, or blistering price tag.

Currently, Newegg has a new Western Digital Caviar WD800BB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 selling for 36 bucks. This rig has 1.1GB for OS, 500MB for swap file, 10GB for Home, and 10GB for user file system. While that other OS is hogging about 50GB.

What I need:
2.0GB for OS
1.0GB for swap
15GB for Home,
and the rest for file system. I have about 5GB of dedicated storage for PDF format service manuals and parts manuals which is a *must*. Music and photo folders are 1.1GB and 6GB respectively.

A 40GB would be tight, 80-120 would be optimal, anything greater than 120GB would be unused and wasted.

Looking for personal experiences.

[ElfBane]

I am a computer tech, both in the Navy (AT1 USN-Ret) and also do CP repair in retired life(A+ certified). The WD brand is reliable and is a good value. I would get the 250GB and partition it thusly, 80, 80, 80. I like to keep the OS on the primary, and as much as possible on the other partitions. I do it this way so my backups will be manageable and not take forever. I backup the primary with Ghost once a month, and the other partitions about every 2 months.
Also in my experience, Seagate is a good value. HOWEVER, they did buy Maxtor, one of the most unreliable HDD manufacturers, IMO. Seagate didn't merge the Maxtor brand in with the Seagate brand, they kept it separate. So Seagate may be worth a look.
Anyway, HDD space it pretty cheap right now, so go ahead and get a 250GB in case you need it in the future. ALSO, the solid state HDD's are coming out..you may want to try one of those..but they aren't cheap!
Hope this helps