Which of these drives would you recommend?

[HaLo2FrEeEk]

I'm looking to add a few more harddrives to my system. I already have 4, but I might take 2 of those out and put their contents on a partition or something. Who knows. Anyway, I was looking at a few harddrives on Newegg, and always having been partial to Western Digital, they were the first once I looked at. This one immediately caught my eye, for obvious reasons:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136344

2TB WD Caviar Green. Now, before I hear you say it, I won't be using these harddrives as my installation drive. I MIGHT install games to it, maybe, but probably not. These will be used for storage, for the most part. My main concern here is that I'm reading a lot of bad reviews (along with a lot of good ones) about these 2TB drives and I'd probably do better to hold off on those for a while until they stabilize.

I also came across this one though:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284

1TB WD Caviar Black. Tons of great reviews about this drive and at only a little more than half the price of the 2TB, it might be worth it.

And finally I'm thinking I might replace my installation drive (which is actually a partition of a 500Gig Samsung drive) with a VelociRaptor. I don't need anything large or whatever for my installation drive, just fast:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136296

150GB, 10,000RPM. This should be perfect. Along with the fact that it's the 5x winner of the customer choice for internal harddrives, it sounds pretty solid.

So the main thing I need is opinions, which of those 2 large capacity drives hould I get and is it worth the money to get the Raptor drive for increased performance?

ALSO, I need a little help with something else. I have a 500W Antex Earthwatts PSU. It's held perfectly solid since I've had it, never an issue with it. I'm wondering what adding more harddrives will do to it though. Like I said I'll probably remove the 2 smaller harddrives I have (a WD 200GB IDE, and a Maxtor 40GB IDE) and move their contents to either a folder or a partition of another drive. Then I plan on replacing the 40.7GB partition of the 500GB Samsung SATA drive, which is my installation (C partition, with the 150GB VelociRaptor, then I want to add either 1 or 2 of those 1TB Caviar Black drives, for a total of either 4 or 5 harddrives. MY question is can a 500W PSU handle 5 harddrives, a PCI-E16x video card, 2 (internal) optical drives, an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ CPU, and 5 case fans...or will I probably have to upgrade before long?

I'm sure if I just remove those 2 drives and add the velociraptor and the caviar in there it won't make any difference at all, since I'm still at 4 harddrives, but I still wanna know.

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS 2TB 5900 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive
This is a black friday sale, so better hurry, it is also 5900 RPM, but you say it is for storage.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Full 7200 RPM, and 1.5tb.

About the Velociraptor, while it is a decent harddrive, I think WD mistimed its entry, coming out just a bit before SSD's started going mainstream, and SSD destroy any raptor. So personally, I would recommend buying either a OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30G 2.5" 30GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail $130, OCZ Agility Series OCZSSD2-1AGT60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail $230, OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail $240, whatever you have the money for. Of course, there is much less storage space, so alternatively you can save up your money and buy when SSDs become even faster and cheaper.

can a 500W PSU handle 5 harddrives, a PCI-E16x video card, 2 (internal) optical drives, an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ CPU, and 5 case fans

yes

I'm sure if I just remove those 2 drives and add the velociraptor and the caviar in there it won't make any difference at all, since I'm still at 4 harddrives, but I still wanna know.

You might as well keep your drives in, the powersupply is fine. Also the raptor takes a bit more power than a normal drive, however, the WD 2tb green takes less power, but I don't think it is quite enough to offset the raptor.

 

[HaLo2FrEeEk]

I'm not looking for the best of the best in harddrives, I just want something that rates faster than 5.9 in Windows 7 performance index. Right now my harddrive is my lowest score at 5.9 followed by my CPU at 6.1, and also I don't have nearly enough money for a SSD.

The cost / capacity ratio just isn't good enough for me to consider an SSD, even if the performance factor IS there. Right now my C: drive is 40.7 GB and with Windows 7 installed and the programs that I use I'm down to about 9 gigs of free space. That's not good enough, so I need something bigger, but not TOO big, after all I don't store anything on my C: drive.

The 60GB SSD would be a good option, if I wanted to pay $100 more for half the storage of the Raptor drive I linked to...which I don't.

And I'm also not going to be able to buy right now or any time soon, really, I'm just looking. So between the 2 large capacity drives I posted in the first post, could I please stick with those and get opinions on which I should look at more closely?

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

And I'm also not going to be able to buy right now or any time soon, really, I'm just looking. So between the 2 large capacity drives I posted in the first post, could I please stick with those and get opinions on which I should look at more closely?

For me, both links go to the same page, a $200 2TB WD, thats expensive.

Right now with the black friday deal in place, the 2TB I linked to costs $140, which is just $10 shy of saving enough money over what you posted to pay for the Agility 60gb.
But since your not buying anytime soon, just wait, SSD and hdd prices will drop.

Windows 7 performance index

Thats kind of a silly test, doesn't really mean anything.

 

[HaLo2FrEeEk]

My mistake on the link, this is the HDD is I was meaning to link to:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284

$110 1TB Caviar Black.

And be that as it may, about the performance index, I don't like seeing my score so low (5.9/7.9), and I obviously need more space. I've been planning on upgrading my system for a while and though I still don't have the money, moving the a faster boot drive was one of my planned upgrades.

I do need more space though, like I said. I have a total of 1619.9GB (formatted capacities) and I've only got 335.72GB left...and that's going away fast.

 

[EXCellR8]

If you're downloading movies or other large media a large external drive would probably be better... I wouldn't worry too much about that performance index thing, as it bases your overall score on the oldest hardware anyways. i was also told that low scores during that scan is a bug with certain hardware. don't base your computer's performance on some lousy number that windows generates...

 

[hellokitty[hk]]

Still, the 2TB I linked to costs $140 at the moment, best deal ever. Not very good reviews though, as to why I don't know, Seagate is good...

 

[EXCellR8]

^the reviews for the 2TB WD20EADS drive are decent... there's always going to be a handful of people that have problems or expect too much, but for $140 it's worth taking the risk if you ask me. i just wanted to point out that external solutions are best for storing media that you don't necessarily need to keep inside your computer. of course i don't know how he goes through space so fast but movies are always better stored on an external.

 

[HaLo2FrEeEk]

It's not movies, I just do a lot of projects ranging from small things like C# programming to image editing to HD video editing and special effects and 3D modeling and animation. Those kind of things take up a lot of space, expecially the HD video one. 1 minute of 720p video captured using an HD capture card from an Xbox 360 console is about 100MB in it's original format. Converted to WMV or another format it's actually a little more (dunno why). I always keep my source footage, so I have my original recordings, my converted versions, and then the multiple project files, plus the final render. It adds up quick.

Here's a good example, I have 14 minutes of 720p footage saved right now for a montage project, in it's original format it takes up 1.33GB.

Add to that the fact that I'm sort of a computer pack rat, I don't delete anything because as soon as I do I know I'll need it again.

 

[EXCellR8]

In that case I would give the 2TB WD20EADS a shot, because it's better to not have project footage/files on an external and work from that. i know the HD video needs a lot of room, I was doing 1080p editing in class and i couldn't bring any of the raw stuff home because i simply didn't have the space.

 

[HaLo2FrEeEk]

The reason I wanted to hold off on the 2TB was because new technology like that always has issues. I've read a lot more negative reviews about the 2TB Caviar Green than I have about the 1TB Caviar Black (or Green), and I can more easily afford $110 than $200. And like I said, I'm not ready to buy yet, I don't have the money to even think about it at this exact point, but I'm preparing for when I do.