7200.12 500GB vs Caviar Blue 500GB

qwertyaas

Gawd
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Jun 25, 2007
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So I'm debating which drive to get. Both can be had for close to $40 so pretty cheap really. Question is, which is better overall.

I have read that the Blue is pretty close to the Blacks performance. Very quiet. Pretty reliable (WD).

The 7200.12 should be quite fast (RA is a bit slower - ~14.5ms if I remember correctly) but average and burst speeds are pretty high. Very quiet as well. I'm just worried about Seagates reliability. I know the whole fiasco was just with 7200.11 but are there a good amount of 7200.12 drives failing? I skimmed through the Newegg reviews (I know, it's usually pointless to do that) and 17-18% claim the drive failed on them, which worries me a bit.

Besides for the drive quality in question, the 7200.12 is pretty much superior to the Blue correct?
 
WD is my brand of choice when it comes to 3.5 HD's. Seagate is ahead on the 2.5's. Both are quality brands. The 7200.12 drives don't have any problems like the 7200.11's did and those problems have been corrected on newer firmware for the 11's anyway. Sounds like you are not that concerned with speed so either will be fine for you.
 
WD is my brand of choice when it comes to 3.5 HD's. Seagate is ahead on the 2.5's. Both are quality brands. The 7200.12 drives don't have any problems like the 7200.11's did and those problems have been corrected on newer firmware for the 11's anyway. Sounds like you are not that concerned with speed so either will be fine for you.

More of a balance of speed/noise/reliability.

7200.12 seems to win the speed portion. Average times and Burst seem pretty good although I know Random Access is a bit slower (compared to the Blacks at least) at 14.5ms. It should still be faster than the Blue, and just as quiet. I guess I'm most worried about the reliability.
 
Don't think you'll have a problem with either WD or Seagates, i've got 15 seagate drives i've been running for 3 years now with out any problems. Seagate is my brand of choice, they messed up big with the 11's i have one of those no issues at all great drive. I had a DOA WD raptor only drive i've ever had die or a problem with other than IBM's older drives. I think it's neweggs crappy shipping that did it, if i ever buy a hard drive for myself i usually never ever get it from newegg. CDW and Dell have great shipping but higher prices if you have a company account you get huge discounts on everything though usually 35% is about average with ours.
 
Don't think you'll have a problem with either WD or Seagates, i've got 15 seagate drives i've been running for 3 years now with out any problems. Seagate is my brand of choice, they messed up big with the 11's i have one of those no issues at all great drive. I had a DOA WD raptor only drive i've ever had die or a problem with other than IBM's older drives. I think it's neweggs crappy shipping that did it, if i ever buy a hard drive for myself i usually never ever get it from newegg. CDW and Dell have great shipping but higher prices if you have a company account you get huge discounts on everything though usually 35% is about average with ours.

True, any drive from any company can fail.

I was concerned with with higher Access times on the 7200.12 though, but still here it's a really fast drive. Too bad I can't use my company's account to buy from Dell/HP! :D
 
More of a balance of speed/noise/reliability.

7200.12 seems to win the speed portion. Average times and Burst seem pretty good although I know Random Access is a bit slower (compared to the Blacks at least) at 14.5ms. It should still be faster than the Blue, and just as quiet. I guess I'm most worried about the reliability.

If you want reliable buy the WD RE3 series. I don't think 7200rpm drives can really be that loud unless you have a really shitty case. I haven't pushed a lot of data off a 7200.12 but I got a sustained transfer rate of 100-110MB/sec when copying 30-40gis from my friends 1.5tb 7200.11 to the raid stripe in my laptop over gigabit ethernet... very impressive speed for the cost on Seagates part.
 
The 7200.12 is a single platter, two head drive, while the Caviar Blue is most likely a two platter, three head drive. The 7200.12 will likely deliver better environmental characteristics than the WD drive the OP suggested, as well as higher linear transfer performance, but Ii'd bet the WD drive has significantly better seek performance and desktop random access performance.
 
The 7200.12 is a single platter, two head drive, while the Caviar Blue is most likely a two platter, three head drive. The 7200.12 will likely deliver better environmental characteristics than the WD drive the OP suggested, as well as higher linear transfer performance, but Ii'd bet the WD drive has significantly better seek performance and desktop random access performance.

This and my recommendation is the 7200.12
 
Just ordered the 7200.12 500GB yesterday! Total was $41 or $45 depending on that Bing cashback :p Too bad I won't be able to set it up until this weekend. Although I am so not in the mood to reformat until W7! I'm thinking I'll just clone my OS drive over for now...

Thanks for the input!
 
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