I wish to buy a SATA III hard drive

saadgamer

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I am about to buy a new gaming PC based on Intel's Core i7 Sandy Bridge processor with ASUS SABERTOOTH P67 Motherboard (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/SABERTOOTH_P67/). I am used to "Seagate" hard drives and I can't understand the WD's Blue, Green and Black categories. On a forum I have read that WD hard disks are not for storage purposes but for performance purposes. But I want a hard drive which has both qualities like Seagate. Now that both Seagate and WD have both introduced SATA III 6 GBs 64 MB Cache I wish to make my PC future proof in terms of hard drives. I need a 1 TB hard drive which Seagate is not offering. If there is a WD with all the qualities of Seagate's Barracuda XT Desktop Hard Drives or even better and which is compatible with the above processor and motherboard kindly inform me. :)


 

saadgamer

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Yes I have read that SATA II or SATA III hard disks make no difference. But when I view WD or Seagate websites they say that soon new hardwares would require SATA III hard drives. So as I wish to make my PC future proof could you kindly guide me when SATA II hard drives would no longer be enough and SATA III hard drives become necessary. I understand that you can not predict the future but given the trend and with your experience do you think that SATA II hard drives would be enough for at least two years?
 


The WD green series have slower 5200rpm spindles, they require less power, and are quieter. The target application is for storage on home theater type systems.
The WD black is the highest performing 7200rpm drive, and the most expensive.
The blue is in between, and is usually the cheapest.

Cache does not matter much. It is appropriate to the drive.
Sata 2/3 is also not much important. It refers to the transfer rate between the cache buffer and the sata interface. It is very quick regardless. Unfortunately, it is the drive mechanical performance that matters most. Sata 3 starts to become important with the newest SSD's
Larger drives like 1tb will have denser platters. The outer rings will transfer data faster because there is more data on them which can be transferred in one rotation.
That is good, because that is where the OS and initial apps will be loaded.

On balance, though, you will not notice much performance difference among brands and models with the same 7200rpm, but the bigger capacity drives will seem to be a bit better.

If you need storage, the WD 1tb drives are good. So is samsung syncpoint 1tb.

If you want performance, be prepared to pony up $100-$200 for a 64-120gb ssd for the OS and apps.
They are 10x faster for anything you put on a ssd.
 

Yargnit

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SATA III will benefit a traditional HDD only when it's reading from it's 32/64MB or however much cache it has. When it's reading from the actual mechanical disk it will make no difference at all, as the read/write speed of a mechanical HDD won't come close to the 300MB ish cap of SATA II.

Even the top mechanical HDD's aren't breaking the 200MB/s barrier when reading off the disk yet. (I think they're peaking around 180 burst, 140-160 sustained)

The main reason to get a SATA III HDD is just because all of the high end drives being produced now, which would be the fastest whether using SATA II or III have it built in.

If you're looking at the WD Black drives, the 1.5 and 2TB capacity drives have a couple extra features built into them that the 1TB drive doesn't have if you take a look at their pages on newegg, just something to keep in mind.
 

leandrodafontoura

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IF you feel confortable with the Seagate brand, you may get 2x Seagate XT momentus 500GB and RAID 0. (hybrid HDDs). This way you will achieve your goal of 1TB. And this hybrid is faster than any HDD

Now, if you prefer to get a HDD solution, I can say its my personal believe that 5 years from now, HDDS will have the same speed as todays, first because of hardware mechanics limitation, and secondly because there is a overall industry shift towards SSD at the moment. Therefore, regarding HDDs, dont worry, you may get one today and it will not be outdated 3 years from now.

Of course, Im refering solely to HDDs, not hybrids. Its very possible hybrids get more popular over the next years, since building systems with TBs of SSD storage is still very expensive.

And regarding SSD solution, who knows what speeds we will get in the future? In addition to Sata III SSDs, there are PCI-express SSDs that have insane speeds, like OCZ Revodrive

WD do not have hybrids yet, but they do make nice HDDs, Ive always used them.

WD Green drives are 5400RPM, and therefore are more silent and run cool.
WD Blue drives offer a IDE interface, in addition to sata, so if you run out of sata ports, you may get a Blue WD
WD Black is a 7200RPM with a lot of cache, twice then Blue's at least, and therefore, is a faster drive.
 
You wish to make your PC future proof, but that's impossible. SATA III is recommended when using a fast SSD, but it isn't required for a hard disk. If you really need speed and you want to take advantage of SATA III transfer rates, then buy an SSD, not a hard disk. You have to decide if SATA II or SATA III hard drives are enough for the next 2 years. No matter what you decide, you need an external SATA II or SATA III external hard disk to bakup your important data.

You should check benchmarks of SATA II and SATA III hard disks. You may be interested in this one: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Seagate-Barracuda-XT-2-TB-Hard-Disk-Drive-Review/866