HDD, what to buy, when to buy?

[Meanl3r]

Hi,
I just built my first pc and I reused the 2.5" Western Digital Scorpion Blue(5400rmp) from my recently deceased laptop. I got a Corsair Force 3 60GB SSD to use as a boot drive. But now I am thinking that I would like to get a new internal HDD around 1TB. I have been reading and it seems to be agreed that HDD's are overpriced right now. I just got into building a month ago, so my knowledge of price trends is very limited.
Is this not a good time to buy? I honestly could hold off for a while. But I would like to do it.
Is something like a WD Caviar Black worth the cost for performance? I know I want to go with one of the major manufacturers. Does rpm trump cache, and is it worth getting one with 6 gb/s sata connection over 3gb/s?

 

[nhasian]

SSD prices are great, HDD prices are still higher than they were before the thailand flood... it may not be till Q4 before prices return to normal.

 

[nukemaster]

The spindle speed(rpm) will help with access times(very good for a boot drive or even program/game drive.).

That said, if you are just storing file on the drive, you do not generally need fast access times.

My main drive WD Black 2TB(picked up before the floods so it was a great price) I also had a 64gig SSD for cache, but not that is for windows 8 and my files sit on a Seagate LP(5900 rpm) drive. I also tossed in a 128gig M4 for some games and other things that need speed.

This has caused me no issues as the LP still has very good throughput and fragmentation does not get bad on a drive that just stores my personal files.

As for SATA6, I have yet to see a HDD pass the SATA3 spec, but they all come with SATA6 now anyway. Seagate's newer drive(the on they say saves power without loosing performance) has sequential read/writes of about 160megabytes/sec.

 

[Meanl3r]

So I would be best to wait, or possibly find one on sale? I guess WD Black is a little overkill for performance for me, plus I hear they are loud. I will probably look for a WD Blue around 1TB to go on sale for a good price. Other than WD, who are some other trusted manufacturers? Samsung, Seagate?

 

[nukemaster]

Keep an eye on the sales, you may get a better deal.

Seagates newer drives. seem to work well, but have a rather loud head parking noise when the drive is not use for a bit(idle system time) then used again.

I have had some 1TB 7200.12's and they seemed to be ok and very quiet.

You are right about the Black 2TB being louder then some others, but not TOO bad.

I also have a WD blue 1TB. it works ok, not the fastest, but gets the job done(I found the 7200.12 to be faster, but did not do much benchmarking).

 

[Meanl3r]

Best answer selected by Meanl3r.