HDD For New Build

[rancineb]

Looking for some advice on some hard drives to get for a new build I'm planning. My current build has a couple WD HDD (Raptor and Caviar Blue). Is Western Digital still a high quality brand? Should I look at other brands like Seagate?

I'm looking for a fast HDD for my OS and applications and a larger HDD for file storage. The WD Black seem to be the best, but the smallest is only 500GB which isn't necessary for OS/App, but didn't think the Green or Blue would be good. Here's what I was eyeing:

Western Digital Caviar Black WD5002AALX 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136795

Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533


I might actually do an SSD for my OS/App drive, but need to do some research with it. One thing that I don't understand is why the 500GB is more then the 1TB. Shouldn't it be less? It is smaller size and cache.

 

[tokencode]

SSDs are a totally different technology and generally are significantly faster than traditional HDDs. With SSDs you're paying for performance, not space. Cache is less important with SSDs since the drive itself is much faster and is able to read multiple parts simultaneously where as the HDD has to wait for a specific sector to pass by the head. I would go with the largest SSD you can afford (Crucial m4's are really nice, I love mine, although there are a lot of good options out there) and go with a larger, cheaper HDD for bulk storage. Image your SSD to HDD reglarly as a backup and keep important stuff on the SSD so it resides in 2 places.

 

[scout_03]

specs for caviar black are nearly the same except that the 500 gb use more power to work

 

[rancineb]

After looking at prices, I think I'm definitely going to go with a SSD for my OS/App drive. 128 aren't too bad in price and from the looks, does wonders for performance.

As for my storage drive, should I look at possibly the WD Caviar Green? I know the Black has the highest performance, but if it's just storage, maybe not needed. I do plan on doing some coding and video editing so I would be read/writing often so the better performance with the Black might be good.

 

[scout_03]

could look at this for ssd http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/hybrid-solutions.html ,the black cary a 5 years warranty compare to 2 for the green

 

[tokencode]

I was actually considering the Revodrive myself, I decided against it for 2 reasons: special drivers are required and it would take up a PCIe slot on my MB. The current generation of SATA3 SSDs perform more than sufficiently for even heavy gaming/desktop uses. Do you video editing on the SSD and copy the final product back to your HDD when done, this will be much faster and no need to pay for performance of the HDD then.

 

[rancineb]

I have the same opinion about taking up the PCIe slot. I think I'm going to get a WD Black 1TB for data and a 128GB SSD for os/app.

 

[aqe040466]

The WD caviar black is still the best.

 

[rancineb]

Best answer selected by rancineb.