HDD Recommendations

seekermeister said:

ignatzatsonic said:

I bought a 1.5 "green" Western Digital about 3 weeks ago. It's working fine. 99.99 at the time thru new egg. The particular model I got was WD15EADS-00P8B0. The 00P8B0 means it has only 3 platters, rather than the customary 4 found in earlier models. This helps it maintain pretty good speed, even though it isn't 7200 rpm.

It has 32 mb cache.


I tested its speed using HD Tune and compared it to the Western Digital 640 gig 2 platter drivei, whcih was about the fastest 7200 rpm drive on the market only 18 months ago.

The 1.5 TB drive's average transfer rate is 86% of the 640 gig drive's result.

The 1.5 TB drive's burst rate is 92% of the 640 gig drive's result.

The 640 has a slightly faster access time: 12.0 vs 13.6

The green drive uses maybe 2/3 the power of the "black" WD drives.

The WD 1.5 runs several degrees cooler in my case and is quieter than the drive it replaced.

All in all, no complaints yet. You will hear people say they aren't as fast as 7200 rpm drives, but it isn't noticeable for most uses. It is noticeably faster than 7200 rpm drives from 2005 or 2006 were.

I realize that a lot of people would disagree with me, but I've never had very good luck with WD HDs. I'll probably stick with SG. The only reason that I might consider a WD is to go with the black edition, for the longer warranty period.

Interesting, I have just the opposite experience. I have never had a WD drive fail but have had 3 SG drives fail. I have 3 WD drives in my system right now.

pparks1 said:

seekermeister said:

Thanks, but for reasons that I shall not go into, I never do business with Newegg.

That's too bad...but I guess all of us can have bad experiences. Personally I almost exclusively buy everything from NewEgg as my experiences have all been good (except for one...but it was really my fault in the end).

Again, without going into details, my problem with Newegg has nothing to do with past transactions. My problem with them goes deeper than that, but not in a way that most people would care about.

Poptart:

The manual for that Intel board can be had here:

Intel® Desktop Board D101GGC - Product guides for Intel® Desktop Board D101GGC

The document says that it has 4 SATA ports, so you should be sure you get a SATA 3.0 drive. Nearly all drives in the last few years meet that specification.

As far as particular models, it is a roll of the dice. You can find horror stories on any brand you care to name. There is a certain DOA rate with all of them and the manufacturers seem to tolerate the DOAs rather than test each drive thoroughly before sending them out. If you have bad luck, just return it for another. Be sure to do a chkdsk /r on the drive before using it and ideally thrash it good for a week or two before installing an OS on it or committing your serious data to it--although I realize most people don't have that luxury.

If it were me and if the drive was intended to have an operating system, I would go with Western Digital's "Caviar Black" series, but that is just personal preference. In all likelihood, any of the major brands would be fine (Samsung, Seagate, Western Digital). Compare them on a price basis. If you buy "OEM", you will probably need to supply your own cables.