New hard drive advice
 

As it turns out, I'm in the need for a new drive to backup the contents of my 250GB Samsung prior to attempting recovery operations. I'm thinking in the lines of a 500 GB SATA drive, but even considering the general price range I can afford right now there's more than enough options to thoroughly confuse me.
The following drives are locally available:

SAMSUNG HD502HI 5400
SAMSUNG HE502IJ 7200
Samsung HD502IJ 7200

SEAGATE ST3500418AS

WESTERN DIGITAL WD5000AADS
WESTERN DIGITAL WD5000AAKS
WESTERN DIGITAL WD5000AAJS
WESTERN DIGITAL WD5001AALS

Hitachi Deskstar P7K500

Maxtor DiamondMax STM3500418AS

Your advice would be most welcome.

Forget all of them and order a Seagate 7200.12 with 500gb.
The new series (.12) beats everyone else in terms of speed, with 130mb/sec read and write beeing the top performer nowadays.

I'm not really looking for high performance as much as for reliability.

Did you have in mind an external USB hard drive or a normal installable hard drive?

Normal one, for the time being.

well i'd definitely get one of the 7200 ones..

but you named all the mainstrea brands that are reliable, every person says something else about their hard disks. i had hitachi, seagate, maxtor and all of them were good. if i couldn't decide i'd pick hitachi just because it's the company who invented hard disks in first place=P

Didn't IBM invent the HDD?

hitachi and ibm merged like in 2002

I'd go for the samsung or the WD disks.

I have two very old HDs , one samsung, one WD and they are still working excellent.

Whereas I know a lot of people with problems with Seagate HDs and Maxtors.
Seagate is more troublesome than Maxtor though, IMO.

I have no info about the Hitachi disks, russ might have a point there.