Choosing and Installing a Hard Drive (SOLVED)

The Crowing One

So the beast has finally broken my back, and I'm running dangerously low on available Hard Drive space. As I've swapped pretty much all of my media to digital form I need something a bit larger than my 500GB factory drive. I've just finished freeing up about $175 total for this investment, and I could go somewhat higher if necessary. If everything works as I believe it should, I would want this entire venture to cost under my price point.

I have my eye on something at least 1TB as I need space for a lot of media. Generally I like keeping entire seasons of various television shows, music and films on my hard drive as I stream them from there directly to my television.

My question is in two-parts. First, how do I choose the correct drive? I don't want to get crap, and I'm not certain if the fact that I'm streaming to my TV through my 360 would change what I'm looking for as far as read-speed etc. I saw a few drives on newegg that I thought would do the trick, but I know next to nothing about Hard Drives. I believe that I have a SATA drive, as my computer is a Velocity Micro system that is now about 2 1/2 years old, right?

Second, what do I need to actually do the install? Do most drives come with cables etc that are necessary, or am I looking at getting those separately? I am under the impression that I'll need to connect the drive to the motherboard and to a power source, right? Is there a chance I'll have to upgrade my power source to run both the factory 500GB and the new TB drive in tandem?

These are the drives I was looking at (briefly)

Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s - Cheap. What makes it so cheap? Would this work, as under $100 would be fantastic! Or is this a piece of crap that no one can recommend?

HITACHI 0A38016 1TB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s - Same deal, smaller cache. No reason to get this over the above, right?

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s - This really caught my eye. 1.5 TB for not that much money. Reviews say it can "freeze up," would this kill my ability to watch a film all the way through without stuttering? It is also listed as a "bare drive" which means, what exactly? No cables etc.?

Regardless, this is the page I'm looking at. If anyone thinks there's something better I would very interested in knowing what and why. Again, I'm not looking for more than a total cost around $200, and would rather stay under the $175 point.

If this is better suited to G&T please move/lock the thread.

Thanks!


UPDATE 1/28:

I bought the Western Digital Caviar Green and it should be in my hands by Monday. I may need a little help getting it up and running, but otherwise this may be solved. Thanks for the help!

tsmvengy

Western Digital.

The Seagate .11s have had firmware problems recently. Not sure I can recommend the other two as I don't know much about them. That WD drive is fast, it has a big cache and the price is around $100.

PaperPritt

I have the Samsung one installed, never had a single problem with it. It's cheap and it works just fine.

As for the installation, you will have to get the SATA cable yourself, these drives comes in plastic bags with no packaging whatsoever.

I am under the impression that I'll need to connect the drive to the motherboard and to a power source, right?

Correct.

Is there a chance I'll have to upgrade my power source to run both the factory 500GB and the new TB drive in tandem?

I'm not aware that this could possibly be an issue, someone correct me if i'm wrong here.

Bionic Monkey

Between the Samsung and the Hitachi, I'd go with the Samsung.

As for the Seagate, I'm planning on building a server computer with a couple of those drives. I haven't used them yet, but from what I can tell, the "freezing" issue comes from waking the computer from a sleep state. You shouldn't have a problem with the drive freezing up in the middle of watching a show.

proXimity

The Samsung has gotten very good reviews for being among the fastest of the Tb hard drives. I'm not sure why it's so cheap, but it's a good drive.

The Seagates have been having freezing problems, specifically while doing low bandwidth streaming data, ie streaming video, but i *think* there's a firmware update for that now...

Cronus

I've had some great drives from Western Digital. They've become the only drives I buy. Whether you go with them or not, you should definitely not get the Seagate. They've been having a lot of problems lately with drives failing and then firmware bricking drives. Here's a recent update about it.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F17%2F0115207&from=rss

The Crowing One

Alright, so Seagate is definitely off the list. I suppose it was too good to be true, especially since their freezing issues are directly related to the streaming video that is the entire purpose of the drive.

I like the WD that Tsmvengy suggested. A lot of bang for the buck, there, and I know that I have used their external drives for years without issues.

I'm going to make a decision tomorrow, most likely the WD, and get it shipped out.

Gdiguy

The Crowing One wrote: »

Second, what do I need to actually do the install? Do most drives come with cables etc that are necessary, or am I looking at getting those separately? I am under the impression that I'll need to connect the drive to the motherboard and to a power source, right? Is there a chance I'll have to upgrade my power source to run both the factory 500GB and the new TB drive in tandem?

Depends on your power supply, but unless you're getting pretty close to maxxing it out already you should be fine, I've really only read of that being a problem when you're doing something like installing multiple drives to create a RAID... but do you have any idea what your power supply is rated for?

