Recommendations for a primary and a secondary drive for a desktop?

[Mushu]

Summary: Looking for help with choosing a fast, quiet hassle-free 300GB+ 7200 RPM HD with one or two platters, from Samsung, WD, or Hitachi!

Hullo everyone!

I'm currently trying to determine what components I want to put into my very first build, and I was wondering what I should do about the hard-drives.

I'd like to start out with one hard-drive, and then eventually add another. I'd like at least 500 GB of space to begin with (but would be okay with something around 300 GB) and don't see my storage requirements exceeding 1 TB by very much anytime soon.

Above all, I'd like the first HD to be fast, cool, quiet and reliable. Preferably hassle-free in general =P I've mostly heard good things about drives from Samsung, WD, and Hitachi in this regard.

So, what am I looking for?

I've found two single-platter 7200 RPM drives:

- Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD322HJ 320GB

- Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAKS 16MB 320GB

Expanding my search to two-platter drives yields 17 candidates from the aforementioned companies and makes choosing even more difficult.

Of those, this (supposedly) has the shortest average access-time:

- Western Digital Caviar Black WD5001AALS 32MB 500GB

But the others are only a couple of miliseconds behind.

How should I think about this decision??? :\

 

[rcpratt]

I wouldn't use anything less than a Caviar Black for a boot drive.

 

[corb01772]

+1 for the Western Digital Caviar Black. Look up some hard drive benchmarks, the Blacks outperform pretty much every other 7200 RPM drive. The 320 GB is single platter. Or you could get the 500 GB or 640 GB which are dual platter.

I have two 640 GB Blacks in my computer right now, along with an older Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500 GB. The Blacks seem to be quieter than the Seagate. And the Blacks run cooler. According to SMART, the two Blacks are running at 33 C/34 C, while the Seagate is running at 38 C (all 3 drives are in the same cage).

 

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

The Samsung Spinpoint is the one I'd go for, the 500Gb flavor. It's the drive that finally came along and dethroned the 640g from WD.

Very best,