Best 250GB SATA II harddrive

[faye]

Hi,

before the battle begins, i need to confirm this first.
I have a Asus A8N-SLI as my motherboard,
I want to know if i can use SATA II on this board..

For now i have a few harddrives in mind...

Western Digital 2500KS
Maxtor DM10 250GB

both 16mb and NCQ support..

 

[Howard]

What do you consider "best"? Best performing? Lowest cost? Lowest noise output?

SATA-II is backwards compatible with SATA.

 

[GrammatonJP]

.

 

[acegazda]

yes, the a8n-sli has SATA II support and between those two drives, I would pick the Western Digital, I don't like maxtor at all but, the western digital is a good buy at $86 shipped. You planning on using this drive for storing the OS and other software and use your raptor for games?

 

[tallman45]

Originally posted by: faye
Hi,

before the battle begins, i need to confirm this first.
I have a Asus A8N-SLI as my motherboard,
I want to know if i can use SATA II on this board..

For now i have a few harddrives in mind...

Western Digital 2500KS
Maxtor DM10 250GB

both 16mb and NCQ support..

WD2500KS Does Not support NCQ

WD2500YD has a 5yr warranty and is usually ony a few $ more

 

[faye]

i heard that NCQ will make the system go a little slower..

is it true?
Do i really need it..?

The drive is for storage for now, BT most of the time..
I know i don't need a fast drive for this, but in the future i may use this drive for gaming too... 36GB raptor can't hold that long..

and seems like I lost 11GB from my raptor for no reason.. now my drives total space is only 25GB, 11Gb lost

 

[Bobthelost]

NCQ will slow you down a bit but since you have to go into the BIOS to turn it on it's not a problem.

It's a significant boon to large multiple user servers, but it's yet to become anything other than a handicap for single users.

 

[raildogg]

Western Digital 250GB WD2500KS is the best 250GB hard drive, generally speaking. Great drive overall. It also has 16MB cache.

 

[faye]

Originally posted by: raildogg
Western Digital 250GB WD2500KS is the best 250GB hard drive, generally speaking. Great drive overall. It also has 16MB cache.

It is so good to have somebody really supporting one of my choice..

 

[Pollock]

Originally posted by: raildogg
Western Digital 250GB WD2500KS is the best 250GB hard drive, generally speaking. Great drive overall. It also has 16MB cache.

I am tempted to get the WD2500KS myself, except for this recent StorageReview roundup. It doesn't seem so great in comparison to some of those other drives. I/Os per second seems like a pretty useless figure to me, though. :frown: And most other reviews (such as Anandtech's) feature the WD4000YD, which although it's in the same family, apparently isn't too similar to the WD2500KS, or so I've read. WD's naming scheme is too confusing, although I did manged to find this.

And also, I can't comment on the quality of Maxtor's DM10 250GB, but the reason I'm looking for another hard drive is because my 200GB Maxtor from Black Friday is dying. No more Maxtor drives for me.

 

[tallman45]

If the choice is only the 2 that you mentioned then the WD KS. Side note that the KS is based on 3yr old technology (83gb platters x 3)

Personally I would use a drive with bigger than 83GB platters, something more dense would offer better performance, use less platters, generate less heat, noise and use less power.

 

[raildogg]

This is pretty good as far as performance goes. When you factor in its low price and that it is pretty cool and has low power consumption, it makes it a good drive. I have one and love it so far. Looking forward to getting one of Western Digital's 300GB drives soon.

 

[faye]

In the sotragereview roundup, i saw Samsung is also rated very high..

I am just picking two harddrive that has less people complaining. I guess they are a little more durablilty than others..

so you have any suggestions?

 

[Howard]

The Samsung SP2504C is the quietest 3.5" drive (excepting solid state) currently available. Its performance is on par with the DiamondMax 10 and slightly lower than the WD2500KS. It's up to you to decide what you want, but IMO you probably won't be able to feel the difference in performance between either.

 

[Bozo Galora]

why waste your time with that crap

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148140

 

[Howard]

Originally posted by: Bozo Galora
why waste your time with that crap

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148140

Fast, but very loud.

 

[Varun]

For a 250GB drive, the Spinpoint P120 would be my recommendation. I doubt you would notice the small performance differences of most of the current generation drives, but you will notice how much cooler and quieter the Samsung is.

 

[Bozo Galora]

Originally posted by: Howard

Originally posted by: Bozo Galora
why waste your time with that crap

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148140

Fast, but very loud.

Did you even read the posts on the 3 pages of replies you yourself gave???

Seagate is ramping up shipments iusing short stroked 200 GB 2 platter drives to get 320GB
Also, OEM drives are louder - set for max performance as default

If you get retail drives that have 2 166 (160GB) platters - they are dead silent.
So dont be a first adopter
And the retail pak should have the new utilities CD for this drive
then you turn off NCQ, and hopefully, clean sweep

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I don't like how you don't include awesome drives like the Hitachi T7K250. This was clearly THE FASTEST drive before the 7200.10 came out. I need to see some benches of the 7200.10 vs the T7K250 though.

Pre 7200.10

Fastest?: T7K250
Best all around? T7K250/2500KS
Sequential transfer rate: 7200.9
Seek times: T7K250

 

[Howard]

Originally posted by: Bozo Galora

Originally posted by: Howard

Originally posted by: Bozo Galora
why waste your time with that crap

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148140

Fast, but very loud.

Did you even read the posts on the 3 pages of replies you yourself gave???

I read the first page.

 

[keldog7]

I have 2 of those Samsung drives...can't hear 'em, and performance is just like every other HDD I've used (i.e. the bottleneck is almost invariably ELSEWHERE). Oh, and yesy, I'd read the STorageReview site's review of them BEFOR purchase. I also have 3 Ssegate 7200.9 drives - a bit louder, but performance feels similar.

Accordingly, I figure you won't be able to *feel* the difference in performance based on routine use - but you might be able to hear it... Buy the quiet drive (i.e Samsungs)
-A

 

[faye]

is western digital KS a loud drive?

Locally only 320GB is available, which i don't really like..
Maxtor has 250GB drive, but is it loud?

 

[tallman45]

No the KS is not loud, but is not as quiet as a T7K250 but then again it is 3 vs 2 platters so there are more moving parts.

The high density platters of the Hitachi (125gb) more than make up for the extra cache (8mb vs 16mb) that the KS (83gb platter) has.

It would seem that the new 7200.10 with 2 x 160gb platters and 16mb cache would be the one to go with, at 320gb a test against a T7 would be a good matchup

 

[Pollock]

Bump.