Recommend a hard drive please?

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cusimar9

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I'm buying a few new bits and pieces so I was thinking I may as well get a bigger hard drive while I'm at it.

I've currently got a 120GB and 160GB WD Caviar hard drives with about 8mb cache IIRC, and they're probably about 4 years old now. These are connected by IDE, but AFAIK I wouldn't see any difference from moving to SATA.

Has technology moved on a lot since then? I know the WD Raptor drives are blindingly fast but from what I've seen they're expensive and noisy.

Can someone summarise the Hard Drive charts on Tom's Hardware for me? There are so many tests I really find them quite confusing!

What would be the second best hard drive (after the WD Raptor) and how would it compare to my WD Caviars?
 
ausch30

ausch30

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bobbknight

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Well the question is what will you be doing with the new hard drive?
If your going to do heavy graphics rendering then you need all the speed from a hard drive that your can get.
If you are going to use it as extra storage for movies, music and photos. Then get the largest that you can afford, from some one that offers the longest warranty.
The newer 32mb cache hard drives are a bit faster than what you have.
I have 2 raptors in raid 0 for my boot os it makes for a faster boot and load of os functions. I tended in the past to shy away from Maxtor but now they are just the same a Seagates.

What I would love to see would be a Sata II 15000rpm 32mb cache hard drive.
 
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cusimar9

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Sorry I should have been more specific.

I'm trying to build a really responsive system, but without spending too much. I don't play games really. Just want something that boots fast and loads apps quickly.

This will become my OS drive, my other two hard drives will be for storage.

Definitely don't need 500GB, I'm thinking more like 250...
 
aevm

aevm

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7200.11 is the technology they released after 7200.10. It is improved, obviously. It's only available in 500GB, 750Gb, and 1TB sizes. If you want 250GB you have to get a 7200.10. Do check though, I may be wrong, maybe they released a 7200.11 250GB version and I don't know about it. I checked newegg, no such thing there.

Spinpoint F1 1TB is incredibly fast when handling large files. That is, transfer rates beyond even the Raptor. I don't know much about the other (older) Spinpoint models. Access rates are still better with the Raptor, thanks to faster rotation speeds. The problem I have with Samsung drives in general is that Samsung is a newbie in the HDD field (compared to Seagate and WD) and I'm not yet very comfortable with them.
 
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Canuck1

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I assert that the Samsung drives are the best but often expensive. WD is 2nd, imho, and are often cheaper. Both get good reviews, are usually quiet and don't produce a lot of heat. Hitachi is up there, too, as well. It's Seagate and Maxtor (both are going to end up being very similar now since Seagate bought out Maxtor) that produce the most heat and are said to be noisy. I have bought a Seagate HDD in the past, but now I go for whichever drive is cheapest between Samsung, WD and Hitachi. If money is no object, get the Samsung.
 
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cusimar9

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Right thinking of going for a 500GB drive now, and these are the contenders:

Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache £66
Samsung SpinPoint T 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache £67
Hitachi Deskstar T7K500 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache £70
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache/ £78
Western Digital RE2 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache £81

Final Thoughts? Do I have the right models? The Samsung drive is one of the cheapest so I'm quite tempted by that if its also quite fast. Its interesting that the Seagate is the only drive with 32MB cache. Can anyone point me to a review where these are all compared?
 
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Canuck1

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The Samsung drive is a good price for you. There you go. I would rank it as:
1) Samsung 2) WD 3) Hitachi
The rankings are just based on price.

There is mention that it also depends what you want the drive for but I think those three drives would suit whatever you need to do.

And yes, those are the models I'd consider, too. I already have the Hitachi and Samsung.

Oops, I forgot to list some links for you to check out:
http://www.thetechlounge.com/article/297-1/500GB+Hard+Drive+RoundUp/

http://www.storagereview.com/HD501LJ.sr

They're a bit old/dated but should still be relevant.
 
aevm

aevm

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I can vouch for the two WD models on this list. I have 3 AAKS disks at home and 2 ABYS disks at work. No problems so far with any of them.
 
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xxsk8er101xx

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I tend to like Seagate. They offer a 5 year warranty on their harddrives.

I have at home a 320gb, 500gb, and a 750gb seagate drive. I bought a 500gb samsung drive for work and those are decent and offer a 3 year warranty.
 
ZOldDude

ZOldDude

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500GB Segate 7200.11's w/32 MB buffers are $89-119 USD's online and/or walk in store sales in the US and kick Raptor's butt.

Get a Segate.
 
ZOldDude

ZOldDude

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500GB Segate 7200.11's w/32 MB buffers are $89-119 USD's online and/or walk in store sales in the US and kick Raptor's butt.
The 500GB WD/Maxtor have also been onsale @ Fry's as a walk in sale for $89 USD.

Get a Segate.
 
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cusimar9

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This review seems to show the Hitachi 500GB as being leagues ahead of other drives.

Even in the THG charts, it seems to be the fastest of the 500GB drives, any reason I shouldn't go with the Hitachi?
 
ZozZoz

ZozZoz

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you want something with as few platters as possible. many platters = bad.

that is: you can get an older series 320 gb drive which will contain 2 160gb platters, or a newer series (higher density) drive with just one platter.
 
ausch30

ausch30

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Look at the charts again, through 15 tests the Hitachi won 3 over the Seagate 7200.11.
 
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cusimar9

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Just found this article, though its talking about 1TB drives I presume the results would be the same for 500GB units...
 
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