Best bang for bucks sata6 hard-drive

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
iceclock

iceclock

Illustrious
Dec 4, 2010
13,088
0
42,960
im looking to spend between 80 and 110$, whats the best bang for bucks mechanical sata6 hard-drives, between 1 and 2 tbs that would have top speed? thanks, i usually like western digital black but kind of pricey anything else someone can recommand thanks.

 
Solution
nukemaster
Western Digital Blacks are about as fast as they get(I had the 2TB one, worked well, but was a bit loud), but even they do not pass the limits of SATA 3gigabit/sec. They DO have a SATA 6 interface, but don't expect much extra because of it.

Seagate's new drives(1TB/Platter) are very fast too. I had the 2TB one PEAK at almost 190megabytes/sec.

That said. SSD's are fast more then anything because of the insanely fast access times.

The old HD tune is not accurate on access times over 1tb drives, but this should let you get an idea of the speeds.

WDC Black 2TB
http://imageshack.us/a/img69/6504/wdblack2000.png
New Seagate 2TB - The one with the short warranty :(
http://imageshack.us/a/img829/7661/cheapseagatehdtune.png
Sort by date Sort by votes
nukemaster

nukemaster

Titan
Nov 23, 2004
19,626
6
74,965
Western Digital Blacks are about as fast as they get(I had the 2TB one, worked well, but was a bit loud), but even they do not pass the limits of SATA 3gigabit/sec. They DO have a SATA 6 interface, but don't expect much extra because of it.

Seagate's new drives(1TB/Platter) are very fast too. I had the 2TB one PEAK at almost 190megabytes/sec.

That said. SSD's are fast more then anything because of the insanely fast access times.

The old HD tune is not accurate on access times over 1tb drives, but this should let you get an idea of the speeds.

WDC Black 2TB
http://imageshack.us/a/img69/6504/wdblack2000.png
New Seagate 2TB - The one with the short warranty :(
http://imageshack.us/a/img829/7661/cheapseagatehdtune.png
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
nukemaster

nukemaster

Titan
Nov 23, 2004
19,626
6
74,965
WD Black mostly because of a long warranty(5 years). I have had several, but have had one fail, but no one is perfect and WDC was fast with the RMA.

Be warned the 2TB to me is kind of loud(but I want a quiet system).

With an SSD, I do not think the hard drives overall speed will matter for just storage(I personally use the 5900 rpm Seagate LP for my files and another for my external backup.). And copying lots of files from the SSD to ANY hard drive will choke it.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
nukemaster

nukemaster

Titan
Nov 23, 2004
19,626
6
74,965

The new Seagate's would be my next choice, just make sure you get the latest firmware if you do not like hearing the drive park when idle(if you have older stock).

EDIt, ohh yeah, My LP's are sata 6 too, but again, it does nothing for actual performance they have much slower access times due to the 5900rpm speed.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
nukemaster

nukemaster

Titan
Nov 23, 2004
19,626
6
74,965
Red runs at the same spindle speed as green(but the red's are rated for 24/7[NAS use] operation and have some other features found on the RE drives.). So if you do not like 5400rpm drives, it is not for you.

What are you doing with the drive?

I would be more then glad to bench some drives on SATA 6gigabit and SATA 3 gigabit to get you some numbers to look at.

EDIT, some reading for you.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/red-wd20efrx-wd30efrx-nas,3248.html
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
nukemaster

nukemaster

Titan
Nov 23, 2004
19,626
6
74,965
If you are sending files back and forth those are sequential(larger files will be faster, while lots of slower files will not be as fast. for the most part access times do not play too much effect.

It is not like loading games and stuff.

Again, for storage, I personally use slower drives(spindle speed).

If i NEEDED to be able to chew on fragmented files or jump from location to location lots(Windows/programs/games), then a 7200 rpm drive is your friend.

I do not see how the SATA 6gigabit/sec will actually help tho. I mean the drives buffer is about the only thing that will work that fast and those tend to be from 8 or so megabytes(laptop) and 16-64megabytes(desktop). Once you full this, you are fully limited by the drives actual mechanical limits(under SATA 3gigabit/sec).

The biggest thing for hard drives is that when they introduced PRM, drives could pack TONS more data on the same sized platters.

This is why you can get a 1TB laptop drive that fits into a 9.5mm thickness :).

By placing the data closer together, the drives get MUCH faster sequential read/writes. access times are the only thing that is truly holding hard drives back.

Think of 9-16ms access times vs ssds with 0.02ms(or less) average access times.

I remember my first 40gigabyte drive could JUST push upto about 40-50 or so megabytes a second if I remember right.

in 2007 I had 2 a 2 drive RAID0 that pushed 120mb/sec by 2009 the same number of drives pushed over 200. Now a single drive CRUSHES what was once fast.

Either way, I can run some benchmarks from SATA 6gigabit drives on SATA 3gigabit if you would like to see if it has any difference.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
nukemaster

nukemaster

Titan
Nov 23, 2004
19,626
6
74,965
This is what I got.

I used the SAME cable(Asus supplied SATA 6gigabit cable) and same port(as even the cable makes a difference), just used the hard drives limit jumper to make the changes.

The testing was done under Windows 8 once the system idles(power hit and stayed under 75 watts at the wall). All updates are installed. I wanted to use HDtune pro(demo), but when I set the clock back to make the other benchmark(Anvil) run, HDtune pro said I was expired forever.

SATA 3gigabit
wdcblack3gigabit.png

SATA 6gigabit
wdcblack6gigabit.png


Without benchmarks, I think you would be hard pressed to feel the difference.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom