Western Digital or Seagate?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
WhatamIdoingWrong

WhatamIdoingWrong

Honorable
Jul 6, 2013
143
0
10,690
I need some help choosing a hard drive or hard drives. I can get a WD Caviar Black 2TB for $110 or two 1TB Caviar blues for the same price and there is also a Seagate Barracuda 3TB for $100. I have an SSD for my OS and most of my programs and a Caviar Blue 1TB for my games and videos but it's almost full. I'm leaning towards the Black but I wanted to ask some people first that know more about them than I do. Thanks.
 
Solution
laviniuc


it supports raid. http://www.ecs.umass.edu/ece/koren/architecture/Raid/raidhome.html

there are 2 kinds basically
0 (stripe) - which is like the dual channel for ram where each data block is split between the 2 hdds. you get the sum of capacity and about 80-90% speed increase. downside is if one of the drives fails you lose the data on both. the one working will have just half of the puzzle.
1 (mirror) - each block is written to both hdds. you sacrifice half of the capacity but your data always exists on both. if one fails nothing happens. speed = slowest of the drives.
(for these the...
Sort by date Sort by votes
WhatamIdoingWrong

WhatamIdoingWrong

Honorable
Jul 6, 2013
143
0
10,690


I can get it for $120 but I thought it was a 5400rpm drive so it wouldn't be as good for gaming as the others, right?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
laviniuc

laviniuc

Judicious
Nov 29, 2013
5,505
18
32,415
seagate is my brand of choice for hdd. i'm never touching a wd after the problems i've had with their green line.

since it's for storage only (ssd does most of the real work) it wont matter which one you get. cost/gb should be your driving factor

p.s. never raid 0 your big storage. simply not worth the risk in case one fails
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
giantbucket

giantbucket

Dignified
BANNED
Nov 17, 2013
3,881
1
15,960
If the Blue is 7200rpm (I can't recall) then get two of those.

The Green (and Red) are 5400-ish so they might be a tad slow for games, but they're more than enough for movies. Personally I use a Black for OS, Red for often-used docs and files, and Green for bulk movie storage.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
laviniuc

laviniuc

Judicious
Nov 29, 2013
5,505
18
32,415


you still have the current 1tb drive for backups and the warranty is the same for all. just make sure it's a 7200rpm version.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
WhatamIdoingWrong

WhatamIdoingWrong

Honorable
Jul 6, 2013
143
0
10,690


The Blue is 7200rpm and so is the Barracuda.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
giantbucket

giantbucket

Dignified
BANNED
Nov 17, 2013
3,881
1
15,960
I used to have Seagate as my main drives, my first pick. Had Hitachi and Samsung too but would never turn down a Seagate.

These days, I pick WD first whenever possible. Better options, nicer support, and for some unknown reason Seagate just rubs me the wrong way nowadays...
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
laviniuc

laviniuc

Judicious
Nov 29, 2013
5,505
18
32,415


it supports raid. http://www.ecs.umass.edu/ece/koren/architecture/Raid/raidhome.html

there are 2 kinds basically
0 (stripe) - which is like the dual channel for ram where each data block is split between the 2 hdds. you get the sum of capacity and about 80-90% speed increase. downside is if one of the drives fails you lose the data on both. the one working will have just half of the puzzle.
1 (mirror) - each block is written to both hdds. you sacrifice half of the capacity but your data always exists on both. if one fails nothing happens. speed = slowest of the drives.
(for these the hdd's should be identical)

and then we move to funky 10 (mirror of stripes), 5 (stripe with parity check), 6 (double parity) but for these you need atleast 3 drives.

just get the 3tb seagate and dont complicate your life needlessly
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
giantbucket

giantbucket

Dignified
BANNED
Nov 17, 2013
3,881
1
15,960


you could get two 1TB Blues and not bother with RAID right now. no need to. just have them as individual drives. but if N years down the road you want to try some RAIDing, then your three 1TB Blues would be well suited to the task.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
laviniuc

laviniuc

Judicious
Nov 29, 2013
5,505
18
32,415


let's assume his current 1tb wd is 2 years old. would you want it on your raid setup 2 years from now? i wouldn't
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
giantbucket

giantbucket

Dignified
BANNED
Nov 17, 2013
3,881
1
15,960
the beauty (and whole raison d'etre) of RAID5 is that if one drive suddenly fails, no data is lost. the drive simply gets replaced with a new one, array is rebuilt, and life carries on. so in short, yes I would trust it once the RAID array is set up because then I wouldn't need to worry about trusting it.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
laviniuc

laviniuc

Judicious
Nov 29, 2013
5,505
18
32,415
(no disrespect) remember we're talking about someone who has never set a raid before. i dont see how more points of failure on his pc can be helpful. so in my personal opinion i think the 3tb seagate is a better choice than the 2x1 wd

we haven't even began to talk about power requirements for 3 drives instead of 2, cables, ports available.

at that point we'd be talking about a drive 4 years old. anything after 5 years is living on borrowed time in my humble opinion. and by that time 3tb would be simply not enough for his needs.

and to make matters worse were talking about a motherboard embedded controller! what if he changes motherboards next year?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
giantbucket

giantbucket

Dignified
BANNED
Nov 17, 2013
3,881
1
15,960
I wouldn't recommend setting up a RAID5 immediately, or even at all. I was (clearly) saying that buying two 1TB drives gives him options in the future to experiment with stuff.

regardless of RAID or no-RAID, I'd think spreading data over two drives is safer than putting everything on one drive.

but yeah, point taken on whether his mobo can even support two extra drives as far as SATA ports, or only one extra drive. as far as power supply, he'd have to be running it pretty close to capacity if one more drive is OK but two more drives is death.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
WhatamIdoingWrong

WhatamIdoingWrong

Honorable
Jul 6, 2013
143
0
10,690


I think I'll buy the Seagate since it's $10 less and an extra 1TB. The hard drive and the rest of my PC is less than 5 months old, Steam sales are rough on the wallet and they can fill a HD fast.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom