What HDD for a balance of speed / reliability / size?

W

WalkedAirplane

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 19, 2005
Messages
378
Looking at the WD 640GB drives as I've heard good things, and the $/gb ratio is fairly good.

But I want to get outside input prior to pushing the so called "green button".

Budget is flexible, not particularly fixated on price. Value is more important.
I do not game, but I do a LOT of streaming and downloads. Looking for something that can handle 4MB/sec (not megabit) on a regular basis, and has a reputation for reliability.

What's my best choice on the market today?
 
In a purely price-per-gigabyte standpoint, the 7200.11 1.5TB disks are appealing (provided you get one with SD37 firmware and not the freezing and glitchy SD16/17 firmwares); I've seen them as low as $135 or so, making the disk less than $0.10 per GB, and if you're willing to deal with eBay and Microsoft Cashback, you can get those disks for as low as $115 or so after cashback.

The performance on these drives are pretty impressive in sequential reads and write speeds...access time will be your traditional 10-11ms or so as it's a 7200RPM disk, but that's the drive I would recommend on a solely cost-per-GB standpoint.

Another recommendation would be a Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD103LJ; it's long been the leader in the Terabyte disks in terms of sheer performance, and its three platters keep it pretty cool and the performance quite superior to other four or five platter TB disks out in the market. The WD Black just recently beat the Samsung in performance recently (but not by much), though I frequently see the F1s hover around the ~$100 mark or so.

If you don't need that much space the 1.5TB or the Spinpoint F1 1TB offers, then just go with a WD6401AALS or a WD6400AAKS (the WD 640GB drives), you can't go wrong with those. :D
 
+1 for WD6401AALS

I'd stay away from the 1.5's as there is firmware issue
Samsung F1 is Fast but I still like 640's for speed.
 
More positive input on the WD 640gb, so I think that's where I'm headed.

Seems to be a very solid choice, and very cheap, so I'm not going to complain :)
 
WD 640Gb Caviar Black... just bought one... getting great performance.
(about 94Mb/s with 11-12ms random seek)
 
I replaced a Seagate 160 gig with 2 640gb seagates in a raid 0 and man o man the difference is very impressive. If you mobo has onboard raid that'd be an option. $150 to your door for 2 640's

Zack
 
I had both my 500 gig 7200.11 Seagate drives die on me earlier this year and as I didn't have time to wait for an RMA I snagged a WD 640 AAKS. It's a faster and quicker drive than the Seagates even though it only has half the cache of the Seagates. I haven't had a single problem with it and overall it's a good value.

 
Per the Hot Deals forum - 300gb Velociraptor is supposed to be $119.99 in about 32 minutes from now.
 
[LYL]Homer;1033372086 said:
Per the Hot Deals forum - 300gb Velociraptor is supposed to be $119.99 in about 32 minutes from now.
Click to expand...

what I dont see that

Link?
 
To update my earlier post about the Dell Small Business AAKS drives, it appears they shipped today. At least that is what customer service is saying. Then again, I don't have a tracking number yet...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top