I'm looking for a 40GB IDE hard disk.

Which one should i buy ?
Western Digital , Seagate , Maxtor or Samsung ?

My motherboard is Intel 440BX , will i have any compatibility problems ?
I think it supports ATA/66 , but most of the newer hard disks are ATA/100 or ATA/133.
So the hard disk will work as ATA/66 on my motherboard ?

AFAIK, the Intel 440BX chipset only supports up to DMA33. That's no problem however. Most boards can either be updated with a newer BIOS for bigger harddisks, support disks over 32.8GB or can be get to work with a disk managment tool (freely available).

One first question: why do you want to buy a 40Gb disc? Looking at some price lists here, the difference in price between a 40 and 80Gb model isn't even 10 euro's. I think you better spend a little more money for the bigger disk, don't you think.

But ok, back to your original question... what drive is better? Hard to say, all models differ some (none of those drives are bad btw).
I think, that if you want details, you'd best take a look at some reviews at http://www.storagereviews.com.

Most probably, the Samsung will be the quiet choice, WD will be the fastest and Maxtor and Seagate will be somewhere in the middle...The nice thing of the Maxtors is that they have a liquid bearing system, that should lower the sound production as well.
The differences are pretty small though, so I'd pick the disk that fits me the best (comes for the lowest price)...

Yes , but "here" in Greece the difference is 25 euros and i'm a bit short on money

At the begining i wanted to buy a used hd , but then i changed my mind , because i always prefer buying new products which are more guaranteed.
If i buy an 80GB hd i will be way out of my early money spending estimations

At first I wanted to give 20 euros for a used 20GB hd then i said "why not give 30 ?" then "why not give 60 and buy a new one?" .........



PS : What does AFAIK mean ?

As Far As I Know

I dont know how WD is now but my previous WD hd broke pretty quickly, I dont trust seagate as much samsung i've never tried but maxtor I love.

I re-checked the prices for hard disks and it seems i can find cheap 80GB hd's , but they only have 1 year guarantee and 2MB buffer.

I prefer buying a 40GB with 3-year guarantee instead of an 80GB with only 1-year guarantee.

So i'll probably buy the cheapest i find with a 3-year guarantee.

Nowadays, about all (new) disks come with just one year of warranty... only the expensive disks (WD raptor and SCSI discs) come with more warrantee... too bad...

I'm thinking of buying an PCI IDE controller card so that i can use the full bandwidth of the hard disk -> ATA133.

What is a PCI RAID IDE controller ?
Is it the same thing as a PCI IDE controller but with RAID support , or is it something different ?

ur right
just an PCI IDE controller with raid support

Here in Portugal everything has 2 year warranty, even an hair dryer

demand replacemends for your fried hardware

most common stuff is one year warranty here

I'm not really sure about this, but isn't there a new European law stating that every product should have at least a warranty of 2 years?

not that i know of
take a look at some inet shops, theire all giving a 1 year warranty with an option to buy extra warranty

Now this is my country's rules and regulations.
Giving out warranty is optional, the seller doesn't have to but most common is 1 year.
However, should you find manufacturing defects on your product you can claim to have it replaced within two years of its purchase. The difference between this and warranty is that you have to prove that the product was faulty from the beginning.

Ive not heard anything about new european laws and EU's search is down...

Looks like it was worth to wait for a while , the prices went down and i finally i bought a Western Digital JB800 (80GB) with a 3 year guarantee.