New hdd purchase help

[jhyukkang]

hello, im buying a new hdd for back up. overall, i had good experience with all brands. I have used 3WD, 2 hitachi, 2 seagate, 1 samsung.
so i dont know which would be best of the best.
in my main rig, i have cav black 7501aals. 320gb aaks. I wanted to get another black 7502aaex to match other drives i have in the case.
but i came across samsung 103sj for 49$ shipped on newegg.
and 7502aaex is about 59$ shipped. i prefer WD but anything that would be very reliable is good.
im looking at reviews on newegg from the past 6 months. and samsung has better score overall.
WD used to be very good on reliability. but newer sata3 drives dont seem that good according to reviews such as 1TB blue...

which one would you recommend?
1TB sata2 samsung for 50$
750GB sata3 WD for 60$

and sata2 or 3 doesnt really matter to me

 

[tecmo34]

My recommendation is the Samsung!! I use them for any current build I work on for myself or others (unless specified differently ). They are very quick mechanical drives at a great value.

I won't worry about going with a SATA 3 mechanical drive, as they don't even saturate the bandwidth of SATA 2 (pretty much the same speed as SATA 2). The only reason to purchase a SATA 3 drive, is if you are going with a SSD on a SATA 3 motherboard.