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Looking for Hard Drive Advice
darkcircuit
Member Posts: 211
Hey all,
Its that time again, upgrade time. I've been doing some tests on my pc and its come to my attention that the slowest component in my pc is now my HD and therefore its time once again to pull out my wallet and fork out for an upgrade.
My current HD is a SAMSUNG SP2504C as reported by speedfan, and it only get a 5.4 rating in the vista performance rating scale stating that the slowdown is in the Disk data transfer rate. Now you might argue that the vista test isnt that accurate so if you can recommend a more accurate way of telling please let me know 
Not only have I taken the results above into account, but I have also noticed that my gf's PC which is a budget buy special loads games quicker than mine (less time spent on a loading screen), and receives a 5.9 the vista performance scale (highest u can get at this time).
Finally I have run out of disk space as the current drive is only 320gb.
Can anyone recommend a drive that provides a decent amount of disk space, isn't going to break the bank and is silent (silence is a big thing for me as I hate noisy PCs)?
Cheers
Dave
Comments
Cheap-That knocks out SSDs
Silent- That knocks out SAS and Raptors
.... hmmm. Probably the best choice would be a Western Digital Caviar Black. They will still have a rating between 5.4 and 5.9, but they have several advantages for a normal SATA drive. First is there power savings features. You won't hear them and they will stay amazingly cool. They have a 32MB Cache so they load a tiny bit quicker.
QFT
I just bought a Caviar black (the 600gb), and am immensely happy. It's quiet enough that I forget it's working sometimes, and heat has not been an issue. I haven't seen a massive speed difference, but I am pulling a 5.9 on the experience rating for HD speeds, as mentioned above.
Thanks for the advice guys
I've done a bit of a a look around and I'm actually quite keen on keeping with Samsung HDs cos I've had this one over 5 years and had 0 problems with it and I am unable to hear it even under heavy load.
Do either of you have any experience with the Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB Serial ATA 3.0 Gbps 32 MB?
Cheers
Dave
try this click, I got this HD WD caviar blue has two 320GB platters and you can't get better for the price in my opinion.
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Just did some research into the Samsung and it appears there is a reliability issue with it.
So I took you guys advice and had a look at the WD Caviar black and I think I'll get that one, thanks again guys
i rly dont see how wd is worth all this obsesion about it , every gamer, pc user would know power saving never goes along with speed, same every pc user gamer, already know that every new pc part already have power saving, and if it doesnt, you can pick from 25 of them in bios, if there arent enough, pick from inbuild mb software
but those are most useless features.
wd is neither fast, nor ever gets update firmware, for the fact there isnt even such section on wd, there is no such thing as perfect hdd, and i clearly wotn go believing that wd drivers never needed new firmware
a year ago when i was buying my pc, and reading various test articles, seagate baracuda were fastest, the bigger the faster tho
these are good, and certainly better than those wd caviars, christ, why do ppl keep offering 2 years old hdd, it will be slow as hell
as for sound, every new hdd are as silent as you can get, tbh, maybe you should upgrade yours 5 -10 years old pc, if you still live in annoying sounds era, now to hear pc, you need super pc, i got 3 hdds, 2 gpu cards, sound card, aftermarket cpu cooler, , everything on air, and there isnt exactly any sound.. yes i can turn off music, whatnot, and sit and listen, ill obviously will hear it..
but yeh.. same way you can hear how you breathe.. and i dont remmeber someone cutting of their nose, cuz it was too loud ...
Didn't get my WD for the power saving. I'd have gotten teh caviar green for that, which is the one built around energy saving.
Honestly in my case it was brand preference. I personally have had stability issues with Seagate HDs, and don't trust them. However WDs have always performed fantastically for me. That was a clincher for me.
I WILL, however, admit that in the long run the Barracuda is the faster drive. Also usually the more expensive one. That's also a factor.
I used a Samsung Spinpoint F1 32MB in another one of my PCs. It performs well. Its really hard to differentiate 7200RPM hard drives.
Ok well based on advice from here its a toss up between this Seagate one:
www.ebuyer.com/product/159612
and this Western digital one:
www.ebuyer.com/product/146079
Which is likely to be the faster of the two?
Cheers
Dave
P.S. I use this site as it has the best customer service so if you can find a different HD you recommend on that site then please link me it (nothing over £70 please
)
The WD Black should be just slightly faster than the Seagate with the Seagate running quieter and cooler and they both have about the same power consumption.
I would get the Seagate if the noise is an issue, the performance isn't much different between the two. I started using the Seagate drives because they're noticeably quieter than the WD ones I had (~11 dBA) but they are both good drives so either one.
I've bought the Seagate after reading that the WD does have a problem with being overly noisy and as the two perform pretty much the same, it was a no brainer.
Thanks again for everyones advice
looks like i've gotten to the thread late. Seagate's are notorious for failing. Lets hope you got one that wont die months after using it. At this point i just suggest you backup that drive as often as possible.
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Get yourself HDTune to test your disks. I'm setting up two of the WD Blacks in a raid 0. I'm still waiting on the second drive but here are the specs of the one I have installed atm.
HD Tune: WDC WD6401AALS-00L3B Benchmark
Transfer Rate Minimum : 57.5 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 113.8 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 93.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 11.8 ms
Burst Rate : 136.0 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 1.5%
Keep in mind that is the SINGLE drive, not the raid 0. I can also say that these 640gig blacks are the quietest drives I have ever used.
Z
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looks like i've gotten to the thread late. Seagate's are notorious for failing. Lets hope you got one that wont die months after using it. At this point i just suggest you backup that drive as often as possible.
meh, I saw your post about your 2 Seagates that failed, and it sucks you had such bad luck with them but I'd hardly say that qualifies them as being notorious for failing. Notorious for failing is the IBM Deskstar drives.
I've had 2 HD's ever that I stopped using because they were dying, one was a WD and one a Seagate, the truth is both WD and Seagate have very reliable drives even if you got very unlucky.