Western Digital 640GB or Samsung F1 750GB?

J

JadeMonkeyStang

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 7, 2001
Messages
497
Hey all,

I need a hard drive to complete my new build and the WD WD6400AAKS is looking like the drive of choice as I'd like something fast and quiet, lower power requirements are always good as well. I bought most of my other components from Newegg but they are out of stock on the WD6400AAKS. Any reccomendations on another place to buy one?

I have also been thinking about getting the Samsung F1 750GB. I'd prefer the 1GB but it is a little more than I would like to spend right now. Has it been determined yet what the actual platter size is on the 750? I have seen the benchmarks showing them being a good bit slower than the 1GB.

Which would you pick? Will it really even make a difference?

Thanks in advance.

-Jade
 
I will be buying Samsung F1 640GB tomorrow so i hope it will be ok. Was checking some e-shops and they are in stock only in some European countries including mine:) It's not even listed on newegg...this has only 2 platters ( 750 GB version has 3) so it should be even better...
 
Nice Papagaj, you'll have to let us know what you think of it. Who knows when it will actually get here to the US. What country are you in?

-Jade
 
I decided to just buy the Samsung F1 750GB from ZipZoomFly. This is my first build in more than 5 years and I have no patience to wait for the WD 640GB or buy it from an unknown seller. I'm sure it'll be a great drive.

-Jade
 
i'd go for wd 640gb. seagates are definitely slower and louder. Only thing going for them is the 5 year warranty.
i've owned 17 WD drives, all is well with them.
 
I've had both the F1 750GB and the WD 640GB. The WD 640GB drive has two 320GB platters, the F1 750GB (unlike the 1TB version) has three 250GB platters. I benchmarked the drives (I already posted the HD Tune screenshots in half a dozen similar threads, so I don't want to annoy anyone be reposting again) and the WD 640AAKS was clearly much faster, it was even slightly faster than my F1 1TB drive which has three 334GB platters in it.

Based on performance alone I was very happy with the WD drive. Also my motherboard (Abit IP35 Pro) has some quirky behavior with the Samsung drives when all 6 SATA ports are in use. My Seagate and WD drives don't have this problem. But with the Samsung drives, it would have problems formatting drives or running chkdsk /r. Use only 5 SATA devices and it's fine.
 
great to see them back in stock. tempting to add a 4th and final drive to my RAID5
 
The WD is faster than the Samsung unless you go with the 1TB, then the Samsung wins, for a lot more money.
 
You bet they are. I play games such as The Orange Box.. CoH ..WIC..WoW.. I can tell you this. I noticed an increase in map loads(TF2) when I started playing games with these 3 in RAID 5 using the 640gb WD.

My apps load faster. I have seen a nice increase over the single 400Gb Seagate I was using which was noisy also. These new WD's are nice and quieter.
 
If the drive is not a boot drive then go for the highest GB. More than 320GB on an OS boot drive is pointless anyway, you should always have a seperate large drive for data storage seperate to the boot drive. And when used for data storage speed is less an issue than reliability.
 
Does it matter that the WD 640GB only has 16MB cache and not 32MB?

Also, does the WD 640GB have perpendicular recording?

I was looking to get three WD 640GB (16MB Cache) or four Seagate 500GB 7200.11 (32MB Cache)

Not sure what would be the fastest, but cost is the same.
 
JadeMonkeyStang said:
I have also been thinking about getting the Samsung F1 750GB. I'd prefer the 1TB but it is a little more than I would like to spend right now. Has it been determined yet what the actual platter size is on the 750?
Click to expand...
The 750GB drive I have has three platters.

Papagaj said:
I will be buying Samsung F1 640GB tomorrow so i hope it will be ok. Was checking some e-shops and they are in stock only in some European countries including mine:) It's not even listed on newegg...this has only 2 platters ( 750 GB version has 3) so it should be even better...
Click to expand...
I wish the 640GB version was out when I bought my 750GB drive.

Deliximus said:
i'd go for wd 640gb. seagates are definitely slower and louder. Only thing going for them is the 5 year warranty.
i've owned 17 WD drives, all is well with them.
Click to expand...
And I have owned drives from every manufacturer. Aside from Quantum, I have had at least one failure from each. 17 drives is too small of a sample size to draw any reliability conclusions, unless you mean you have 17 drives from the same model?

Seraphic said:
Does it matter that the WD 640GB only has 16MB cache and not 32MB?
Click to expand...
most likely it won't matter much
Seraphic said:
Also, does the WD 640GB have perpendicular recording?
Click to expand...
and why would that matter? There's nothing magic about perpendicular recording that makes it better than any other data density increase that had been achieved before. Sure marketing tries to make it seem somehow special, but it is not. Asking for the number of platters is a much smarter choice, since it directly translates into higher data density.
 
JadeMonkeyStang said:
I decided to just buy the Samsung F1 750GB from ZipZoomFly. This is my first build in more than 5 years and I have no patience to wait for the WD 640GB or buy it from an unknown seller. I'm sure it'll be a great drive.

-Jade
Click to expand...

Got a notification last night (but didn't see it until this morning) from Newegg that the WD 640GB was back in stock. I cancelled my order, as it was still in processing status at ZZF, for the Samsung and got the WD instead. I should get it tomorrow as it ships from 2 towns over. :D

-Jade
 
the WD 6400AAKS will be my next drive as well.. 4 of them, that is :)

It's amazing how fast you can fill a TB with a 20mbit connection :D
 
[LYL]Homer;1032272726 said:
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14380
Click to expand...

Good review, I'm just about sold on the WD 640GB. I think I'll be picking up three WD 640GB for raid0. Was thinking about four Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB but after hearing a lot arrive DOA and with bad sectors, along with the cache showing up as unknown or 0. I'll pass.

However, just wish it had 32MB cache. If it did, I wouldn't have anything to think twice about.
 
mwarps said:
the WD 6400AAKS will be my next drive as well.. 4 of them, that is :)

It's amazing how fast you can fill a TB with a 20mbit connection :D
Click to expand...
20Mbit? pfft, weaksauce. That's my upstream. ;) 50Mbits is where it's at. :D FIOS FTW! I upgraded from a true FIOS 20Mbit connection which was awesome so I'm not taking shots at ya. No problems with bandwidth here as most of my neighborhood has FIOS and they are a bunch of leeching mofo's. When we were Time Warner world, the bandwidth was shitty. When folks were home that nice Premium connection was slower than the standard connection. At any time I could not max out my connection. Now I max out at any time during the day.

I'm thinking about picking up a couple of those 640GB drives. I'm tempted to lose my 74GB raptors and replace them with the 640GB drives. I keep the raptors around becuase they aren't even past warranty yet so why waste them but I'm not quite sure there is any real benefit to using them anymore. I can setup small partitions at the front of the 640GB drives for the swap and temp file stuff which should keep access times pretty low.
 
those that bought a couple for raid let us know how it goes.... :D

I'm thinking of getting 2 of either of these for a raid0 setup too. Not sure if I want the more space or slightly faster drives. Both seem solid, quiet, fast drives though.
 
dr4gon said:
those that bought a couple for raid let us know how it goes.... :D

I'm thinking of getting 2 of either of these for a raid0 setup too. Not sure if I want the more space or slightly faster drives. Both seem solid, quiet, fast drives though.
Click to expand...

will do, eta monday
 
Does all the 500 and 750 drives made by various companies use the 250 platters?
 
dr4gon said:
it's Tuesday, any updates? ;)
Click to expand...

Drives are in, but didn't get a chance to re-install XP last night. Re-installing tonight then ill post some results. (Its been 4+ years since ive reinstalled, I think its time, heh)
 
is it alright to get the 640 gig and partition it? into a boot sector of like 200 gigs and the rest for saving stuff ?

or does partitioning this hdd make it weak and not as fast?
 
got mine on the way. Should be much faster over my Seagate 320GB .10 drive that has the bad firmware on it. Its still fast, just the drive is super loud during seeking.
 
RAID-0 on Marvel XBX2

HDTune_Benchmark_MARVELL_Raid_VD_0.png
 
WOW, that is VERY impressive

does it boot and is everything a lot noticeably faster? I think I'll be upgrading soon (from a 7200.10 500gb seagate)

I can't wait to see anandtech's upcoming review comparing the WDs, samsungs, and the seagates.

I'm not sure if I want a bit more space with the samsungs or a bit more speed with the WDs. To be honest, I'm leaning for the more space of 2x750gb.
 
im still booting off an older raptor, divided into two partitions for two OS's
its a new install so I haven't done much with it yet.
 
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