Help choosing HDD

[sunnyimran]

Hi there,

Please help me in choosing between two brands of 500GB HDD,



Choice -1
Western Digital

WD Caviar Green
SATA Hard Drives
500 GB, 32 MB Cache, SATA 3 Gb/s
Model: WD5000AADS


Choice -2
Seagate

Barracuda 7200.12 SATA 3Gb/s 500GB Hard Drive 16MB Cache
Model: ST3500418AS


Please suggest which choice is better in terms of reliability and performance from above two.

Thanks

 

[treefrog07]

Get the Western Digital Caviar Black WD5001AALS, it's cheaper than the green with free shipping at newegg, and has a 5 year warranty. The WD site doesn't show the Green's speed, and if I remember correctly the Green series is 5400 RPM, which results in slower read/write speeds.

 

[sminlal]

The Green drives are slower, but use less power and have an Enterprise-class data integrity rating (1 unreadable sector per 10^15 bits read vs. 1 per 10^14 for most of the other consumer class 7200rpm drives I've seen).

Choose the Green for bulk storage if performance isn't important, otherwise choose a 7200rpm drive.

 

[sunnyimran]

Thanks folks,

performance and reliability both are of concern.

I have also tryed to analyse benchmarks http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2...hmarks,50.html

to compare my two choices. but quite lengthy for the time.

Q. DOES HDD Cache play a major role in performance ?

since in my two choices, seagate cache is 16MB, just half of the cache of WD Green.

 

[sminlal]

Cache is just about the last thing to look at when comparing drive performance. I don't think there's any drive out there which has so little cache that it really affects performance.

Once the drive has a certain minimum amount of cache, adding more generally has a very minor impact in overall performance.

 

[sunnyimran]

Thanks

So far my votes are going with Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 SATA from my two choices

till there is further helpful info

waiting

 

[N.Broekhuijsen]

im gonna say +1 for the Caviar Black 500GB, otherwise the Caviar Green

 

[prelude2250]

+1 Caviar Black. I have 2 in raid 0 as a system drive and its performance is amazing. I've got WD Blacks in all of my PC's Desktops and Laptops. Havent had a single failure, yet. knock on wood.

 

[N.Broekhuijsen]

got a 2TB caviar black not long ago. sure it's not the same capacity, but these drives are just stupidly fast!

 

[robjohnston]

I'll second malmental on the Samsung Spinpoint F3 series. The 500GB model is ludicrously cheap at the moment and so is the 1TB version, around £40 on ebuyer.com

 

[sunnyimran]

For my case,

WD is not as popular as Seagate here although it would be a neck to neck competetor.

secondly WD BLACK is little but higher in the price than a Seagate in similar capacities.

 

[sunnyimran]

Hey guys, if there are Two Sata HDD present in a system, both have primary, active partitions on it, both has OS installed, which one will boot first ? HDD on lower SATA port no. or what? any ideas ?

 

[sunnyimran]

I have ASUS P5QL PRO mobo.

Can i selectively change the order from BIOS to boot from SATA-1 instead from SATA-0? or from SATA-0 intead of SATA-1? and from IDE instead of Sata.

It seems to me, in BIOS Boot priority options->It just gives boot priority option for removable drive, CD/DVD and Hard drives, no futher selection for Which HDD first.

I have one IDE PATA drive also with bootable partition. once boot sequence is selected to boot from Hard drive, on next boot IDE drive gets priority in IDE, Sata-0, sata-1.

 

[sunnyimran]

Yes all Sata ports are enabled and set on AUTO detect.

at the moment I have removed one Sata-1 HDD, and now I have this:

TWO IDE PATA
one master ( bootable active partition with OS ) MAXTOR 40GB
one slave ( no bootable active partition, no OS only Data) SEAGATE 40 GB


ONE SATA -0
Sata-0 HDD seagate 250GB

ONE SATA -1
Sata-1 DVD Writer TSST corp.



Sata ports configured for HDD as AHCI enabled.




BIOS-> Boot priority-> HARD DISK, DVD, Removable.

in this case IDE MAXTOR boots first, then Sata-0.






To forcefully boot from Sata-0, I have to:

1.disable IDE onboard ports from BIOS
OR
2.Mark Boot partition as inactive and hide boot partition on IDE
OR
3.remove IDE cable from both IDE drives.

Only in case of 2. I am able to boot from Sata-0 and still able to see IDE partitions in Sata booted OS.



Suppose I populate this:

IDE HDD master + slave two HDDs , master with bootable active bootable partition.

Sata-0 HDD with bootable partition
Sata-1 HDD with bootable partition

Q. What is the easy way to go , to boot selectively from the drive/partition of my choice between IDE master, Sata-0 and Sata-1 HDDs?

as stated above, If I disable IDE onboard from BIOS, my IDE is still connected and set, no need to open the case to remove any cables. BUT I am unable to see IDE partitions in Sata booted OS.

another thing, suppose IDE is out of question ( assume not installed) now to selectively boot between Sata-0 and Sata-1, ... :
hard crude way: swap the sata-0 and sata-1 cables, since sata-0 HDD will get priority first

but to do this, I have to open the case everytime.

please suggest