Samsung F3/WD Black... also quick RAID0 question

[AthlonAlien]

Greetings,

I am looking for a new 1TB hard drive (not a SSD at this time). I have been doing a little research and came to the conclusion that the Samsung F3 and the Western Digital Black are probably the two fastest 7200 RPM drives right now.

I was looking at this Samsung F3 drive on Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-185-_-Product

It seems as if the F3 possibly edges out this WD Black:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-284-_-Product

But, then I came across this WD Black:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-533-_-Product

It has 64MB of cache (vs. the other drives' 32MB) and is 6.0 Gb/s (vs. 3.0 Gb/s). I assume that if you are using the drive on a typical motherboard that is only SATA 3.0 Gb/s, you probably wouldn't see any performance increase from the 6.0 Gb/s spec, however, I was wondering if the extra cache would make any performance difference?

Also, on a side note. I am moving away from a RAID 0 array (2 x WD Caviar SE16 250GB WD2500KS drives) to one of the single drives above. I know I will be gaining double the space (1TB vs 500GB), however, I am wondering if there are any circumstances where the newer single drive would/could be outperformed by my previous RAID 0 setup?

Here is a link to my previous drives:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144701

-Thanks

 

[tweakboy]

The 64MB of cache is nice, but you are not going to notice a speed difference from 32MB or 64MB. Ive heard many say high cache doesnt neccesarily mean more speed. Faster transfer rates. Soo based on that I would go with the one with greatest price for you.

WD pownz if you take care of it the right way it will never break down just look at this

So dont base your decision on the cache, it really means diddly. Also dont believe this double the processing power stuff. That is just them saying we can get our stuff in cache quickly, something you wont notice.

Just get the one with the best price. Plus youll join the Samsung group. I have a F4 and on a clean boot and waiting 15 minutes for thrashing to stop , Thunderbird used to load in 3 and half seconds on the WDC SE. Now it loads in 1 and half seconds. Pictures certain ones when I zoomed in there was a split second to second delay,, now I click and its instant no delay.
Boot up times are the same. Its very snappy. Im shure the Black is snappy too.

Also remember the more platters the more chance of breaking down. 500GB has less chance then a 1TB however, if you buy the right brand and keep it cool like at 30ish celcius then it will live for long long time.

Go with price. If you can afford it get the more expensive Black, If you wanna save money and not notice a difference from a Black then get the F3

If RAID 0 is not set correctly by a user it can hinder in performance. Also has a lot to do with the RAID card being used. But bottom line if one goes the other goes too. Get the F3 you wont be sorry. gl and gb and tc

 

[FishAk]

SATA III on a mechanical drive is a marketing gimmick. A HDD can't come close to saturating SATA II, let alone SATA III.

 

[tweakboy]

Seriously what the heck is 6 gigaflops or bytes or whatever it is LOL,, whats the latency and sequential read and write.

 

[Emulex]

sas expander?

 

[drevin]

Greetings,

But, then I came across this WD Black:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-533-_-Product

It has 64MB of cache (vs. the other drives' 32MB) and is 6.0 Gb/s (vs. 3.0 Gb/s). I assume that if you are using the drive on a typical motherboard that is only SATA 3.0 Gb/s, you probably wouldn't see any performance increase from the 6.0 Gb/s spec, however, I was wondering if the extra cache would make any performance difference?

-Thanks

SATA 6.0 Gb/s and 64MB cache don't make a big difference in performance. However, data density does. I believe that 3 platter WD1001FALS drives are still being sold (there are both 2 platter and 3 platter versions around), while the WD1002FAEX should always come with 2 platters. So in some cases, the performance difference may actually be over 20%. If they are about the same price, I would certainly pick the FAEX over the FALS.

 

[Dark Shroud]

SATA3 is a marketing term anyway as it's officially SATA 6gbps. Anyway this is technically SATA4.

SATA 133
SATA 150
SATA 300
SATA 600

We went through a similar mess when SATA 300 came out as it wasn't officially SATA 3 either. In the end its just a big mess.

 

[FishAk]

[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]The WD1001FALS-00J7B0, 00J7B1, 00K1B0, and 00E8B0 drives have 3 platters, but the WD1001FALS-00U9B0, and 00E3A0 models have 2. [/FONT]