harddrive buying guide?

R

robman_rob

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 7, 2006
Messages
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I'm in the market for a new hdd - was thinking like 500gb range.
There used to be some guide here... has it been deleted now? I can't seem to find it. In addition is this true:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,125778-page,1/article.html

"Your PC's internal hard drive is a real workhorse--the most critical component of your system after the CPU and memory. The hard drive is the hub where your operating system, programs, and data are stored and accessed--making a purchase is an important decision."
 
The thread is still here, but has been un-stickied. It hadn't been updated for more than two years, so I think the information in it had been getting a little stale.
 
If you aren't in a rush and need >500Gb, wait for the release of the 640Gb WD6400AAKS next month. That drive sets new standards for 7200rpm performance <1TB.
 
wait for the release of the 640Gb WD6400AAKS
Click to expand...
Any comment on why they chose 640GB? If anything for a new intro I would've guessed a size between 750 & 1TB (if not GREATer than 1 TB) :confused:
 
DrStrangeBrew said:
Any comment on why they chose 640GB? If anything for a new intro I would've guessed a size between 750 & 1TB (if not GREATer than 1 TB) :confused:
Click to expand...

Its my understanding that they figured out how to fit 320 gigs on a platter instead of the 250 that is common now. So although that one will be 640, once they make one with 4 platters you will see 1.28 TB hard drives.
 
DrStrangeBrew said:
Any comment on why they chose 640GB? If anything for a new intro I would've guessed a size between 750 & 1TB (if not GREATer than 1 TB) :confused:
Click to expand...
As the above poster indicates, the WD6400AAKS uses Western Digital's new, faster 320GB platter design. Larger, higher-density platters provide greater throughput (disk transfer rates) and therefore performance.

Most drives available today use 160GB to 250GB platters. The first >300GB platter drive on the market was the Samsung F1 1TB with 333GB platters. The second was a new version of the 320GB Western Digital WD3200AAKS (manufactured January 21+). The next should be the 640GB Western Digital 6400AAKS released in March. A 1.28TB version may follow later this year.

In HD Tach, Western Digital's 320GB platter design provides 90-95MB/s average read throughput, 115+MB/s peak throughput, and 240MB/s burst throughput. The Samsung F1 1TB with 333GB platters provides about 5MB/s more. You can download and run HD Tach to see how your current drive compares.
 
KenF said:
If you aren't in a rush and need >500Gb, wait for the release of the 640Gb WD6400AAKS next month. That drive sets new standards for 7200rpm performance <1TB.
Click to expand...

This is why I love hardocp, I always come here for computer information first. Thanks.

And ideas how much it will cost? I had my eye on seagate 7200.11 500gb. and i currently own a 250gb wd drive (not enough space!)
 
robman_rob said:
This is why I love hardocp, I always come here for computer information first. Thanks.

And ideas how much it will cost? I had my eye on seagate 7200.11 500gb. and i currently own a 250gb wd drive (not enough space!)
Click to expand...
It should cost $125 to $140.
 
KenF said:
It should cost $125 to $140.
Click to expand...

Thanks, it sounds like it is acceptable cost, I will wait. In the mean time, I have to figure out how to cool my damn case down!

ps KenF, do you agree with that quote saying hdd is 3rd most important component?
 
robman_rob said:
ps KenF, do you agree with that quote saying hdd is 3rd most important component?
Click to expand...
That depends on what you are doing. Some applications and games are more disk intensive than others.

World of Warcraft is one of the more disk intensive games -- i.e. faster hard drives will load instances noticeably faster than slower drives. If you have a 3.0GHz CPU and a fast hard drive, you'll get into instances faster than someone else with a 4.0GHz CPU and a slower hard drive.

Some other applications benefit from having a second drive. You can literally double performance in VideoRedo -- a popular MPEG-2 video editor for automatically removing commercials -- by having separate drives for the source and destination files. Adobe applications like Photoshop and Premiere also benefit from a second disk (set as the scratch disk) -- separate from where the application and source files are stored -- when working with large images and videos. Adobe applications use a maximum of 2GB RAM, and anything required beyond that is swapped to and from disk.
 
Thanks for the reply KenF, what you said makes a lot of sense. I didn't even think about using the second drive as a swap drive..., when I get my second hdd, I will need to figure out how to maximize it for performance for each program. :D
 
Yea, if you can afford to wait, there is always something newer and faster coming down the pike.

I just bought a 500gig 7200.11 from Newegg for $126 delivered. It's still formatting so it will be a couple of days before I get it setup the way I want.

My 2 main systems right now have a 36 gig Raptor and an Ultra160 10K 36 gig SCSI. So I am not going to be blown away by the "SPEED" of my new Seagate, but it is big, reasonably fast, and relatively cheap.

I find the Charts over at Toms Hardware to be very helpful.

