What are the different types of HDD and what's the best?

Do the different makes come into it?

Well, you've got SCSI , you've got IDE.

You've got big disks (7 kilo's) and you've got small disks (2.5 inch , 500 gram)

You've got black disks, you've got grey disks , even silver-looking ones.

Then there are disks with 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , etc.. 20 , 30 , 40 , etc .. 120 Gigabytes of capacity.

Then there are those wide disks (Quantum Bigfoot)

ALso there are disks with OS'es preinstalled on them (comes with the new computer you buy)

So .. i hope that about the 3rd line recognized i'm making fun of your question , because it's a far-too-general question..

in that same category fall questions like :

What is a cool car ?
Where can i go on holiday ?
I need a cool couch
What is a nice sound ?

Hehe, Belvedere ranting on...
Maxtor has gotten more and more people's sympathy recently, their latest drives are fast and quiet. IBM seems to have some problems with certain drive-series (although my 60GB 60GXP have only had minor hiccups ), but remeber IBM sells huge volumes... Their 120GXP series however seem to have improved and brought back IBM quality to what it used to be.
Then there are obscure companies like Western Digital, but I don't know anything about them...

Well if you want to find out about the different interfaces have a look bellow.

Ultra scsi 160
Serial ATA
Maxtor's version of IDE (ATA133)
Fibre Channel

A quick summery of the two main standards that are scsi and parallel ata (i.e IDE drive running in ATA66/100/133 - what you most probably have) Serial ATA, is not released to the consumer market yet, but is intended as the replacement to parallel ATA. Fibre channel is really a very specialist area not remotely intended for the consumer market.

Scsi
Maximum bandwidth 160MB/sec (Ultra scsi 160)
Maximum number of devices per channel 15
Drive spindle speeds 7200, 10,000 15,000 rpm.
Very quick (due largly to faster spindle speeds than ide drives)
More expensive than IDE
Lower CPU utilization than IDE

IDE
Maximum bandwidth 133MB/sec (ATA 133)
Maximum number of devices per channel 15
Drive spindle speeds 5400, 7200rpm.

There is a lot to add but in a less flippant way than Mr. Belvedere did i think what have said is fairly accurate, and more the sort of thing you were looking for. As far as i am concerned the manufacturer to go for at the moment is Maxtor, for IDE drives anyway.

I have both Maxtor and IBM 7200RPM drives. My brother has Seagate 7200 RPM. I find them all similar speed - e.g. one is not noticeably faster than the other. Noticable differences:

1. The Seagate gets hot the most - untouchable (too hot) at times. Well Maxtor and IBM still gets hot over a longer time.

2. The quietest is the IBM. Seagate is second and Maxtor is the loudest of the 3 it is still quiet but sometimes you can hear it click when doing some random reads. This is with the PC case off.

Personally I prefer the IBM for being very quiet.

Forgot to mention - these were IDE HDs.

i am looking for ide, 40gb+, fast read/write rates, quiet, but i dont know the difference between ATA 100-133-whatever the other ata versions are, and i dont knwo if my motherb will support all/some of the types

Well based on that I would go to overclockers.co.uk, or dabs.com, and see what the cheapest 7200RPM IDE hard disk you can find made by either Seagate, IBM, or Maxtor (my recommendation) All the hard disks will be backwards compatible with slower ata modes than the top rated one, you MB is bound to support at least ata66, if it takes a PIII800, and above that in my opinion there is no perceptible difference. Western digital HDs used to be very dodgy, and I have friends who have had a lot of problems with IBM drives bought recently . As for Seagate, I have an early (II or III) 72000RPM barracuda and it makes a hell of a lot of noise during disk access. The Maxtor’s I have are all quiet, but you can sometimes faintly hear them flicking about seeking, and i would go for fluid bearing versions, as they seem to be a little quieter while idling, but if you have several fans in your case it wont make a difference that you can hear, as you wont be able to hear either of them.

Also I said "Maximum number of devices per channel 15" for IDE!!!! when i should have said 2, and no one said anything .

My 2 cents:
I have both Maxtor 40GB 7200/ATA100 and Western Digital, (hardy "obscure"), 40GB 7200 ATA100. The WD is quieter, but it's hard to see any difference in performance.
It's important to note that Maxtor has lost some credibility lately due to their re-labeling of Quantum drives as Maxtors and selling at lower prces. Support is also poor at Maxtor, (who's isn't?).
In the US, W.D. probably has the best reputation for reliability and performance. I have yet to have any problems with ANY hard drive other than sluggish performance with a Quantum 5200 ATA100 that was OEM. I will stick with the WD drives in the future.

WD drives are really good (look into my signature), but JB drives (they're even faster, their linear transfer rate is over 35 MB/s) of 100 GB and 120 GB are too expensive (compare 80 GB BB: 119 € vs. 120 GB JB: 250 €).

Be careful with IBM: In my opinion, they have to proove that they've found and eliminated all their serious faults in their DTLA and their first IC drives which caused many of them to die within 3-6 month.

There's even a german site where you can download typical DTLA noises:
http://www.cooling-solutions.de/down...sound/typ1.mp3
http://www.cooling-solutions.de/down...sound/typ2.mp3
and the most interesting:
http://www.cooling-solutions.de/down...sound/typ3.mp3

wow; thanks all... there are so many nice people on these forums

bt-the-by, is UDMA100, UDMA66 and UDMA133 the same as saying ATA100, ATA66 and ATA133 respectivley?

Yes.
Or, if want more confusion:
UDMA 5 is ATA100
UDMA 4 is ATA66
UDMA 2 is ATA33
I think.....

I think, UDMA 100 is the name of the protocol, while ATA 100 is the name of the interface (so you have an ATA-100-device, which should work in UDMA 100 mode).
I think you can't say: my harddisc operates in ATA-133 mode, but you must say UDMA 133 is this case.

Just have to bump in with my experience:

IBM DTLA: *yuck* Lost about 170 gigs of data (many self made DVD-rips (Divx)) due to discs failing. all was in the 75GXP series

Maxtor: To niosy for me, all 7200 rpm Maxtors I've used have constantly made an annoying whining/buzzing sound. (but I've pretty good ears, in a test I heared sounds all the way up to a bit over 19000Hz).

Fujitsu: Yuck, the later discs I've used have been just as bad as IBM.

Quantum: to bad they was bought by maxtor as they was very reliable for me......

WD: No special problems really, pretty quiet and fast. Well priced here in Norway.

Seagate: Reliable, very reliable. The older discs was a bit noisy and did get a bit hot but the New barracuda ATA 4 series is excellent. I've never heared a more silent disc and they create little heat. And not a single failure out of loads used at work.

OC, you just answered a nagging problem for me. I've been hearing a very high-pitched whine for a long time, could never figure it out. Maxtor drive, (7200 RPM 40GB). Looks like it's time to get another WD!!! I'm sticking my head in the case right now to see if that's it. It's one of those noises that's just barely perceptable but naggs on the nerves all the time.

OC, you've just improved my quality of life. I replaced the Maxtor with a WD, and it's so much more quiet in here! No more whine.
Also, since I was buying a drive, (what the heck), I got one of the WD "Special Edition" drives with an 8MB buffer. This puppy is not only quiet, its FAST. Compared to the standard 7200 ATA100 drive, it boots faster and loads programs faster, noticably faster.
I'm a happy guy.

What does ATA 4 mean?

It's like a model number for seagate

is it a UDMA 133 type HDD?

WHy is the drive 'excellent'

Because it is fast, but not noisy (note that it has a firmware bug which prevents it from working properly in raid-0 arrays)