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The Whole Drive Guide

Advice for the gigabyte-addicted: How to upgrade to today's best and biggest--or keep your current hard disks running smoothly.

Jon L. Jacobi

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BIG 'UNS: Hitachi's Deskstar 180GXP (left), and Western Digital's Caviar Special Edition WD1200JB.With hard drive makers selling the space equivalent of an executive office suite for what seems like the price of a post-office box, why not get yourself some breathing room? A big new drive can help your PC become a well-stocked music jukebox or a digital video recorder, and it can also boost performance. However, if you decide to wait--say, for even bigger drives coming down the pike--you can get more out of the model you have now, and keep your important data safer, by giving it a little TLC.

In this guide we tell you how the latest crop of big drives did in our tests, so you can buy the right one if your current model is running into trouble or running out of space. We also offer advice for keeping any hard drive humming happily.

See our comparison chart: Great, Big Drives. Parallel ATA models still dominate, but Serial ATA units are emerging.

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