Don
 
That chart at Toms is very interesting.... according to that, the Seagate 7200.11 series drives beat the Raptors in almost EVERY benchmark. I was sure that I had read other comparisons that found almost the exact opposite results, and that the Raptors were still tops for desktop usage. Is that not true anymore? Seems like random seek time is just about the only thing that the Raptors are #1 for now....
 
The Raptor line is long overdue for a refresh. With the higher bit densities of the newer drives, they can read and write about as fast as the older Raptors. The Raptors only advantage now is that at 10K RPM, they get to that sector on the other side of the platter 25% faster.

It will be interesting what WD decides to add to the line. Higher density, faster spindle, bigger cache, or all 3?:D

Don
 
I'm excited. I hope it comes out soon. the new WD drives. Yeah looking at those charts, the 500/750/1000 7200.11 sometimes have significant performance differences in different categories.
 
xappie said:
That chart at Toms is very interesting.... according to that, the Seagate 7200.11 series drives beat the Raptors in almost EVERY benchmark. I was sure that I had read other comparisons that found almost the exact opposite results, and that the Raptors were still tops for desktop usage. Is that not true anymore? Seems like random seek time is just about the only thing that the Raptors are #1 for now....
Click to expand...
The problem with Tomshardware is that they do only one real world performance test. They run synthetic tests.

At both Anandtech and Storagereview.com, the 7200.11 was at the top of synthetic tests, but near the bottom in actual application performance. Tomshardware just ran one real-world test -- Windows XP startup -- and the 7200.11 was towards the bottom of the pack.

If you want a drive to run synthetic benchmarks, then you buy a 7200.11 because that drive is specifically tuned for the I/O used in those tests. If you want a drive for real-world applications, you buy a Raptor X, Spinpoint F1, Hitachi 7K 1000, Western Digital WD7500AAKS, or one of the new 320Gb-per-platter WD drives.
 
KenF said:
If you want a drive for real-world applications, you buy a Raptor X, Spinpoint F1, Hitachi 7K 1000, Western Digital WD7500AAKS, or one of the new 320Gb-per-platter WD drives.
Click to expand...

man i really thought the 7200.11 were tops according to the reviews i've been reading, guess not as it's been a while.
 
KenF said:
Tomshardware just ran one real-world test -- Windows XP startup -- and the 7200.11 was towards the bottom of the pack.
Click to expand...

Yeah I noticed that too... slow startup is one of my pet peeves, so I think I will continue with my plans for another Raptor. I have a 36 and a 74 now, but I just need something larger. 150 will be plenty for my main HDD.
 
If you're just looking for capacity per dollar, I wrote a widget that will let you sort by cost per GB, among other things. If speed is your goal, I'd go for Hitachi over WD myself, unless you go for a Raptor.
 
Here's the HD Tach for the new 320GB platter version of the WD3200AAKS. The full part number is WD3200AAKS-00B3A0.

hdtachwd3200aaksni6.png


PCMark05 Results
Code: 
XP Startup:           11.114 MB/s
Application Loading:   7.991 MB/s
General Usage:         7.292 MB/s
Virus Scan:          116.577 MB/s
File Write:          101.494 MB/s

I have the drive suspended in rubber bands (Antec P150), which may affect access times slightly.
 
Nice... thanks. So, from your post at AT, these are the 00B3A0 revision. Since these are single platter drives, are they thinner/slimmer than normal?
 
enginurd said:
Nice... thanks. So, from your post at AT, these are the 00B3A0 revision. Since these are single platter drives, are they thinner/slimmer than normal?
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I didn't measure, but they look about the same size to me.

They do produce noticeably less noise than previous Western Digital drives.
 
enginurd said:
Yah, but you have to make sure its revision 00B3A0, and most etailers won't confirm/guarantee such revision. KenF got his off of ebay, IIRC, and the seller made sure to ship him that particular revision.
Click to expand...

Ebay listing.
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Call me what names you will, but I urge you to please not rely on any information you find on TomsHardware, he is a completely biased hardware reviewer and has openly admitted to taking 'donations' from intel (and if you look at some of his Intel vs. AMD comparisons, he does NOT compare similar components, in fact, in one review he had the audacity to compare an OVERCLOCKED intel proc against a stock AMD proc, there are much more reliable reviewers ... such as the [H] and Anandtech ... but you make the call (also recognize that his findings were based on synthetic benchmarks, which can and do differ widely from real world performance, so take that into account)

About the '3rd most important component' I think they were making that statement on the basis that a hard drive is the most mechanical component in your computer, and thus the most prone to problems (yes optical drives are mechanical, but they are not being constantly read and written to), also ... do you want to lose 500gB of data? I know I dont :p

Seagate is my recommendation, because they:
a. Offer a 5 year warranty
b. They pioneered perpendicular recording technology, and for a while were the only company to manufacture drives with this technology (they were mobile drives, such as that in an ipod) ... so they've had a few years on other companies in terms of refining the technology, etc. ... they have also been instrumental in almost all of the major hard drive technological discoveries in the past few decades
c. I have NEVER had a seagate drive die on me, I have had at least one of Hitachi, WD, and Maxtor drives die ... but hd death is often a random unfortunate event (except for Hitachi's 'Deathstars' (Deskstar being the real name :p), so this point may have been moot as YMMV differently then mine :p

Now, given all that I just said, its probably irrelevant lol, because I would recommend over anything else to get a drive with the highest platter density, 320gB per platter being a marked increase over 250gB.

