Digging up this older thread again because things have changed a bit (again :))

Mark, what is your stance of Hitachi HD's? I know they were pretty good in the IBM days (until the Deathstar debacle), but how are they now? Reason I'm asking is because it seems that Hitachi has quietly released their 3TB 7K3000 Deskstar HD, and initial reviews seem to be pretty good.

Prices of 3TB HD's have finally started to drop a bit, too. As far as I know, there are now 3 manufacturers offering a 3TB drive: Western Digital, Seagate (bleh!) and now Hitachi. I'm still waiting for Samsung to release theirs to be honest though, but maybe this Hitachi drive isn't that bad also: 5 platters instead of 4 compared to the other two brands, but also pretty fast, 7200RPM and 64MB cache.