WD caviar black 1 TB 6.0 Gb/s vs Caviar Black 1 TB 3.0 GB/s

[georgecale]

Hi,
has anyone come across comparisons of these two western digital drives? the prices at newegg on each are negligible and in theory the 6.0 Gb/s should have a nice bump in transfer rates.

In looking at the newegg reviews of the 6.0GB/s drives, it seems many users are encountering a fair amount of instability as well as unacheived speeds.

thanks!
George

 

[zowryo]

Yeah the 6 Gb/s (SATA III) should be faster than 3 Gb/s (SATA II) but it just a bit faster I think, and also some motherboard with SATA III capable chipset need some bios update to enhance their SATA III capability, performance might different with another motherboard manufacturer, and hard drive quality. The best solution for speed is to take two identical drive and RAID0 them together, its faster than SSD perhaps.

 

[georgecale]

thanks, zowryo. have you used the 6 gb/s yet? seems like maybe it's a bit unstable yet to depend on based on the reviews i've been reading - unless people aren't tweaking the drives properly.
george

 

[sminlal]

The difference in SATA connection speeds is almost entirely irrelevant. Neither drive can even get close to a 3GBit/sec continuous transfer rate, so using a 6GBit/sec connection really makes no difference.

Base your decision on the basic performance of the drives themselves - their transfer rates and access times - and don't worry about what type of SATA they use.

The only case in which SATA 6Gbit/sec makes a real difference is for a few very fast SSDs (Solid State Drives) which have raw transfer rates that can exceed 3GBit/sec.

 

[georgecale]

thanks, sminlal. good to know. i've had and enjoyed using the wd caviar black 3 gbit drive and will likely stick with those until ssd come down.

 

[teamyns]

Good info here.

Im in the process of building my brother a new PC and I bought an ASrock MB with USB 3.0 and SATA 3. Wasnt sure if SATA 3 was worth it so I skipped the HDD (Some stuff came up so now I'm ordering a HDD).

Anyway, I will order a SATA 2 drive. Save my brother $20.

Newegg has a Seagate drive on sale right now. 1TB Sata 3.0 for $59 shipped.

Thanks again.

 

[georgecale]

hey teamyns,

i know others are fans of seagate but i had some really awful experiences with them - both internals and externals- about a year ago so i don't even look at their drives any longer.

thi is off topic but here goes: i had a home server failure as well as local drive back up failure (all outfitted with the then brand new seagate drives), had to use their proprietary company to recover data at a true premium over other respected independents because they had a lock on all of the parts (since they were new drives). these were all less than a week old.

was subsequently over a barrel on this one. most insulting was the attitude of their phone rep - 'we're the best in the world. you can take it to someone else but you'll never see your data again' and then a bs riff on 'clean room state of the art data recovery iso certified blah blah blah'. one of their recovery centers happened to be about 20 minutes from my home so i took the drives there, and the enviro was nothing of the sort advertised in pictures and via sales/support - dudes working at 'clean benches' cubicles with bench mounted fans in a fully open environment, etc. needless to say, i have no qualms with that per se' - specially if it gets the job done (which it didn't) but if you're charging a premium + and misrepresenting the nature of services supplied, that doesn't sit terribly well with me. when it was all finally resolved, i started getting regular - i mean 2 a week-phone calls from someone at seagate that verged on harassment. each time i answered, they'd hang up. it all seemed pretty unprofessional and it never feels good to drop 3k on something like this.

i've heard whatever drive kinks were there at the beginning were resolved but i'm not going back to them and, btw, before i learned the hard way that you really shouldn't use external drives with the oem produced enclosures - seagate , WD, whoever - I lost a handful of drives in years past so its not like i only ever had hardware problems with seagate. i just think how they deal with stuff was iffy at best.

 

[RetiredChief]

Concur with sminlal.
The only bennie is in burst speed. Here is one review.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/18467/5

On spur of the monment while shoping @ microcenter I picked this puppy up - mistake, Should have trusted my instinks and save some mony with samsungs F3 sata II.

Added: On Seagate, I was a big fan prior to the -11 debacle. While their -12 is an improvement, I think when compared to WD Blk and Samsung F3 - it's still below par!

 

[georgecale]

Concur with sminlal.
The only bennie is in burst speed. Here is one review.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/18467/5

On spur of the monment while shoping @ microcenter I picked this puppy up - mistake, Should have trusted my instinks and save some mony with samsungs F3 sata II.

yes! that'll be my next drive purchase. i am happy with wd...very surprised, in fact, by how quiet the cav black 3 g is. i also have a green which is fine and seemingly reliable for storage. i wouldn't use it for performance.

Added: On Seagate, I was a big fan prior to the -11 debacle. While their -12 is an improvement, I think when compared to WD Blk and Samsung F3 - it's still below par!

never going back there again! a tell tale sign: after i had all this nonsense with seagate and their recovery center (i386), costco had their externals at blow out prices for 1.5 and tb drives. don't get me wrong, i like my costco for a lot of stuff -most of it is naturally perishable by nature's design-but when it comes to their electronics section, it often sems like a place to blow out last generation makes and models from cameras to tvs. so, to see thos seagates in a matter of months after they hit the street was really something. great business plan: create a problem in order to fix it!