Choosing old fashioned magnetic HDD

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carlmart

Gawd
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Sep 17, 2006
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For me and for my country SSD storage is still too expensive. So I will have to rely on magnetic HDDs for now.

I need a new HDD for my C drive and I wonder what your recommendations would be for a fast, reliable unit, and what should the maximum size to go for on such a search.

Sorry for my old fashioned question. ;)
 
If you want a fast drive, go for a WD Black Series Drive. These drives are pretty fast. Size depends on how much storage you need. SSD's are coming down in price by the day now. I personally am holding out for another SSD to compliment my 120GB Intel 320 Series until the price is below $0.50/gb.

Hope this helps.

Bill
 
If you want a fast drive, go for a WD Black Series Drive. These drives are pretty fast.
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I would go for one on the 1TB / platter hitachis (if they are still available) for speed over the 500GB / platter black drives.
 
Probably a tricky question: is it worth it buying a laptop HDD?

I have had very good results with laptop DVD, on an external case. It proved much more resilient than already two internal DVD on same PC. Maybe that's also the case with laptop HDDs.
 
Probably a tricky question: is it worth it buying a laptop HDD?
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They are more expensive per gigabyte, significantly slower and will have a smaller maximum size.

As for reliability laptop drives can take more vibrations and movement then a desktop drive but I would expect them to not be significantly more reliable than a desktop drive meaning you can still expect > 1% of your drives to die annually.
 
drescherjm said:
They are more expensive per gigabyte, significantly slower and will have a smaller maximum size.

As for reliability laptop drives can take more vibrations and movement then a desktop drive but I would expect them to not be significantly more reliable than a desktop drive meaning you can still expect > 1% of your drives to die annually.
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Laptop drive failures are far higher than desktop drives. Part of it is the environment of course.
 
OK. I think I will pick one of the desktop 1Tb types.

What I can get here are the Seagate ST31000524AS and the WD WD1002FAEX. Both have quite a good rate from Newegg feedback, so the odds look good.

But I have had more luck with Seagate than with WD, and the price over here for the Seagate is almost half the WD's.

Both brands fans are usually quite emotional, so if anyone is using any of those models and is pleased, do let me know.
 
grambo said:
Consumer desktop drives yes, but what about 15k enterprise drives? Downside is they sound like a fighter jet ramping up off a carrier :). Although I'm guessing the 2.5" are a bit quieter.

OP: WD Black is probably your best bet, unless you can find the Hitatchi 7K series.
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15K RPM drives are far more expensive than any SSD, require far more electricity, require active cooling, and as you said, are very noisy.
For a single-user environment that doesn't require the uptime, 15K drives just aren't worth it.

The OP will definitely want to stick with desktop-class or portable-class HDDs.
+1 to the 1TB Seagate ST31000524AS, but for the same price, a 500GB Seagate Constellation ES nearline-class drive can be had. (quantity vs quality)
 
Red Falcon said:
+1 to the 1TB Seagate ST31000524AS, but for the same price, a 500GB Seagate Constellation ES nearline-class drive can be had. (quantity vs quality)
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This quest started because I need the HDD to be at least 1Tb, to join data from an IDE 500Gb and a SATA 500Gb.

Thanks.
 
if your looking for a top end magnetic consumer drive, the WD 'VelociRaptor' is probably the best. they are backed by a 5 year warranty. i've owned (all still work error free) 3 going back to the original 36GB model. the 1TB version might be a bit pricey tho.

i also really like the hitachi drives tho the brand may be somewhat diluted now that WD bought them out.
 
carlmart said:
This quest started because I need the HDD to be at least 1Tb, to join data from an IDE 500Gb and a SATA 500Gb.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Then go for the Seagate Barracuda, the WD Black drives have quite a high failure rate.
 
Thanks for the suggestions, folks.

Seagate has better support and service over here, and the price was much better.

Bought one and I'm already cloning my IDE onto it.

I would really like to try a WD Black some time in the future.
 
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