Need Advice On Selecting The Right HDD Solution

[UMtech84]

As the title says, i'd like some advice on what HDDs to use for a storage server that I will make out of some spare parts when i upgrade my pc in the coming weeks. I've been out of the HDD market for awhile, the largest thing I have is a 250GB drive I'd like a 3-drive raid 5 array which should be enough for now. I've been looking around and have seen that there seems to be a lot of problems with seagate barracudas, so i'd like to steer clear from those. From what i've seen so far, I'm liking some of the Samsung Spinpoint series drives and some of the WD Caviar Green and Black series drives. I'm looking for drives that are at least 1TB, but preferably 1.5TB.




Drives that have caught my eye so far


Western Digital Caviar Green WD15EARS 1.5TB 64MB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136513


Western Digital AV-GP WD15EVDS 1.5TB 32MB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136495


SAMSUNG EcoGreen F2 HD154UI 1.5TB 32MB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152175


Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EARS 1TB 5400 RPM 64MB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136490


Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284


SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185



Like I said before, the main purpose of these drives is going to be file storage, backup, and maybe some video streaming. Out of the listed drives, what do you guys recommend? The 1.5TB WD Caviar Green drives can be had for $100 including FS, while the 1TB WD Caviar Black drives can be had for the same amount. What do you guys recommend, more storage or better performance? And how good/bad is the performance of these WD Green drives? I'm leaning more on the side of more storage, but i'm open to suggestions. Thanks for any and all help

 

[ryero]

on the same boat as you.

If you're only using it for storage and have an other drive running your OS/Games....definitely storage > performance.

I heard good reviews about the WD WD15EADS 1.5 32MB, not sure about the WD15EARS 64MB.

I have a samsung 7200rpm 500gb right now and it's running really quiet.
For me, I'm looking for something extremely quiet...yet affordable, so SSD is out of the question

 

[pojut]

I heard good reviews about the WD WD15EADS 1.5 32MB

I have the WD15EADS green drive, and it is indeed awesome...but I've heard its life expectancy when used in a RAID is exceptionally low. Might want to consider one of the Black WD drives if you are going to be doing a RAID.

 

[UMtech84]

Yea, these drives are going to be strictly for storage. I've got an 80gb g2 intel ssd coming in the mail Isn't the WD15EARS 1.5TB drive just an upgraded version of the
WD15EADS 1.5TB drive? The WD15EARS has a 64MB cache while the WD15EADS has a 32MB cache.

 

[ryero]

If you're running Windows XP or some Linux distro....you need to do something different with the WD15EARS.

http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/WDC-WD15EARS-00Z5B1-awful-performance/td-p/5242

Apparently it's the OS's fault...not the drive. If you scroll down the solution is there.

It works fine with Windows 7 though.