I want to buy a 60GB IDE HDD, cant afford any bigger drive ATM (local prices are outrageous).
I´m almost sure about getting a Seagate Barracuda (IDE, 7200 RPM), just wanted to hear your opinion based on your particular experience.Thanks!.

Great drive, cool, fast and quiet it is (still having three 40 GB models)...
If they only had a larger capacity...

I've had a Seagate Barracuda ATA IV (60GB) for over a year now... quite fast, very quiet, and (so far) extremely reliable. Also, it runs surprisingly cool for a 7200 RPM drive.

My Barracuda ATA IV 80GB have been working perfectly for a year and a half now. As other mentioned it is very quiet.
If I was about to buy a new drive it would be a Seagate Barracuda again. Probably a 7200.7 80GB version, since that one has only one platter (disc). [edit] and so does the 60GB and 40GB version [/edit]

WDC,
THG also recommends WDC
I think WDC may be cheaaper?

I've got a couple of the larger Western Digital special edition hard drives, and they're also very quiet and fast. I've had good luck with WD, but I hear that the Seagates are pretty good also. If you go with WD, be sure to get the special edition drive. It comes with 8mb buffer. Here's a link to WD's 60GB special edition drive:

WD 60GB 7200RPM SE

Try to get a 3 year warranty HDD from WDC
If u are so unlucky that the drive fails after a year plus
then u can let WDC repair your HDD

I'm one of the unlucky ones.
My WDC fails after 2 years!
but I'll still recommend WDC coz its quiet until the day it fails!
the read and write perfomance is the top among all drive at same price tag, am i right?

If you're looking for speed, the Hitachi 180GXP and Maxtor DiamondMax9+ should be on the list too. Just like the Seagate BarracudaV these are quite new, and feature fluid bearings. It's not yet possible to get a good idea of their reliability.
If you don't mind getting an older (slower) BarracudaIV, this is a drive that has a good reputation in reliability terms.
Don't buy before visiting storagereview.com!

Remember Toms Hardware

this article is not the newest, but it might help
it has benchmark too

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/200006...0602/index.html

Thanks for all the good replies .I finally decided to buy a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB drive (Ultra ATA 100, 2MB Cache, 7200RPM) model number ST380011A.
I´ve found an offer on a site similar to ebay (www.mercadolibre.com.ar) for u$s 104.Really cheap compared to store prices around here (A 60GB Maxtor is around u$s 140 in local stores).

Barracuda's rule. Long history of outstanding reliability. Also, nobody ever mentions Maxtors even though they're available everywhere. Their support is excellent. It's also a shame that IBM stopped making drives - one batch of bad deskstars got a lot of publicity. All the problems with WDC drives back in the 1.2G to 2.5G range were twice as bad but never got that publicised.

I will never buy a Western Digital ever again even if they were the last hard drive manufacturer on Earth. Their drives are utterly unreliable and their support and RMA policies are terrible. I've had two WDC drives fail personally (complete failure), which is a lot considering I've only owned three. My brother had a drive from the same batch that failed. I went through hell getting them replaced, the customer support reps were rude and patronizing. I have a friend who's had two fail also (though to be fair, the first one must blamed on the general shittiness of molex power connectors and not the drive). More recently, another friend got two WDC drives (not from the same batch or anything) which failed separately within weeks of purchase, and it took him weeks to get _anything_ out of their RMA department. He eventually broke down and replaced them with another brand.

hmm.. i would normally try my very best to get the hd size with the best mb/$ at the point of time. currently here in singapore dollars for the WD JB series:

40GB: 354 (MB/S$)
60GB: 403
80GB: 516
100GB: 541
120GB: 622
160GB: 559
180GB: 531
200GB: 518
250GB: 479

I´ve been using the Seagate Barracuda ST380011A drive for a couple of weeks now, it´s unbelievably silent compared to my oldest drive (Quantum Bigfoot 1.2GB from 1996).Some of the time I can´t even say the drive is on, and I use an open ATX case.It´s also (obviously) much faster, doesn´t build much heat (it´s mildly warm after a few hours, never hot).I´ve left free space 1 inch above and below the drive following Annuka´s advice .