Picking a Hard Drive

[AddictedGamer93]

Hey guys, im looking to upgrade my hard drive, and quite frankly i just dont know what to pick. I want at least a 500GB drive, and it needs to be as fast as possible. Price range is anywhere from $80 to $120.

 

 

I currently have this picked out:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822136544

 

any help will be greatly appreciated

[El_Capitan]

Check out the OCC marketplace. I placed a deal for 1TB Spinpoint F3's you can get at MWave for $79.99. It's much faster than the Caviar Black.

[AddictedGamer93]

how? the caviar has twice the cache? isn't that important?

[El_Capitan]

Take a look at benchmarks. I own both, here are the differences using HD Tach Quick benches (8mb zones):

 

 

 

Also, the Caviar Black is louder and has trouble in RAID configurations, especially in RAID 0. What you will get though, is about 2ms faster access times.

[AddictedGamer93]

ill go with the samsung then

 

lol, how much faster is it than my current drive?

[El_Capitan]

Your current hard drive averages around 68 - 76 MB/sec read. Download HD Tach, it's free. You should test it out for yourself.

[IVIYTH0S]

I'm partial to my dad's 500GB 7200.122 seagate, it's a single platter of 500GB and it seems more peppy than my raptor at times.

Take a look at this thread for some other ideas too: lots of good benchies here

http://forums.overclockersclub.com/index.p...howtopic=171480

[El_Capitan]

Yeah, I have a 500GB Seagate Barracuda, too. It averages around 105 - 115 MB/sec (it's at my client's office, I can get a snapshot of the HD Tune later). It's on sale at Newegg for $54.99 with a $6 off promo special with free shipping. It's a good deal, but not as good as the 1TB Spinpoint F3.

[OCFreak]

Caviar Black all the way. Best warranty in the business, if you ever need it. I know that IVIY and I don't agree here, he has had back luck in the past with WD from my understand, but I have had terrible luck with Seagate, so it's a toss up!

 

I have had 4 Caviar Black drives, and not once had any issue with them. I love WD and they stand behind their products.

[Chadwick0]

I have two WD blacks, ive never had isssues with WD but my laptop seagate has gotten louder than it once was, im afraid ive ran the poor guy into the dirt with windows vista and all the formattng and partitioning i've done with it, im just awaiting its final day. Samsung does make good products though, My samsung external had been through alot, and it took quite a few bumps before it started giving me troubles not too long ago, i got it when 120GB was next highest available to 160. so maybe like 5 years? i cant put a time frame on it. i dont rely on it for data anymore but if i do use it and it freezes i just tap the top not too light, not too hard, and you know how hitting things always fixes it.