WD Black Caviar 1TB

1. 640gb uses two platters while the 1tb uses three platters
The samsung spinpoint f3 uses a single 500gb platter, take a look at that, and its cheap

2. i'm not sure . up to u

Its not so much the number of platters, but the density of the platters. The 1tb should perform close to the 640 as they use the same 334mb platters. As jchan said, the spinpoint F3 uses 500gb platters as do the seagate 7200.12s. They will have better performance since the heads can read more data per revolution than a platter with 334mbs on it.

Recommending the 640 over the 1tb is more about price and the fact that most people don't need 1tb. I run a single 160gb drive and have XP and Win7 dual boots with Crysis Max edition, The orange box, and Fallout 3 loaded on both partitions. Media files cover just over a gig. So be realistic about your capacity needs and take a good look at that spinpoint F3, great price/performance. $55. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Mine came in just fine, hopefully whatever they use to ship it out to you doesnt beat it up too badly, thing is most small drives until recently used 250GB platters, currently drives like the 1TB and 640GB caviar black use 320GB platters, and drives like the 500GB Samsung F3 and Seagate 12 use single 500GB platters, either of those would offer better performance than the 1TB or 640GB caviar black but at the cost of less space. Since you need the TB of space the caviar black or Seagate 12 series are you best options but since you seem to have had issues with the seagate then the black is your best remaining option. Hopefully this one doesnt arrive DOA, if it does its probably shipping damage that its killing them.

I've ordered 100s of the caviar black 1TB drives, and only had 2 DOA...it is my drive of choice for most builds because it offers the best mixture of high storage and performance. If you have a lot of media files like I do that 1TB doesn't go as far as a normal user, so buy for your needs. Music files don't take up a whole lot of space each, but if you have 100,000 like I do they add up fast. It only takes a few HD video files to chew up all your available space.

I ordered the 1TB WD black this on Monday. Hopefully, it won't be DOA. It'll be my first black. I've used their 1TB Greens and 1TB "RE" series without any issues.

Thanks for all of your input guys. I think I should put performance over storage size, so I've decided to risk it and go with the Spinpoint that has been recommended by 3 of you (plus some mentions of the spinpoint on a review I read on the 1 Tb itself!).

Hopefully it is not another DOA  

thanks guys

palithius

yeah i ordered a 750gb caviar black, was not doa and i'm quite satisfied with it.

i was going to get a 1tb myself but decided it was overkill for my immediate needs and with the 750gb having been a shell shocker the day i bought it made sense, i can always get more storage later (or an SSD for a boot drive and then the 750 is nothing but storage)

Why does the WD Black 500GB offer less performance than the 640GB version? Does it use one platter or two smaller ones?

The WD 500GB drives use two 250GB platters. The 640GB drives use two 320GB platters. Higher data density equals a faster drive in most cases.

I think this review is worth looking at WRT this conversation.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2tb-hdd-7200,2430-9...

I too have been contemplating which hdd to get and it seems to me that the WD Black 1TB is faster for loading apps and games than the F3 500GB ... despite the fact that the F3 has 500GB platters.

I'm still curious about the WD Black 1TB vs. WD Black 640GB. It makes sense to me that the 1TB would be faster (since it has 6 heads and 3 plates) than the 640 (which has 4 heads and 2 plates), but these specs:

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/287...

say that the Host to/from drive is 106MB/s for the 1TB and 113MB/s for the 640GB ... does anyone know how important the 'Host to/from drive' for games/load times?

Thanks for any advice.