Opinions Please ..Best Hard Drive Choice

[Bigdog45]

Would like to get some opinions as to what would be a good choice of Two internal SATA2 Hard Drives for a new build.................Right now I'm thinking about the WD Raptor of any size...

 

[electrontau]

WD velociraptor - 300GB/10k rpm. good for boot drive and apps. Better with SSD for boot drive.

2nd drive: Caviar Black.

 

[pa8riot]

best value = WD black
3 year warranty, 7200 rpm, cache

 

[d1rtyju1c3]

If it were me I would get at least a 64gb SSD for my boot drive and the samsung spinpoint f3 1tb HDD for storage.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233108

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185

Sorry guys but the f3 has better read and write speeds than the WD black and the f3 is $20 cheaper.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-3.5-desktop-hard-drive-charts/benchmarks,50.html

 

[Bigdog45]

If I were to go with this setup ..(the SSD and 1TB HD) what type of configuration would I choose in the BIOS.?...and if you go RAID on this ..would it be safe.?

 

[saint19]

You can't RAID an SSD and normal HD.

For SSD I'd go with Crucial C300 any size, and for storage, the Spinpoint F3 or Seagate 7200.12.

 

[Phil Indeblanc]

I doubt Bigdog was thinking of RAIDing an SSD with a spin drive. In fact RAIDing anything but identical drives is a risk of running errors as each drive has different specs of R/W. Even 2 different MFG with similar specs may get errors. So use identical drives in any Striped RAID setup.

 

[saint19]

^You can find very funny things on Internet, so, I prefer clarify that.

 

[Phil Indeblanc]

I did run into some issues of setting up my SSD as AHCI. Since I am still using my OS drive with a Spin HHD(not SSD), yet my scratch drives are 2 SSD's in RAID0, In the BIOS you cannot select AHCI, as the OS drive will not boot. Anyone know a workaround for such an issue. The last thing I want to do is reinstall the OS/Programs(and all the little tweaks of settings and saving all my custom wacom, plugin settings). I have Acronis for the image, maybe not selecting the MBR as a backup image may allow for a new MBR with AHCI to write on to the Spin drive?


On another note.... What would gain more work performance?... a RAID0 SSD on the OS/programs with a single SSD as scratch, or the scratch being RAID0 SSD ? Ofcourse I would image the boot SSD's as my 64gb Torqx drives have failed on me already(10yr warranty locks me in for a bit). I am running 16GB RAM, and my files sizes hit 1GB easy, and with cache and History points in CS5 Photoshop that gets mulitplyed rather fast.


To the OG poster. If you dont need a lot of room on your boot drive, I would SURELY go for the Raptors in 150GB . For what that is worth. I say that with a bit reservation as the newer drives of Raptors are the new 3.5 size and those numbers I am sure have changed as the platform has. Either way the 10K spin specially in RAID0 will be snappy.
Look for latency times, spin up, etc....Or get SSD's since you arn't looking for size.

 

[saint19]

If you already are on IDE mode, check this: http://www.ithinkdiff.com/how-to-enable-ahci-in-windows-7-rc-after-installation/ to change to AHCI without clean installation.

Now if you are on RAID 0, you can't change to IDE or AHCI, as you know, RAID 0 distribute the files in the array's HD.

I suggest you don't use RAID 0 on SSD, because TRIM isn't supported on SSD RAID 0 or SSD partition in RAID 0, so, you will have a lot of garbage that affect the performance of your rig.

 

[Phil Indeblanc]

Great link Saint19!!!!

My OS is not RAID0, my 2 scratch disks are via Windows 7(x64 OS).
Not sure who controls or ingnores what on them, but they are all IDE right now.

So once I do the reg edit for AHCI, will this apply to the OS drive only? I guess it would.

On the SSD ...My Torqx drives do not have TRIM. they do have a Firmware update option, but they are Trim free. Patriot claims it support RAID0, 1, 0+1. Maybe this somehow makes them less of a candidate for scratch?

 

[saint19]

All SSD support TRIM, but only Windows 7 support TRIM. When you change to AHCI on regedit, you need reboot the rig, and go to the BIOS to change to AHCI. After that Windows 7 install the AHCI driver automatically.

 

[Resteasy]

I keep hearing the spinpoint f3 is faster than the WD BLack sataIII. Is that still going to be true with the new P67 boards and sandybridge processors or will that be able to handle the sata III better and produce better speeds?

 

[saint19]

If you want speed, get an SSD, the spinpoint performs much better because has better build, and a SATA port or new CPU will not change that.