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Hard drive recommendations?

MundaneSoulMundaneSoul fight fighterDaehan MingukRegistered User regular
edited March 2010 in Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern
Hi all, looking for a new hard drive in the $100-ish range to do a fresh install of Win7 and use for gaming. I'm terrible at muddling through all the different models that are out there and coming up with a hard drive that is going to work well as a primary, so can anyone recommend one or two in that price range that would work well? Many thanks.

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  • NailbunnyPDNailbunnyPD Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    I went with a 1TB Western Digital Black. Pretty nice drive. Partitioned ~100GB for the OS, and the rest for programs and games. I also have a 1TB Samsung F1 which I use for media and profiles. The WD is slightly faster and quieter.

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  • Dark ShroudDark Shroud Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    You want a WD Caviar Black for your boot drive. They're faster than the compeition and cheap compared to higher RPM platter based HDs or SSDs.

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  • travathiantravathian Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    ++ WD Black 1TB

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  • Dark ShroudDark Shroud Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    Just a note about the 1TB, it's better not to make the boot partition no larger than 400gigs to make sure your OS is on the first platter. The reason for doing this is because the first platter is the fastest.

    I have a 750gig myself, I got it for $60 with free shipping. Now I'm eying those 2TB WD caviar black drives.

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  • m4v1sm4v1s Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    Dark Shroud wrote: »
    Just a note about the 1TB, it's better not to make the boot partition no larger than 400gigs to make sure your OS is on the first platter. The reason for doing this is because the first platter is the fastest.

    This is almost the case.
    A hard drive's r/w arm moves across all platters at the same time, so no one platter is faster than another.
    The reason the first partition will provide higher performance is because it is on the outside of the platters.
    The closer you are to the outside, the longer the track and the more data the r/w head can read without having to reposition.

    Personally, I don't see any advantage to partitioning a drive as system/data, other than for personal organization and easy backups.

    As recommended by almost everyone above, the Western Digital Black and Blue series drives are very good. We recently received 90 OEM Blue series drives at work with 0 DOAs.

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  • travathiantravathian Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    m4v1s wrote: »
    Dark Shroud wrote: »
    Just a note about the 1TB, it's better not to make the boot partition no larger than 400gigs to make sure your OS is on the first platter. The reason for doing this is because the first platter is the fastest.

    This is almost the case.
    A hard drive's r/w arm moves across all platters at the same time, so no one platter is faster than another.
    The reason the first partition will provide higher performance is because it is on the outside of the platters.
    The closer you are to the outside, the longer the track and the more data the r/w head can read without having to reposition.

    You can short stroke a drive and get some pretty decent performance increases, but it comes at the cost of a significant amount of storage space on the drive. The moment you create that second partition and put all your data on there then you muck that up.

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  • m4v1sm4v1s Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    travathian wrote: »
    You can short stroke a drive and get some pretty decent performance increases, but it comes at the cost of a significant amount of storage space on the drive. The moment you create that second partition and put all your data on there then you muck that up.

    Or turn a $110 drive into a $300 10k RPM raptor killer

    http://www.techwarelabs.com/seagate_1-5tb-mod/

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  • AkatsukiAkatsuki Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    Bump. Sorry.
    Some stores here in Portugal I searched have this with a "greenpower" label, I'm guessing it's a different disk? I'm also guessing it's still recommended :P

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  • MadpandaMadpanda suburbs west of chicagoRegistered User regular
    edited March 2010
    WD drive labeling

    Green or greenpower - lower energy use, quieter, variable RPM, good for storage, not so great for OS/Gaming drive but not completely horrible. Cheapest $/Gigabyte ratio

    Blue - in between black and green

    black - higher energy use, louder, fastest (out of the 3 lines) slightly pricier. Not available in higher capacities afaik.

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  • AkatsukiAkatsuki Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    Thank you very much :)

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  • AlectharAlecthar Alan Shore We're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    I'm pretty surprised no one has mentioned the Samsung Spinpoint F3. Easily the best 1TB drive available, in my opinion.

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  • General_WinGeneral_Win Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    m4v1s wrote: »
    travathian wrote: »
    You can short stroke a drive and get some pretty decent performance increases, but it comes at the cost of a significant amount of storage space on the drive. The moment you create that second partition and put all your data on there then you muck that up.

    Or turn a $110 drive into a $300 10k RPM raptor killer

    http://www.techwarelabs.com/seagate_1-5tb-mod/

    This is pretty much hard drive overclocking and I find it to be absolutely amazing.

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  • Dark ShroudDark Shroud Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    Alecthar wrote: »
    I'm pretty surprised no one has mentioned the Samsung Spinpoint F3. Easily the best 1TB drive available, in my opinion.

    I've never heard of that drive, but this thing just came to market this month.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533

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  • BarrakkethBarrakketh Registered User regular
    edited March 2010
    Dark Shroud wrote: »
    Alecthar wrote: »
    I'm pretty surprised no one has mentioned the Samsung Spinpoint F3. Easily the best 1TB drive available, in my opinion.

    I've never heard of that drive, but this thing just came to market this month.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533

    The F3 outperforms the old 1TB Black Edition. Given the model number and cache size that drive is probably using a 4K sector size, so the same caveats apply as with the 1.5tb Green Edition that also uses 4K sectors.

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