which hdd should i use as main

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joobie

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Nov 22, 2011
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i currently have a 750gb hitachi deskstar http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145532

I just bought a 2tb black WD http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8699280&srkey=TSD-2000WD2%20TD

they r both sata 3 6gbps 7200 rpm. only difference i can see is my hitachi is 32mb cache vs the 2tb's 64mb cache. which one is faster and is there a huge difference between 32 vs 64mb?

main question is should i make my life easier and just install my 2tb and use it as nas storage if speed isn't too big of a difference or should i use the 2tb as main with OS installed and format my hitachi to nas?

ty
 
Solution
nukemaster
The WDC black is more than is needed for most NAS applications.

Hard drive performance has 2 main things to look at.

Platter density. If a drive can place more data in a smaller area, it will have faster sequential read/writes. Many things you do on the system do not use sequential read/writes, but it is still a good metric to check out

Access Times. These mostly come from the drives spindle speed(7200 rpm). Now some drives have firmware optimizations to make them faster or more quiet. For this reason not all 7200 rpm drives are the same. Access times are why SSD's are so fast, a drive may have to make many moves from place to place on the platter to get the data needed, without this actual moment ssd's have very low access times

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nukemaster

nukemaster

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Nov 23, 2004
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The WDC black is more than is needed for most NAS applications.

Hard drive performance has 2 main things to look at.

Platter density. If a drive can place more data in a smaller area, it will have faster sequential read/writes. Many things you do on the system do not use sequential read/writes, but it is still a good metric to check out

Access Times. These mostly come from the drives spindle speed(7200 rpm). Now some drives have firmware optimizations to make them faster or more quiet. For this reason not all 7200 rpm drives are the same. Access times are why SSD's are so fast, a drive may have to make many moves from place to place on the platter to get the data needed, without this actual moment ssd's have very low access times

I would run a benchmark like CrystalDiskMark to compare the drives.

HDTune is also great but the free version does not properly perform an access time test on drives over 1tb. You can however use the trial of Pro.

I am going to guess the Black will come out ahead.

If you do not NEED tons of space, you can perform an operation called Short Stroking a drive. This means you make a partition of 200-500 gigabytes(the smaller the faster the access times) on the 2000gigabyte drive making the drive head not have to travel shorter distances. This leads to faster access times.
 
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J

joobie

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Nov 22, 2011
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it was a 1tb deal on cyber monday then they changed it to 2tb a few days later. I guess they just didn't update the picture. Anyways my invoice says 2tb so I better get a 2tb or TD will feel my wrath. Good catch didn't even notice that.

I guess I'll try the benchmark thing. But yea I think the black WD is gonna come ahead. To transfer files from old hdd to new one, can i just copy the files on old hdd and just paste it into the new hdd then nas format it ftw?
 
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nukemaster

nukemaster

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You have to format it before bringing files over. What nas are you running anyway. The nas should take care of the drive.

If you have an operating system on the old drive you will have to clone the drive(as you can not just copy/paste an os).
Macrium Reflect Free(free for personal use) does a very good job at drive cloning. Your drive may have more than one partition, you should bring them ALL over because extras may be used for a boot loader as well as recovery partition of pre-built systems.
 
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