Is the WD6400AAKS the fastest out there, after Samsung F1 and Raptors?

killtacular

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Hi all,

I really need a bigger drive and am looking to rebuild the OS. As the title says, is the WD6400AAKS fastest after the F1's and Raptor? I don't want to go for Samsung due to reliability issues and the Raptors are too expensive for small capacity...

Also, how do you guys usually partition your hard drives in terms of what partion the OS goes on etc? I don't usually partition it so I am interested to see what you all do....

Thanks guys/gals,

Me.
 

3Ball

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I have the 320gb AAKS as my main drive and it works great. I agree that the raptor is just to much $ for the amount of space it offers and I am not one for samsung drives. For the money the 640gb AAKS seems to be the best one out there.

I have no partition on my drive. I was going to in order to run Vista and XP, but I just decided to go with Vista exclusively, so I do not partition my AAKS, but I do partition my laptop hard drive, but it is just to allocate 10gb to my linux installation for server management and a few classes that I had to take a while back.

Best,

3Ball
 

ainarssems

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Partition one in the beginning of the drive for OS, programs, pagefile, rest of space another partition for storage. First partition 50-200GB depending on the programs You will be using, rest for storage.
 

Granite3

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Yes, it is.

It is faster than the raptors in all but seek time.

The new velociraptor is faster, but for a 640 gig drive, you can't go wrong.

And I have read that the fail rate is lower than the Samsung F1's.

I do not partition, just keep the drive cleaned and defragged every other day or so.
 

KyleSTL

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Have you seen reviews? Theoretically what you said should be correct, though.

Yes, the 6400AAKS is one of the fastest (if not THE fastest 7200rpm drive that exists right now). It doesn't hurt that it also has the lowest $/GB to date. I own two 6400AAKS drives and one 3200AAKS (single platter) and I have no complaints about any of them.
 

I've seen a few tests - I can't seem to find them right now.
 

royalcrown

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partitioning sucks when you need to change it...so I don't just use 2 drives one for os and one for backup, files, iso's, etc...then np if you have to redo it...and no partition resizing headaches...
 

killtacular

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Thanks everyone for your quick reply. I have decided to go for the WD. The sad thing is that it looks like I have to RMA my mobo as I get memtest errors on 2 of the memory slots whereas the other 2 slots as fine. Well, that ruined my 4 day weekend this week. Oh well, guess more time online on Halo 3 then!

Cheers,

Me.
 

eternyty

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Everyone keeps talking about the 6400AAKS. The 3200AAKS is just as fast right? just smaller? I mean, it is the same drive.
 

KyleSTL

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Technically, yes, but it has longer access times and slightly slower linear read and write rates (I have first-hand experience with both).
 

KyleSTL

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I'm going to try playing with them tonight and see if disabling the AAM on each drive changes the performance disparity. I'll post results here later this week (or this weekend, when the better half is gone).