The Samsung SP1614N is our labs winner - and is a winner by a big margin. It scored strongly both SysMark2002 and Drivespeed to yield the pole position in performance, and following our current-labs-trend, it outperformed its SATA counterpart (only just). Its strong performance means that it is the drive able to come closest to the manufacturer’s specifications.

It’s also the best-value drive; the three-year warranty pushing over the Seagate ST3160021A, which is slightly cheaper. It’s also $60 cheaper than its SATA counterpart.

At 160GB, it’s a smaller competitor in this roundup, but it easily threatens the larger drives because of its low price. For under $500 (i.e. costing less than at least three of the 200GB+ drives), two of these drives can combine to offer serious real estate. Though it already outperforms any drive in our roundup, you can get some serious performance gains by using these drives as part of a RAID. If you have the connectivity options and the bay-space, the SP1614N actually wipes all the larger drives off the map.
If you are after a sizeable drive for a good price, you can’t go past this solid performer.