HDD recommendations?

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HaLo2FrEeEk

HaLo2FrEeEk

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I need a new Harddrive. I have 4 right now, all internal (and I'd like to keep it that way.) I have a 1TB and a 500GB both SATA 3.0GB/s and a 200GB and 40GB IDE. The 500GB one is partitioned into 3 separate drives, 250GB, 175GB, and 40.7GB (the remainder). So in My Computer it shows 6 drives. I use the 40.7GB partition as my boot partition, I never store anything of value on the C: drive so it can stay small; there are 9GB free. I use the 175GB partition as my personal file drive. On this I put music, movies, pictures, misc. stuff, applications...basically everything that I want to keep forever; there are 90GB free. On the 250GB partition I put full movies (backups of ones that I own,) but I'm starting to delete them as I just make hard copies on disks; 144GB free. On the 200GB I put raw game recordings. Some of you might follow the game Halo or visit Halo.Bungie.Org, so you might have seen the news about the Cutscene Library being updated with HD versions of the cutscenes from Halo 1 and Halo 2, well that was me. All the recorded files from the cutscenes from those games go on this drive, as well as another game's cutscenes I'm recording, Halo Wars. These take up a LOT of space, especially the Halo 2 ones (almost 100GB); I have just 22.1GB free on this one. On the 40B drive I keep the rendered files from those cutscenes, after I cut and edit them out. The rendered files are 720p videos, so they're smaller than the full HD I recorded them at; 31.4GB free. And finally the 1TB drive is where I install my games, download stuff to (before I figure out where I want to put it,) make copies of my HD-DVD and BluRay movies (since I don't have a BluRay burner, just the internal drive), and this is also where my recordings from my HD capture card go; on this I have 282GB free (of the available 931GB.)

Ok, so here is my dilema. I have a 500W PSU, but with 4 HDD, 2 internal optical drives (and one external), and a GeForce 8800 GT Superclocked, this beast needs quite a bit of power. I'm not sure I want to upgrade my PSU, or if I'll need to, but in addition to a recommendation, I'll need some advice: SHOULD I ugrade my PSU, or will 500W be enough with what I have? I COULD remove the 40GB drive, where I keep the rendered cutscenes, but I like to keep them all separate so I don't want to put the cutscenes on another drive. They're easier to find this way.

Ok, so now to the meat of the matter. I need a recommendation for a new HDD. I'm thinking I want to stay away from anything bigger than a terrabyte, I don't trust the technology enough yet to put all my potentially precious information in such a dense format, so it'll have to be a 1TB. I've looked at Newegg, but to be 100% honest HDD's are not my speciality. I know how they work, but there are people that know them in and out better than I do. Can anyone recommend a good harddrive that will serve well as a storage device, and one that you might have had luck with yourself? I've looked at these 2:

Western Digital Caviar Black
Western Digital Caviar Green

Those are the 2 highest rated 1TB drives on Newegg, and the 1TB I already own is a WD Caviar Green, so idk.

Anyways, could I get some help?

Thanks in advance!
 
Lots of information to which we must respond.
We have three shops. We use Seagate, Western Digital, Fujitsu, Samsung, and Toshiba Drives. For Desktops, we find the best results from Seagate... Western Digital and Samsung nearly tied for second.
I would buy based on warranty length first, and price second... We Do Not recommend Hitachi, Maxtor, or TriGem.
You will find the partitioned drives, and the large drives 500 GB, 1 TB, and 1.5 TB drives are slow for gaming... Get one 250 GB drive by Seagate or Western Digital for games... and use the 1 TB drives for regular files and storage.
Be sure your source is selling the drives that have the long warranties... some low priced drives are only 90 days or 1 year... get the warranty in writing.
We recommend Directron.com, ZipZoomFly.com, NewEgg.com, Outpost.com, TechDepot.com and very few others...
Read the return privileges closely... as such places as TigerDirect are darned near impossible to return drives... NewEgg and Directron has the most fair return policies.
 
Well, i wouldn't say that their SLOW, their plenty fast enough. Some are just possibly faster.
I would also reconsider the 1TB opinion, but if you don't trust them...

Seagate and WD are both great, Samsung is pretty good too, but i like WD and Seagate better, they seem more specialized.

