Hi, can anyone recommend me a cheap reliable 80 gb hard drive and where the cheapest plce to get one from.
thanks

Could try a Western Digital SE 80gb (7200rpm 8Mb buffer.)
They are about £50 (if you're in the UK that is, probably ALOT cheaper if you're in the US) and come with a 3 year warranty.
Have one myself and it's been great!

Go for WD, maxtor or samsung

their all good really, but some have different warrantys on them. And only 2Mb buffers

have a look here if your in the UK

http://www.computerprices.co.uk/hardware/pricebrowser.asp?categoryid=HD%5FIDE&testcatid=HD%5FIDE&desc21min=60&desc21max=89%2E99&sortby=price

or

www.PCindex.co.uk

I'll leave the pricing to other UK users like yourself ... but as fara s brand goes, Maxtor gets my vote. Have a ton of Maxtors here up to 7 years old, and all running perfectly. Had 2 WDs, both died - 1 within 3 months of purchase. :( Every has their HDD stories of woe of course, and perhaps some have had great luck with WD; I'm simply not one of those people.

Easily Samsung.

Have a look HERE (http://www.cdrom-guide.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=266444) at a previous thread.

Both recent Samsung and Maxtor drives use fluid dynamic bearing motors so they're extremely quiet and reliable. I have several of them on my systems and all of them are so quiet that I can't hear anything from them. I built an external USB 2.0 HD with a Samsung 120GB SP1213N and it's so fast & so quiet. I gave it to my brother because I knew the kid was madly in love with it. I then bought a Maxtor 160GB 6Y160P0 to build me another USB HD. This one, too, is very fast and quiet as the Samsung. I also have 2 Maxtor 80GB 6Y080P0 drives on a RAID 0 and these 2 are excellent as well.

In short, you can't go wrong with Maxtor & Samsung drives. Just get the 8MB cache drives instead of the 2MB because for a few more bucks, the speed improvement of an 8MB cache drive is very remarkable.

The 8 mb cache is even more important as the 2 mb Maxtor only have a miserly 1 year warranty, while the 8 mb has 3 years.

I don't know about the others, but it seems that Samsung, WD and to a slightly lesser extent Maxtor, seem to be the only ones who have enough faith in their own products to adequately cover them.

Overclockers still has the sale on for the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 160GB 8MB for £80 inc vat. The 80GB cost £53 inc vat.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_Maxtor_Hard_Drives_9.html#ahd_2d0 12_2dmd

So basically pick (at least) a 7200rpm, 8 mb buffer HDD with 3 year warranty and you can't go far wrong.

thanks a lot you've all been a great help.
Also can anyone recommend me an external HD enclosure for around £30.

The Bytecc ME-720U2 is around $30 USD. It supports up to 300GB drives.

The Bytecc ME-350U2 is similar to the above but costs ~ $37 and supports drives over 300GB. Both are IDE to USB 2.0 enclosures.

The StorTecc PM-350U2-LSC is also a good USB 2.0 case that supports up to 300GB drives. It's ~ $28.

I hope you can find them in the UK.