Which HDD combination should I get?

[sneak3]

Hello people!

I'm planing on getting new HDDs since my both samsungs are almost dead.

I've read some reviews and I really liked the WD HDDs.

Do you think that a 500gb Caviar black, 32mb, 7200rpm for SYSTEM and a 500gb caviar blue, 16mb, 7200rpm for DATA is a good combination?

And one more thing, is it worth dividing the system HD in more than 1 partition, so it becomes faster? (someone told me that, just wanna check if it's true)

Thank you!

 

[sminlal]

A disk with two partitions isn't faster. One partition (the first) will have a higher transfer rate, the second partition will have a slower transfer rate. And the drive as a whole will be a lot slower if you're trying to access files in both partitions at the same time because the head will be constantly moving back and forth between them.

 

[hellwig]

the only reason I partition my drives is to separate data from my OS and certain APPs. This way, when I inevitably need to re-install windows, I only have to format my OS partition, and not worry about my data.

If you plan to use 2 drives, you probably don't need to partition (like sminlal said, it doesn't make anything noticeably faster, it hasn't for decades).

As for the choice of drives, I would either go both Black (faster and more reliable, but maybe $5 more expensive), or Black for SYSTEM and Green for DATA (green is better efficiency than Blue). Blue seems to be a "middle of the road", i.e. single-drive solution, and Green isn't any more expensive, so go Green if you want, but I would go both-Black personally.

 

[Hawkeye22]

I'd go both black myself. The blue and green have a 3 year warranty, the blacks have a 5 year warranty. So, unless you need the low power of the green drives, I'd go black.

 

[sneak3]

But from what I've seen so far, blue is significantly better than Green...and since the data drive is only for DATA, Im not convinced that a black would be give me any kind of advantage...Further on, I think 2 blacks would make a lot of noise/vibration!

I didnt underestand why green would be more efficient.

 

[sminlal]

The greens don't perform as well, but they use less power (which is why they're "more efficient) and run cooler. The cooler operation makes them an excellent choice for external enclosures or if you're trying to stuff a LOT of drives internally into a case.

Something most people overlook is reliability ratings. Certain models of the WD Blue drives (including the 500GB model) have a higher reliability specification (less than 1 unrecoverable error per 10^15 bits read) than the Black drives (1 per 10^14 bits read).

 

[sneak3]

The greens don't perform as well, but they use less power (which is why they're "more efficient) and run cooler. The cooler operation makes them an excellent choice for external enclosures or if you're trying to stuff a LOT of drives internally into a case.

Something most people overlook is reliability ratings. Certain models of the WD Blue drives (including the 500GB model) have a higher reliability specification (less than 1 unrecoverable error per 10^15 bits read) than the Black drives (1 per 10^14 bits read).

Alright, so you think my choice of hdds is ok? Black for system, since its faster and blue for storage, since it's more reliable.

 

[sminlal]

Alright, so you think my choice of hdds is ok? Black for system, since its faster and blue for storage, since it's more reliable.

Seems like a reasonable choice to me...

 

[sneak3]

Best answer selected by sneak3.