Best hard drive for my buck

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clickit

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I am in the process of putting together a new system that currently contains the following:

  • Antec 300 case
  • Gigabyte S - Series Motherboard (GA-73VM-S2)
  • 4GB Ram (Kingston)
  • Intel Core 2 Duo processor E8400 (3.0GHz)
  • Antec PSU 500 Watts

I need a hard drive but I didn't want to get just any hard drive. I am looking to put in a 500GB or 1.0TB hard drive. Does anyone have a brand that they think is better than the others?
 
I Hate to Say This... But ATM, I'd go for WD.......

During the past few months Seagate had a bad run of their high capacity HDDs, from about 500GB and up. I always buy,like, and trust the Seagates. I bought a 640GB a couple of months ago. I checked Seagate's website, (by the drives SN#), I was told that this drive was not affected. So, I suppose we're good to go on that one. However, many models were affected in both their Barracuda 7200.11 and also their "ES" (enterprise) lines.

But, it's hard to know how many drives are affected, or how many of the affected drives have already been sold. The fix is a firmware update, but Seagate screwed up the original version, and killed another bunch of (possibly) good drives in the process. Also,to apply the patch to an unaffected drive results in the drive's demise. (I think)

So, for the time being, If I were going to buy a high capacity HDD, I'd spring for a Western Digital, one of the "Caviar Black" series.

The "Caviar Green", variable speed, "energy saving" models, IMHO, sound like nonsense. HDDs only draw about 15 watts or so in the first place. They're the cheaper line anyway.

So, while I still have, use, and love, all my smaller Seagate drives, I think I'd wait a few months to see what happens with the big ones. The Seagate 250GB Barracuda 7200.10 models are fast, quiet and reliable, but alas, it's not what you're looking for.

It probably just superstition, but I don't really trust anything that spins from Hitachi or Toshiba/Samsung. (TSST)
 
IMO, the WD6400AAKS (WD Caviar Blue 640GB) is the best deal you can get right now.

The WD1001FALS (WD Caviar Black 1TB) is pricey, but has slightly better performance compared to the aforementioned drive, and is more reliable due to the extra hardware they put in it to prevent the HDD from crashing. The warranty period on the latter is larger too (5 years, vs 3 years for the other drive).
 
Go for Two.....

Did I mention that I wouldn't mount the OS on such a large drive anyway?

The Seagate 250GB I mentioned before is the smallest in their line, (@ Newegg), that comes with free shipping. Gosh, I'm a sucker for free shipping.

Anyway, I try to never own a computer with a single HDD.

OS, software, and "loseable" files on "C:/, with my photos, video, and other passive files on the volume drive. (Across TWO computers, NOT networked).
It's like RAID 1, but for the truly paranoid.
 
I think Rage meant the Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache. WD6400AAKS is a IDE drive not sata. I have both the 640 WD6401AALS and the 1TB WD1001FALS and they are both super fast. I would say the 640 might be slightly faster. The 640 is really the best deal. Especially put two of them in raid 0 and you will be loving the speed! I would never go anything but WD. They have the best reliability. I have my OS on my two 1TB raids now and wow insane. I had them on the 640's raided before and there super fast and quiet.
 
we just had a good 2-hard-drive discussion:

https://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-123923-Erasing-my-HDD.html

check out that discussion regarding two hard drives versus one.

I agree: have two.

Have the first be really small. like a 80gb sata that gets good reviews at egghead.

then, put in your tyranassuarbyte hard drive.

and put a fan on those two - i find that crossing the line from one to two hard drives is where you need to go ahead and do the hard drive fan thing.
 
Why go small

I don't understand why people think you need a small drive for your OS? Once a hard drive fills up over 50% you start to lose speed. Unless they are thinking single platetr but even then the differences with todays modern hard drives would be so small. I have 4 hard drives in my computer. I have two 1TB raided and two 640GB raided. My OS is on the 2TB raid. I am using about 300GB and she runs amazingly fast. So I wouldn't go small unless you get one of the new SolidStateDisks(SSD) as your main os drive. That will be my next type of drive for my mainOSdrive. You can get the OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30G 2.5" 30GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk for around $119 right now.
 
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