Second hard drive - what do I want?

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calza

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Mar 18, 2013
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My current second drive is full, it's only 750gb. I think I'm looking for 2 or 3 TB this time.

It's primarily used for hosting the backup of my main SSD along with videos and games (I like to store old digital games!). I download torrents to it on a moderate basis and will occasionally stream a file from it to my TV.

I don't really know which brand is better, but I see a lot of western digital models out such as Red, Green, Black etc..

Hard to know where to start?!
 
Solution
Solandri
You only have three choices for hard drive brands - WD, Seagate, and Toshiba (formerly Hitachi, which was formerly IBM). Everyone else has been bought up. The other brands you see are simply reselling drives from one of these three manufacturers. Samsung = Seagate (Hitachi before 2011), Fujitsu = Toshiba, etc.

For 3.5" drives I'd order my preference as Toshiba/Hitachi, then WD, then Seagate. Things change with every new model each company puts out (7 years ago I would've rated Seagate #1). So don't take this as gospel several years from now.

For 2.5" drives I would buy a SSD.

Western Digital created a lot of artificial distinctions between their drives (i.e. removed features which used to be on all their drives) to divide up the...
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Solandri

Solandri

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Jan 4, 2012
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You only have three choices for hard drive brands - WD, Seagate, and Toshiba (formerly Hitachi, which was formerly IBM). Everyone else has been bought up. The other brands you see are simply reselling drives from one of these three manufacturers. Samsung = Seagate (Hitachi before 2011), Fujitsu = Toshiba, etc.

For 3.5" drives I'd order my preference as Toshiba/Hitachi, then WD, then Seagate. Things change with every new model each company puts out (7 years ago I would've rated Seagate #1). So don't take this as gospel several years from now.

For 2.5" drives I would buy a SSD.

Western Digital created a lot of artificial distinctions between their drives (i.e. removed features which used to be on all their drives) to divide up the market so they could charge higher prices.

Green = low-power, slower (typically 5400 RPM with aggressive power save features)
Blue = regular consumer (typically 5400 RPM)
Black = higher performance consumer, business (typically 7200 RPM)
Red = server/RAID (7200 RPM with TLER)
Purple = surveillance cameras (not sure what makes these special)

If you're downloading torrents, make sure you enable the option to reserve the file space as soon as the file starts to download. Without that option, the downloaded file will end up fragmented in a thousand pieces across your hard drive, slowing down access not only to that file but to other files on the HDD. If you enable the option, the file will be written as one contiguous file (or as close to that as possible). If your torrent app doesn't have this option, you should make a separate partition specifically for files that are in the process of being downloaded. And when the download is finished, copy the file to the final storage partition.
 
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Solution
C

calza

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Mar 18, 2013
338
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Hi,

Thanks for the replies. I've enabled 'Pre-allocate all files' in uTorrent - does that sound like the option you were referring to?

Will I notice a difference in speed between 5400 v 7200rpm in streaming video? (720p). Also is there a typical speed difference in Mb anywhere?

I know the purple is meant to be for CCTV, but is there any harm in using it? This seems a reasonable price:

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+products/Western+Digital+WD30PURX+3TB+Purple+Surveillance%2FAV+24x7+SATA3+3.5+?productId=62088
 
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