Ratings do not always mean too much, consider this one (Not that its relevant, you can skip it):
Cheaply made. Loaded with crapware. Even when the crapware is deleted this drive is still more than 1/2 gig short of the advertised capacity (7.47 gigs instead of 8). And this thing is too slow to use for ReadyBoost.
Click to expand...
Cheaply made...it happens to be in the expensive segment, and is probably better than any of its class, but i may have to agree with the 'crapware' statement. Half a gig short?!?!?! thats called FORMATED CAPACITY, and readyBoost is slow AND destroys flash drives.

and of course, the user put tech level highest.


ANYWAY
I recommend the cheaper Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000333AS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM despite the 50% negative reviews, I honestly don't remember a time when Seagate drivers ever failed like the reviews say, aside from their recent firmware failure, which i think is fixed now. If you don't like it, just go with the Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM, i think its the same one you posted.
 
We agree. We install 7 to 10 drives a day... over half of them Seagate... We prefer to have Seagates in machines on which we worked, because a come-back costs us money, staff time, and shop disorganization.. Seagates fail sometimes, but they fail less often than any other drive...
For laptop drives, we rate Seagate, Toshiba, and Fujitsu at the top. All three of those drives have the lowest rate of failures. Western Digital are very good, as are the latest Samsung.
But we do NOT want a Hitachi laptop drive. Ever. Based on failure rates.
 
The 250 GB is faster than the 320 which is faster than the 500 which is faster than the 1 TB which is faster than the 1.5 TB...
The 250 is faster than the 80, 100, 120, and 160...
There is a noticeable difference, methinks.
 
I wouldn't ever consider Hitachi.

I've always loved WD drives, 2 of mine are WD (the 200 and the 1TB.) The other 2 are Samsung (500) and I think Maxtor (40). The Maxtor was free so no need to comment on that.

As for speed...it's really irrelevant. Yeah, I play games off it, but I'm more a console gamer anyways, so having blazing fast transfer speed from the HDD isn't really a huge issue.

I didn't say I didn't want a 1TB, I don't want a 2TB yet, since they are fairly new and as with all new technology it hasn't really been tested thoroughly in a real-world environment. I might change my mind, but cost is also an issue, they're $400, as opposed to the 1TB being $109.

As for my other question, about the power? Will 500W, under the load I already have, be enough to power another drive?

Thanks for the recommendations, btw. I do have another question though, what is the main difference between the WD Caviar Green and the Caviar Black? They look identical except the green is $20 less.

Also, what do you think of this PSU?
 
Power is not usually an issue. There is plenty of power for the hard drive, as even the hogs don't use much. It depends on the video graphics card, then the quality of the power supply.

The Tagan is overkill at a price that is $50 too much, but it will work well.
 
The one I have now is an Antec Earthwatts. I planned on getting a more powerful one anyways because I'm getting a new Mobo soon, and when that happens eventually I'll get a new CPU and finally 2 new GFX cards.
 
Antec Earthwatts is a good power supply.
Unfortunately, we have seen the rate of failures of Antec power supplies going up over the past couple of years... sudden, dramatic fails. So we no longer recommend them. We have our best luck with Seasonic, Sparkle, PCPower and Cooling, and most of FSP Group. But Corsair and OCZ (which often have power supplies made by. or designed by, PC Power and Cooling) are good, but high priced, choices.
 
I'll keep that in mind.

Now back to HDD's, any recommendations of specific units? Knowing brands is great and all, but Ireally only look on Newegg, and my days are taken up looking for a job (this time of years is NOT the time to be doing something like that)
 
PATA/EIDE or SATA?
Seagate 250 GB is the best PATA
Western Digital 10,000 rpm is the best gamer
Western Digital or Seagate 750 GB are the best SATA
Samsung is coming on strong.
For laptops,
Fujitsu, Toshiba, Seagate, or Western Digital... 100 GB to 120 GB. No history on the larger laptop drives from which to judge.
 
Except there are many reports that one made in China is more reliable than the one made in their Korean factory, or is it the other way around. The Seagate 1.5 TB made in one of those two countries is having early failures... of less than 30 days, while the other is just fine... and I cannot remember which is which.
And it is definitely noticelably slower than the 250 GB drive.
 
But raybay, like I said speed isn't an issue because this will most likely primarily be a storage drive only.
 
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