Need 2 Good/Cheap HDDs

XxH34dshotxX

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May 18, 2011
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Hey! I am building my first gaming RIG and I need 2 HDDs. I don't really want to spend anymore then $150...

Reason for 2 HDDs:
1st) For games, OS, anything else.
2nd) To record to. I am going to Fraps and save the click to the 2nd HDD. By having 2 the performance will be better when recording.

I was looking at the Western Digital Caviar Black 500TB and the Seagate 500GB 7200.12 and now the SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 1TB

Also, this is my MOBO if it matters: GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0
Thanks!

Links:
Western Digital Caviar Black 500TB - http://www.bestdirect.ca/products/232142/Western_Digital/WD5002AALX/
Seagate 500GB 7200.12 - http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4499974&CatId=2459
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 1TB - http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6448061&CatId=2459#2
 

cscooper2000

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Jun 17, 2011
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After a bit of research, and several glowing reviews, I just ordered the Hitachi 7K3000 1.5TB hard drive. I will be using it as my system drive (and I'm tempted to order another pair to stripe as my video drive for editing). Benchmarks show this drive is fast! I'll be short stroking the drive (probably down to 200GB) to get even faster OS boot times and program launch times.

Two of these drives would cost you just a tiny bit more than $150.

Before being turned onto the Hitachi 7K3000 I had also considered WD Caviar Black, but they are more pricey and many benchmarks show the 7K3000 is right on par with the Caviar Black.
 
Samsung F3. Try Newegg.com or Microcenter.com. I'll bet they are cheaper than TigerDirect!

Don't spend ANY extra on a SATA 3 6.0Gbps drive over a SATA 2 3.0Gbps hard drive. No HDD out there even comes close to saturating the SATA bandwidth.

I had 2xSamsung Spinpoint F3 1Tb in RAID 0 and only got 150MBps reads!

 

XxH34dshotxX

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May 18, 2011
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Alright I'll keep that in mind. For some reason in Canada tigerdirect had that HDD cheaper :O