Suggestions for new hard drive

[drdeutsch]

Okay, some of you may have read about my problem reformating in the operating systems forum. Long story short, I'm getting sick of RAID 0. I have no worries about losing data, because I back up everyweek with an external WD usb drive, but reformatting is a pain in the butt, as well as messing around in the BIOS and not seeing any performance benefits.

Here's what I have:
Asus A8N-SLI Premium
2x74GB WD Raptors in SATA RAID 0

Here is what I want
1x74 GB SATA Raptor for Windows and system files
1x300+ GB SATA hard drive for games, music, other storage.

The new hard drive should be 300-400 GB or more and should be internal. I'm rather partial to WD, as I've always used them and have never had a problem, but am willing to try other brands. I prefer SATA because of the smaller cables and my board can easily handle them. Besides, sticking with SATA would make it easier (wouldn't have to rearrange the cables and power configuration in my box)

So, I'm open for suggestions. I've been eyeing the WD Caviar SE16 400GB with 16MB cache. Pretty nice, but so is the Seagate Barracude 7200.9 500GB, which has 16MB cache and also SATA-300.

Those are two that have caught my eye so far... should I be considering any other hard drives?

Also,

I'd prefer to keep it under 300.00. The Barracude is 335.00, which I'd be willing to spend if people think it's worth it. Also, it comes with a 40.00 rebate right now.
Anyway, I really don't know that much about storage, so I'm looking for some expert opinioins.

Thanks,
drdeutsch

 

[drdeutsch]

I was just reading some reviews on Tom's Hardware. Should I wait until this summer in the hopes that these new Perpindicular Recording drives will come out? The Seagate 7200.9 didn't get very favorable reviews, and the WD did okay, but they both fell short of the Seagate 7200.8.

Any advice is appreciated.

 

[DougLite]

WD4000KD is by far your best choice. Significantly more cost effective than a 500GB drive, great performance as measured by SR (Tom's doesn't measure desktop storage performance, they run server tests on desktop drives ), and solid cool/quiet operation.

 

[drdeutsch]

okay, I've been reading review after review after review and checking prices and one thing has got me confused:

The WD4000KD (SE16) and the WD4000YR (RE16) are the same drives, right? The only difference is the Time Limited Error Recovery?

So... why am I reading some reviews that say the SE16 doesn't have NCQ and the RE16 does and some reviews that say both have NCQ?

so... I would definitely buy the SE16 if it had NCQ.... can someone settle this for me once and for all?

Storagereview.com says that both support ncq:

Though spec sheets fail to mention it, the 400 GB SE16 supports NCQ. It’s the same physical drive as the RE2, a drive targeting the multi-user market where such a feature is a necessity.

Pcstats.com says that the SE16 doesn't have NCQ:

Noticeably missing from the Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD4000KD HDD's specifications is support for Native Command Queuing (NCQ).

Even the WD site doesn't mention NCQ for this drive, but that would explain the StorageReview.com article.

Can someone please clear this up for me?
thanks,
drdeutsch

 

[drdeutsch]

Sent an email to WD to confirm, but their website says that the WD4000KD does NOT support NCQ. Read it here.

All other Western Digital Serial ATA hard drives (WD360GD, WDxxxxJD, WDxxxxKD, and WDxxxxSD) do not support any Queuing method.