Need some advice on buying a hard drive

[imported_trajan]

I'm looking to replace my primary drive with something higher-performance, but while I've managed to educate myself a little on most other computer parts, I'm still completely clueless when it comes to hard drives...

Anand's May guide reccomended the Samsung SpinPoint HD501LJ 500GB for high end, priced in the very low 100s, and something ridiculously powerful (sounding) at around $350 for the ultra high end.

I'm aiming for something high-end for a gaming rig, but I'm hoping to spend under $200. Would go up to that, if the cost-to-performance benefit was worth it. But like I said .. completely clueless about what makes one HD better than another, other than size. Could really use some expert advice!

Thanks to anyone who can help, and as always thanks to everyone who has helped me before. The people on this forum are amazing.

 

[Whiznot]

I have four Samsung HD501LJ drives that are fantastic. These units are extremely quiet and run very cool. In the past I have purchased two 160GB Spinpoints and one 400GB Spinpoints. I have never been unhappy with a Samsung drive. If you want more unbiased input about the HD501LJ search the Silent Storage section of the silentpcreview.com forum.

 

[ForumMaster]

the expensive HDD that the article was refering to is a Western Digital 10k RPM Raptor drive. the advantage it has, is that the drive spins faster providing better read/write times. but it's not worth it unless you realy have money to throw away. the samsung drive they mentioned is a very good drive: it's cheap, quite and reliable.

 

[imported_trajan]

Thanks for the advice! I'll probably go out after breakfast and pick one up.

I've been going over Newegg looking at the other options and its still very confusing to me what makes one hard drive better than another, other than size. I have an AsusP5W mobo, so I don't think I can do anything faster than 3.0gb/s SATA (which is plenty fast). But looking at those drives, they pretty much all seem to feature a 16mb cache and almost identical read, write, seek, latency times.

So what makes a Seagate Barracuda an extra thirty bucks or so over the Samsung Spinpoint? Are these price variations silly?

Anyway, like I said, I think I'll get the Spinpoint, but I'd love to learn a little bit more about HD nuances.

 

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: trajan
Thanks for the advice! I'll probably go out after breakfast and pick one up.

I've been going over Newegg looking at the other options and its still very confusing to me what makes one hard drive better than another, other than size. I have an AsusP5W mobo, so I don't think I can do anything faster than 3.0gb/s SATA (which is plenty fast). But looking at those drives, they pretty much all seem to feature a 16mb cache and almost identical read, write, seek, latency times.

So what makes a Seagate Barracuda an extra thirty bucks or so over the Samsung Spinpoint? Are these price variations silly?

Anyway, like I said, I think I'll get the Spinpoint, but I'd love to learn a little bit more about HD nuances.

probably the same thing that makes Nikes more expensive than Kangaroo.

 

[imported_trajan]

Well there's also a guilty / extravagant part of me that is being tempted by the WD Raptor X.. Newegg has a $30 rebate... On the one hand, $175 for a hard drive?! On the other hand, I'm about to buy one for $120 so really the Raptor is only $55, a bargain.

Yeah, faulty logic, I know...

 

[pontifex]

do the raptors really make that much of a difference? all my stuff works fine with standard 7200 rpm hard drives. i can't imagine that the price is worth the performance.

 

[imported_trajan]

I'm wondering the same thing.. user reviews appear to say that they do, in terms of dramatically increased load times for games and faster boot times.. I'm still a little skeptical. Does anyone have one and can weigh in?

 

[drakore]

Raptors do yield a small increase in performance. Unless you are crazy about performance then they are not worth it.

Just stick to a 7200.10 series drive

 

[Old Hippie]

I'm still a little skeptical. Does anyone have one and can weigh in?

I've got the 74GB version, and use it for my OS and programs. It's definately noticeable. If you're a GB/$ kinda guy, you won't think it's worth it.

 

[D1gger]

I have two Raptors in Raid 0 configuration for my OS /applications install and I have never had a computer boot as fast, or load an application as fast. I haven't measured it, but it is my observation that the Raptor is very fast for loading applications.

 

[JustaGeek]

Seagate will give you 5 years of no-questions-asked warranty.

I would not even think about any other brand.

 

[pcslookout]

Raptor is well worth it!

 

[jkresh]

raptor is great for seek times, its actually read/write bandwidth is int that much higher then soem other top drives. Basically if you are moving a lot of small files or reading out of order it helps a lot, but for something like installing a game or encoding/decoding video its not that much better. Western digitals new 750gig drive is about the same price as the 150gig raptor and its the fastest of the 7200rpm drives (about teh same speed as the 1tb ibm) in terms of read/write performance and just about as fast as the raptor for everything besides seek. It probably is your best bet for performance and size right now.