As for connecting - SATA drives will connect with a

power cable that connects to the power supply, and a

data cable that connects to your motherboard (it will probably be right next to where your current hard drive is plugged in). The last couple SATA hd's I've bought have come with data cables; if not that should be a fairly cheap thing to pick up at a fry's/microcenter. For power, there should be free power cables already coming from your power supply; if not, you may have to buy an extra cable that splits it. However, it's unlikely that you'd have other stuff using SATA power cables in a computer that old, so you probably should be fine (there's certainly no harm in opening up your computer and checking )

OremLK

Let me second Western Digital, although may I suggest the Caviar Black 1tb instead of the Caviar Green? It's faster, basically, and is on average the fastest 7200RPM hard drive on the market.

The Crowing One

Gdiguy wrote: »

Everything I need to know...

Awesome. While I don't have access to my tower right now, I'll have to check on my power supply rating tomorrow. I can't imagine there would be any issue, as I really have not added anything to the machine since I bought it. I'm not going for RAID (er, I'm not even sure what that is other than that it is server related) and I'm certain that I should be able to just "plug and play" the drive post-format.

Bottom line is that this was very helpful.

MrMonroe

I'm surprised it hasn't been said yet, but I want you to hear this as emphatically as possible:

I would never buy an HDD in OEM condition

You will have literally no idea why it is being shipped that way. Did a customer use it for six months and wreck it? Is it refurbished? Did Newegg just get it back because someone ordered the wrong model? Were they shipped to Newegg in that condition? You have no idea, and that is why the ones you listed first in the OP were so cheap. Because you have no idea what you are getting.

Maybe I'm paranoid, but I would never get something that cannot be tested simply and easily by the factory staff OEM. HDDs, RAM, a heatsink... no way. A motherboard is borderline, but a video card or any peripheral like a mouse I would be fine with. An HDD is finicky and failure usually happens suddenly and can't really be rectified.

The likelihood that your power supply will be unable to take the load of one more SATA HDD is very slim. They only take up a handful of watts.

OremLK

I've bought all my hard drives OEM (somewhere between five and ten, I forget the exact number), and they have all been fine. Never had a dud.

MrMonroe

Damn, you're lucky. I got one shit HDD OEM and that was my last. I suppose that could be tainting my opinion, though.

illig

MrMonroe wrote: »

I'm surprised it hasn't been said yet, but I want you to hear this as emphatically as possible:

I would never buy an HDD in OEM condition

You will have literally no idea why it is being shipped that way. Did a customer use it for six months and wreck it? Is it refurbished? Did Newegg just get it back because someone ordered the wrong model? Were they shipped to Newegg in that condition? You have no idea, and that is why the ones you listed first in the OP were so cheap. Because you have no idea what you are getting.

Maybe I'm paranoid, but I would never get something that cannot be tested simply and easily by the factory staff OEM. HDDs, RAM, a heatsink... no way. A motherboard is borderline, but a video card or any peripheral like a mouse I would be fine with. An HDD is finicky and failure usually happens suddenly and can't really be rectified.

The likelihood that your power supply will be unable to take the load of one more SATA HDD is very slim. They only take up a handful of watts.

You're confusing OEM and Refurbished drives...

OEM drives are exactly the same drives (though sometimes with a slightly shorter warranty) as you'd get in a full retail box, just without that box, driver CD, cable, screws, etc.... they're absolutely ***NEW****, and never returned by some customer as you think.... OEM parts are made for system builders and people who don't need all the extra crap

OremLK

Most likely what happened is your OEM drive got damaged in shipping. That's the only major con to buying OEM, actually--the packing isn't necessarily going to be as good as a retail box. And Newegg is known to not pack OEM drives all that well, at least some of the time.

The Crowing One

Alright, I'm going to purchase the Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive unless someone has any last minute suggestions.

Based on reviews and all of you all's help, I think I should be fine with an OEM drive, as most issues seem to be with it showing up DOA. I'm confident to take the chance and perhaps deal with some crap.

Am I going to need cables separately with this one? This one looks like the right length.

OremLK

Excellent choice. If it's DOA I think NewEgg will replace it for the cost of shipping, but it will most likely be fine. And yeah, it won't come with any cables so unless you have a spare you'll need to buy one. Oh, also make sure you have an SATA power connector from your PSU, if you don't you will need an adapter.

The Crowing One

OremLK wrote: »

Excellent choice. If it's DOA I think NewEgg will replace it for the cost of shipping, but it will most likely be fine. And yeah, it won't come with any cables so unless you have a spare you'll need to buy one. Oh, also make sure you have an SATA power connector from your PSU, if you don't you will need an adapter.

~$10 shipping if it comes DOA, and I'm fine with that. The drive looks and sounds like a steal as is.

Caviar Black is out of stock/not available. I went with the Caviar Green instead. I'm not in need of "the best" so I'm happy with this. Ordered. I should have it in hand by Monday.

Crashtard

The Western Digital drive is a good choice. I've been using those and Seagate exclusively for a long time and have been very very happy with them.

The Crowing One

Hard Drive showed up last night, got formatted overnight and now working like a charm.

Thanks everyone! This is now solved.