Why is the larger hard drive cheaper?

Jason Ronald · May 26, 2013

So for my build I have a ssd boot drive but I am looking for a main storage drive.
Here are the two I am looking at:
Western Digital
and
Seagate
But I have one question about these drives, why is the 1 TB cheaper??
And please tell me which drive is better, or if you know about a similar drive please say so!
Thanks

Fulgurant · May 26, 2013

Jason Ronald :

The second link doesn't appear to work.

But I wouldn't get too caught up in the price discrepancy; sometimes drives go on sale. It's often true that vastly different capacities are within ~$5 of each other at certain price points.

Without being able to see the Seagate in question, I can only speculate that the Seagate is faster (better RPM, bigger cache, whatever) or that it has a better warranty (doubtful), but it could just be a random pricing quirk. In any case, almost any current desktop HDD should be fast enough for general use, particularly if you've already got an SSD to speed up the really important stuff.

That WD Blue ought to work just fine for you, BTW.

Jason Ronald · May 26, 2013

Fulgurant :

Jason Ronald :

The second link doesn't appear to work.

But I wouldn't get too caught up in the price discrepancy; sometimes drives go on sale. It's often true that vastly different capacities are within ~$5 of each other at certain price points.

Without being able to see the Seagate in question, I can only speculate that the Seagate is faster (better RPM, bigger cache, whatever) or that it has a better warranty (doubtful), but it could just be a random pricing quirk. In any case, almost any current desktop HDD should be fast enough for general use, particularly if you've already got an SSD to speed up the really important stuff.

That WD Blue ought to work just fine for you, BTW.

This is the seagate: Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive .
So you think anyone would work fine?

jackson1420 · May 26, 2013

The Western Digital has a larger cache.

64MB vs 16MB cache.

I would go for the WD - a larger cache is always good to help kick up some speeds

Otherwise they are the exact same. Both good brands.

k1114 · May 26, 2013

jackson1420 :

They are different sizes 500gb vs 1tb. You wouldn't feel a difference between them. http://www.ncix.ca/products/?affiliateid=7474144&sku=65701&vpn=ST1000DM003&manufacture=Seagate&promoid=1281 Here's a 1tb for $60. Or you can get a 500 gb hdd for $44. http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B000Q82PIQ/?tag=pcp0f-20

Guest · May 26, 2013

If you go to the respective websites, you can download a specification sheet. If you use your computer heavily one thing I look for is a drive that is designed for 24/7 usage or has a high listed "load/unload cycles". Many less expensive drives are not designed for lots of use.

I would also not try to buy a drive on the web due to how shippers treat them. In my experience (for what it's worth) I have found more people have less drive fails when you can go and pick the drive up and not have it shipped.

The drives you mentioned are similar except the WD has 64Mb cache vs. 16 Mb cache as has been mentioned and the WD Blue drive is rated for 300,000 load/unload cycles. The Seagate doesn't give this figure, but lists under "Data Integrity/Reliability" 2400 power on hours and 50,000 contact start/stop cycles. Don't know how the two types of 'cycles' compare, but 2400 power on hours is a scarily low number.

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Why is the larger hard drive cheaper?

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