Does anyone know if seagate plans on producing drives with 320gB platters?

Anyways, its obvious that ppl have posted a lot more info here then this post (I just wanted to provide my own personal experiences with u), good luck :)
 
Actually, the Deathstars aren't really all Deskstar models - it specifically refers to the IBM Deskstar 75GXP and a few others around that time. Since Hitachi took them over, I don't think there has been any problem with Deskstar reliability. I've never had a drive die on me at all, which is probably just luck!

StorageReview.com specialises in hard drives, and might be useful:
http://www.storagereview.com/
 
I'm also waiting to grab a WD 640GB, but it is actually a bit too small. Will there be a 3x320GB hard drive coming soon?

Let us get our information straight:

@HiTech-Hate

Toshiba was the first to perpendicular magnetic recording, not Seagate.

@KenF

I don't think it is exactly fair to diss THG for using synthetic benchmarks to test their drives and then you place your own? I know real-world testing (that is reliable) is difficult for the end-user who doesn't have multiple drives, but a grain of salt should be taken with every benchmark.

Thanks!

~Ibrahim~
 
point taken mith ...

I do remember it being a time where the drive was being avoided like a plague, gave Hitachi a bad name, from which they are still recovering
Here is the results of one of the IBMs: http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~ken/crash/index.html

I like how the platters were scraped clean of all magnetic substrate, thats definitely one way of making sure you will never recover the information on those discs again

yes i know ikjadon

I said they 'pioneered', not they 'invented'
(in other words they were a large part of its development process)

I was just trying to give him my own opinion for whats its worth, you can take it or leave it *shrug*
 
Yes, those ones were pretty bad! Not really sure how a hard drive could fail that severely.
 
A minor point. I don't mean to cause an argument, just mentioning a slight inaccuracy.

And will these new WD's have 32MB of cache, instead of the usual 16MB?

~Ibrahim~
 
ikjadoon said:
@KenF

I don't think it is exactly fair to diss THG for using synthetic benchmarks to test their drives and then you place your own? I know real-world testing (that is reliable) is difficult for the end-user who doesn't have multiple drives, but a grain of salt should be taken with every benchmark.
Click to expand...
I agree.

Real world testing is needed. Unfortunately, I don't have the means to do that.

Anandtech and Storagereview run real world tests in their hard drive reviews, so hopefully they will review this unit in the future. I know that Anandtech has these drives.

ikjadoon said:
A minor point. I don't mean to cause an argument, just mentioning a slight inaccuracy.

And will these new WD's have 32MB of cache, instead of the usual 16MB?
Click to expand...
They still have 16Mb. Cache size is not a significant factor in performance.

Platter size is the drive equivalent of CPU MHz and rotational speed is the drive equivalent of CPU IPC. Cache implementation (not size) also affects the IPC.
 
Right. Next month it is, then.

Eghad. I guess I'll have to live w/o the other 16MB, then. I'd feel better with it, nonetheless.

~Ibrahim~
 
KenF said:
They still have 16Mb. Cache size is not a significant factor in performance.
Click to expand...

Thats not entirely accurate... it really depends on what you are using it for ill spare you my comp specs, but lets just say thats the only thing my computer has an adavantage on over other gamers, yet i can load maps faster than everybody... my 32mb cache really helps me out (heh heh... to get the helicopter first in BF2)
 
If anyone is looking for a hd, take a look at

http://www.tech-report.net/storage/

they have some extensive reviews on hds, and they combine all the results of previous tests so you can easily compare different drives.

Sucks to hear that the new WD 320mb platters won't have 32mb cache.

I really hope it comes out soon, or else I'll get the 500gb/750gb SE16 WD.

I just haven't found any place local that sells them and I don't want to order them online because I think they do not ship well.
 
Old Hippie said:
Toms Hardware has some interactive drive comparison charts.
Click to expand...
Tom's Hardware is worthless
here is proof

they have one of the old Raptors 36GB 8MB cache beating the new Raptor 150GB 16MB cache

tomsea1.png



Of course this is wrong, and you can see how the new Raptor completely destroys the old one in this head to head comparison at the only place you should go for hard drive benchmarks, StorageReview
http://www.storagereview.com/php/be...&numDrives=1&devID_0=309&devID_1=249&devCnt=2
 
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