Hard Drive ComparisonIf you’re like me you’re probably running out of hard drive space. Experts agree that running your system at full capacity will cause more data errors and could make your system crash more often. Since I’m within a few gigs of being completely full on all my hard drives I thought its time to buy a hard drive with more capacity. Installing an internal hard drive is actually pretty easy but if it’s not your thing there are always external hard drives. The external hard drives are very close in price to the internal counterparts. A few years ago external hard drives were more expensive so it’s nice to see them come down in price.

Before buying a new hard drive I do a quick check on cost per gig. In the past I’ve used low cost aggregators like pricewatch.com. After being burned a few times by the low cost leaders I now use newegg.com. These prices are from Newegg.com and reflect the lowest cost SATA hard drives for the various sizes.


Internal Hard Drives

      Best Value    
Gigs 160 250 320 500 750 1000
Cost       56.13       69.99       79.99         99.99     154.99     271.99
Cost/Gig         0.35         0.28         0.25           0.20         0.21         0.27




The 500 gig hard drive is the best value closely followed by the 750gb drive. Surprisingly the 160gb drive is the most expensive. I almost bought the 160!

External Hard Drives


Gigs Cost Cost/Gig
40 59.99 1.50
60 53.49 0.89
80 64.99 0.81
120 65.99 0.55
160 59.99 0.37
200 67.99 0.34
250 83.33 0.33
320 79.99 0.25
400 107.80 0.27
500 107.80 0.22
750 168.99 0.23
1000 239.17 0.24

Again the 500gb wins for value. This list only includes those that require an extra power source. Out of curiousity I looked at the new USB hard drives that don’t require a seperate power supply. They averaged around a $1.00/gig.

Hopefully this helps in your hard drive shopping. It’s made me rethink the decision to buy an an internal 160 gb hard drive. The 500gb external is probably what I’ll get.

If you have any suggestions please leave a comment.

Hard Drives, Internal or External, All available at Newegg.com

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