HDD as a gift

[ohGrFreak]

My fiancee's comp has a measly 80G harddrive, I don't even know what brand, this comp was built before I knew much about comps (I still don't know a lot, LOL).

She's having major slowdowns, and I have scanned for spyware/adware/virus' and all that good stuff with multiple programs. I have come to the conclusion that we're still running a frankenstein XP Home, which has never been re installed since we built the machine more than two years ago. On top of that, she only has 20 percent of her harddrive available.

Rather than reformatt this old drive, I plan on getting her a 120-160G harddrive. I had a few questions to ask before I make a purcahse.

IDE ATA100 and 133, are they compatible with eachother, or at least backwards compatible, I know that this is an IDE machine, but I do not know the 100 or the 133 standards.

I have looked at some HDD's on newegg, and I have good experience with Western Digital, my 250G caviar has done great by me and the service from WD is top-notch. But some of the caviar drives on newegg, some of the reviewers have gotten quite a few bad drives, same with Seagate's barrcudas.

I plan to pay 70-80 dollars on this drive, no more, well, a few bucks extra for shipping, but no more than that.

Does anyone have any suggestions for me?

Thanks

 

[Ste]

IDE/ATA 133 drives will work on IDE/ATA 100, it will just run at that speed.

 

[Static_11]

they have w.d. caviar 120 gigs on newegg for 75 bucks... but there oem

 

[ohGrFreak]

OEM is fine with me, but I saw all the reviews with the dead drives, that concerned me.

It's also fine that the 133 will run at 100 speeds, speed isn't the greatest concern, she just listens to music and surfs the net only a couple days out of the week. I just want something reliable.

I'll take another look at the caviars.