Every once in a while it's helpful to know what the best hard drives are. Here we present a roundup of the three best hard drives to own - especially for a gaming computer. Our focus this time around will be on the hard drives with the best storage, speed, and reliability.

Seagate Barracuda ES.2 1TB Hard Drive

The Barracus ES.2 offers a lot of bang for your buck. Clocking in at 1TB of storage (1000 GB) it can store about 424 DVD movies, or 880 days of MP3 music. In other words, it's got a lot of space for your current media, and room for future expansion.

Its 7200 RPM speed and SATA connection also ensures that you can access your data quickly. In fact, we chose the more expensive 7200 RPM version over its 5400 RPM counterpart because of the access times! the performance boost from 5400 to 7200 RPM is just too much to ignore.

The ES.2 is also fairly reliable, as the Seagate brand hasn't given us nearly as many
problems as the Western Digital Caviar drives have.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB Hard Drive

Yes, another Seagate drive! The Barracuda 7200.11 offers a lot of the advantages of its big brother, the ES.2, but at a much lower price. You get the same 1TB of storage, 7200 RPM, and the stable Seagate brand. Of course, the ES.2 offers a significant reduction in sound, whearas the 7200.11 may rattle the desktop case a little bit when it's spinning up.

For the price, however, it can't be beat.

Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB Hard Drive

A 300GB hard drive that costs $400? Why in the world would we recommend this drive? Simple: speed. This drive isn't meant to be your media storage device, it's made to be your workhorse: pumping out data to the rest of the computer. With a blazing 10,000 RPM spin speed, the VelociRaptor is built for speed.

Unlike the other hard drive brands, the VelociRaptor series is built on stability and reliability. It's made to stand the brutal punishment of 10K RPM, and won't overheat, thanks to the heat sink enclosure.