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Samsung Spinpoint F3 or WD Caviar Blue

any reason you only want 500gb? id get a 640gb black drive from the forums for 55 shipped or close to same price.. i just bought a 750gb for 45 shipped i think it was a wd blue. and a 1tb black for 75 6gb/s

looks like the Spinpoint F3 500GB reached a maximum read throughput of 136 MB/s and an average of 110.4 MB/s. thats pretty good,, has seek time of like 14 seconds tho instead of 11 like other 7200 drives.. i dont know about a hands down, the black drives also have 2 more year warranty and are easier and cheaper to rma (at least for me in california)
 
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any reason you only want 500gb? id get a 640gb black drive from the forums for 55 shipped or close to same price.. i just bought a 750gb for 45 shipped i think it was a wd blue. and a 1tb black for 75 6gb/s

looks like the Spinpoint F3 500GB reached a maximum read throughput of 136 MB/s and an average of 110.4 MB/s. thats pretty good,, has seek time of like 14 seconds tho instead of 11 like other 7200 drives.. i dont know about a hands down, the black drives also have 2 more year warranty and are easier and cheaper to rma (at least for me in california)

is the wd black for sale in the deals section or for sale? i was considering the 500gb cause im pretty sure i wont use that much space...im currently using a laptop with 40gb and an external hard drive with 160gb which is totally good for me but i appreciate the advice
 
i dunno i guess if you dont care about space then 500gb is fine and go for it. i have bought maybe 10 640gb off the forums for 55 or cheaper, one guy had three for 120 shipped so bought them and got a 1tb and 640gb black for 110 recently as well shipped. People always selling them
 
I have them both.

The Samsung blows away the WD Blue in every way.

Well, it used to. It died a few hours ago after being a month old.
 
the single platter 500g F3 hands down

The new WD blue are also single platter. Regardless, the F3 still wins hands down.

I have 2 computers that are exactly the same (CPU, mobo, RAM, OS, etc) The only difference is the hard drive. One has an HD502HJ (500 GB F3) while the other has a WD5000AAKS (WD blue 500 GB single platter, don't remember exactly if the suffix is EA1VS)

The machine with the F3 feels faster, and the benchmarks prove it.
 
The Samsung has a lot of reviews on Newegg that are not so great. With over 250 reviews, it takes a lot of bad experiences to skew the percentages, but there are still dozens of reviews stating that the drive was DOA or died within a short period of time, I'd bet there are several reviews giving 5 eggs when the drive was first installed, then a few weeks later the drive died and another review was submitted by the same person giving 1 egg.

The WD Blue drive doesn't look a whole lot better, actually it looks worse. I'd probably look for a 3rd option that isn't such a gamble.
 
The Samsung has a lot of reviews on Newegg that are not so great. With over 250 reviews, it takes a lot of bad experiences to skew the percentages, but there are still dozens of reviews stating that the drive was DOA or died within a short period of time, I'd bet there are several reviews giving 5 eggs when the drive was first installed, then a few weeks later the drive died and another review was submitted by the same person giving 1 egg.

The WD Blue drive doesn't look a whole lot better, actually it looks worse. I'd probably look for a 3rd option that isn't such a gamble.



yea i saw that too,, but the wd blue has 2500 reviews compared to 250 for the F3. F3 prob faster but i dont have enough hd slots to buy 500gb drives so i might bite on a 1tb f3 for 69
 
I got the Samsung F3 and hardly notice a diff from a prior Hitachi 7200rpm 1TB drive from 2009, yet the F3 blows it away in benchmarks. In terms of speed of HDD, I think most of them are so similar in performance that any diff is only discernable in benchmarks, not in real world. But if you had to decide with your wallet, i guess go with the one faster in benchmarks. If there's no real world benefit, at least u got some bragging rights.
 
I got the Samsung F3 and hardly notice a diff from a prior Hitachi 7200rpm 1TB drive from 2009, yet the F3 blows it away in benchmarks. In terms of speed of HDD, I think most of them are so similar in performance that any diff is only discernable in benchmarks, not in real world. But if you had to decide with your wallet, i guess go with the one faster in benchmarks. If there's no real world benefit, at least u got some bragging rights.

Hmmm...as main drives in each of my PC's I have: WD Blue 640GB, Samsung F3, and WD Black 1 TB.

Going by seat of pants, the F3 blows them all away.
 
The new WD blue are also single platter.
Is there some web site or matrix that lists HD models and the number of platters they use?
TechReport is pretty good about posting this type information, but it's only for drives they are testing.
 
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