I'm wanting to get a 3TB drive that's both fast for writing large files (films/tv shows) and fairly quiet because the only audible part of my current system is my case fans which aren't that bad. What should I go for? I'm buying from the U.K.

Come on, there must be at least one surely?

Check the most recent review and look at the table. Here's a direct link: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1243-page5.html
The WD30EZRS is the quietest 3T that SPCR measured but there are many more, some of which might be as quiet as the quieter 2T drives. Another problem is that WD sometimes uses the same model number for different drives. But at least you know this particular model is not a bad bet.

I would probably go with the recently reviewed by SPCR Seagate Barracuda 3TB: 1TB Platter Behemoth, one of the few 7200rpm hdd that go editors choice.

A 7200rpm drive would be a bad choice for storing videos.

Maybe you don't really want such a large hard drive. Take a look at these reliability figures:
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/ ... ure_rates/

well he might not be only storing though, as he says writing, im guessing he might capture the tv show. But if its pure storage i would go with Hitachi 5k3000.

In that case a 7200rpm drive is an even worse choice.

Obviously

I need 3TB because I've just about run out of space with my two 1TB drives. I need the fast write speed to put all of my anime,films and other TV shows from my DVD's onto the HDD. The Seagate one seems to be pretty good from the reviews I've read, I really don't want to get another very slow drive because my current Western Digital Caviar green really takes the piss with how long it takes to write and move things. Is there a piece of software that I can use to track the health of a HDD so that I can see when one is going to fail and replace as necessary?

Every 3T 3.5'' drive is *a lot* faster than you need rip a DVD. That's not an issue.
If you have performance issues with your drive, either it's bad or more likely you have a software problem. Or you're simply using it wrong. Barring expensive SSDs, no drive is fast enough to compensate for the worst cases of junkware or inappropriate use.

You can run a bechmark to see how fast your current drive is and compare with others.
You can check the SMART readings with smartmontools and that can give you marginally usable risk information. But nothing can predict most failures.

Do you know what fragmentation means?
Ripping produces notoriously fragmented files. If you use a drive exclusively for ripping from optcal drives fragmentation is nearly 100% and performance is severely degraded.
PEBKAC, nuff said.

Yes I de-fragment my drives about once a month but the speed at which the files transfer from the internal caviar green to the external drive are ludicrously high regardless .

Most people would I suppose transfer to an external drive over USB2. That's much slower than any 3T 3.5'' drive and most likely a good bit slower than your old WD as well... unless it's damaged obviously.

Run a benchmark and see what results you get.

Hi, another tool to check the SMART status of your drive is Crystal Disk Info
USB2 tops out at ~30MB/sec no matter how good the source/destination drives are.
eSATA basically extends the SATA interface outside of the case to an external drive. High-end motherboards often have eSATA on the back panel. Some cases also have eSATA port(s) on them that connect to "ordinary" SATA port on the motherboard. You can easily buy eSATA back planes see here
If you want to go eSATA you can remove the external drive from it's existing one and replace with eSATA one. 3.5" drives 2.5" drives

Alternately you can go USB3, these are the ones with the blue plastic in them. Two port cards from £15-20 and cases ~£20.

eSATA is extension of SATA, speeds are:
SATA I = 1.5Gbs (~150MB/s)
SATA II = 3Gbs (~300MB/s)
SATA III = 6Gb (~600MB/s)

Mechanical drives are barely up to 150MB/s so the hard drive is the limit with any speed of SATA, SSDs however are up over 500MB/s now and climbing fast.

USB(1) "Low Speed" = 1.5Mbs (~0.1MB/s)
- - - - "Full Speed" = 12Mbs (~1MB/s)
USB2 "High Speed" = 480Mbs (~35MB/s)
USB3 "Super Speed" = 5Gbs (~400MB/s)

To see transfer rates in Windows Vista or 7 just click "details" on the copy dialog box.
In XP is rather more involved and you need to use the Performance Console (run "perfmon.msc") and add a counter for the Physical and/or Logical disk(s) in question.
[unless someone knows a simpler way, eg dived the MB by the estimated time!]

Hope this helps, Seb

Why not rip on one drive and store on another? And does that mean that an SSD would be good for ripping or bad?

Thanks for that, it does look like it's the USB2 interface that's limiting me. The crystaldisk software said my drive is Good condition.