Comparing 2TB Drives by 8/16

[balthanon]

I'm currently looking at options for expanding my storage capacity on my new computer, adding a 2 TB drive to a 60 GB SSD + an existing 2.5 TB's of storage. My existing hard drives are primarily used for storing video and I want the new drive partly to add more capacity to those drives. Mainly though, I want a drive that is going to be relatively fast for loading large games and applications that I don't use quite so often that I want them on the limited space of the SSD.

I'm currently looking at these hard drives on NewEgg.

What I was wondering primarily is whether anyone knows what the difference is between the two Hitachi drives listed there for 120 and 130 dollars, since as far as I can tell from searching online, they're the same drive. (Though the 119 one didn't come up when searching Hitachi's website.) It seems odd that a retail boxed drive would be 10 dollars cheaper than a bare drive in that case though.

My second question and one that I'm hoping to get an answer on by tomorrow due to the sale, is whether the WD Cavier Black is significantly better than the 7K2000. The benchmarks I saw all put it ahead, but I'm wondering if it's worth the extra 30 or 40 dollars for my purposes. (Keeping in mind that any programs I want to be really fast, I'll be placing on my SSD-- feasible so long as the application is under 5 or 6 gigabytes or up until I run out of space anyway.)

 

[jefe323]

one hitachi drive is a bare drive (just the drive with no cables or anything else) and the other is the retail version

the WD black drive is amazing (i have the 1tb version)

 

[balthanon]

My confusion came in because the bare drive is more expensive-- that seemed slightly counter intuitive to me. If that is the only difference, I might as well go with the cheaper retail though. Unless I end up going with the WD black-- just not sure it's necessary since I have the SSD. I suspect most of my games will be going on the new drive though, simply because of the space they take up.

 

[jefe323]

it does seem odd, but that does seem to be the only difference between them

 

[birdeye]

Just curious but is there any reason why your not buying 2x 1TB drives and setting up in raid 1(striping). Essentially it functions as one drive, you get a performance boost, and it ends being around the same price. I could see with your setup that you may not have the room to add 2 drives, but if you do I would go with 2 so that you can the performance boost.

 

[jefe323]

Just curious but is there any reason why your not buying 2x 1TB drives and setting up in raid 1(striping). Essentially it functions as one drive, you get a performance boost, and it ends being around the same price. I could see with your setup that you may not have the room to add 2 drives, but if you do I would go with 2 so that you can the performance boost.

striping is actually RAID 0 (not RAID 1) and raid 0 is prone to failure. if one drive fails, then all the drives in the RAID fail.

 

[birdeye]

Yea I knew that don't know why I said raid 1. Yea, it may fail but i think its worth the risk, after all most drives now come with a 3 year warranty. Just my opinion with that much space I'd be thinking about raid so I could get a performance boost.

 

[jefe323]

its not the drive you need to be worried about, but the data (no warranty on that...)

 

[balthanon]

I'm not looking at 1 TB drives primarily because of the limited capacity to add additional hard drives to my case. I'm already using four out of my 6 hard drive bays and I anticipate potentially needing more space in another year at my current rate. Basically, a 2 TB drive maximizes my ability to cram data into my computer at the moment.

If I go with 2 TB drives for now, hopefully by the time I hit 6 drives and have shifted my SSD up into a 3.5 inch slot further up they'll have something better for storage. As far as performance is concerned, I'll be counting on the SSD primarily in that regards-- I may actually consider RAID 0 for my SSD when the prices on those come down a bit. My 60 GB already cost me more than the 2 TB drive I ended up purchasing for this.

 

[balthanon]

Best answer selected by balthanon.