WD6401AALS the best sub-$100 HDD?

S

Skillz'n Magic

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 6, 2008
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It's finally time for me to upgrade from my 34.6GB Raptor! Obviously I've been out of the storage scene for a while.

I want to spend under $100 on a new drive. I'm looking for best performance and so far I've seen that the Caviar Black drives are pretty impressive. I see people saying that the WD6401AALS drives are great because they use only two platters. I also see on Newegg that I can get the 750 version for only $5 more, but if performance is going to take a hit I'll settle for the 640GB drive (It's only 20 times what I have now lol).

Am I barking up the wrong tree or is the WD6401AALS the best bang for my buck? I see the terabyte model is $20 more, but if it doesn't increase performance I'd rather have the 640.
 
You will not see any difference in real world applications between any of the Blacks but you may notice very slight differences in benchmarking. Any of the Black models will out perform your old Raptor. It just comes down to what size suits your needs.
 
The WD6400AAKS uses two platters as well. Amazon has 'em for $70 right now. The general consensus is that the Black's performance isn't that significant over the Blue. If you need a longer warranty, go for the Black. Otherwise the Blue will be just fine. I'm using one right now with another on the way. Gonna have one for my OS and the other is storage.
 
I think the 640 black is a pretty killer deal. Its got longer warranty which in itself warrants the slightly higher costs of $10-$15. I picked up one last week off buy.com seller one ebay with the cashback thing. Total came to like $63 shipped. Best thing ive bought all year.
 
the 1TB black is $110 at newegg with free shipping.

If you live outside CA to avoid tax, I think that might be worthwhile. It IS louder than the 640GB AAKS I have (according to some tests I've seen).

I think it's worthwhile to have more storage per drive, personally. If I were to purchase drives again now I'd get 2x 1TB rather than my 2x640GB.
 
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