Thinking of getting a new primary HD

[TheInternal]

Hey all, I was researching a little on hard drives, and saw Newegg had a nice pricepoint on the 1.5 TB baracuda 7200. However, I also read of some major issues with the drive (though not for windows XP). Do a search for "1.5 TB freeze" in Google, sans quotes, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

I'm looking for the best bang for the buck to replace my old 300 and 500 GB drives. The drive will be going on an old (but supposedly unused) Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard.

I do gaming and some 2d and 3d graphics work. Not much video editing these days, though I do occasionally watch movies from my hard drive.

Any suggestions on the best blend of performance and capacity at a reasonable price point? I also like my computers quiet, so noisy drives aren't very welcomed.

***The main contenders at this point***

- Seagate Barracuda 7200 1.5 TB for $139.99

Worried about previously mentioned issue, but liking an extra .5 terabytes for $20-30 dollars more.

- Seagate Barracuda 7200 1TB for $109.99

Is this faster than the 1.5 TB by a noticeable margin?

- Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB for $119.99

- Western Digital Caviar Green 1 TB for $119.99

Is this drive noticeably slower than the Caviar Black and/or noticeably more quiet?

- Western Digital VelociRaptor 300 GB for $229.99

More expensive and lower capacity than I'd like, but I have a serviceable 300GB and 400GB drive I could use for storage. Is it worth the price differential?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'd go with the caviar black myself. excellent drive.

 

[TheInternal]

I've had very positive past experiences with WD myself. My first WD 120 GB special edition PATA drive finally croaked after 7 years of being up roughly 90% of the time. The biggest debate I find myself having is the extra .5 terabytes for an extra 20 to 30 bucks on the Seagate. That's a hell of a lot more space for a great $ per gig.

 

[WT]

It seems like the newer firmware drives have been less problematic at this point, and shoddy packing issues aside, I am trying to pull the trigger on a Seagate 1.5tb from the 'Egg based on newer drives shipping from them (I'd go retail as well for the extra packing).
Sadly, they raised their price $20 on the drive in one week's time, which I would attribute to Seagate's acknowledgement of a warranty drop from 5 years to 3 years as of 1/1/09, and Newegg knows that people will buy now rather than after the new year.

That extra 500gb on the Seagate is driving me nuts, as I am finally updating my HTPC drive, and I really want/need the extra space.

 

[n7]

I've had no issues with my 1.5 TB Seagate thus far.

 

[taltamir]

the raptor is fast, weather it is worth it to you, well, that is a tough question to answer.

 

[TheInternal]

Thanks for all the responses. Sadly, I just found out my hours are getting cut back significantly, so looks like I can't afford to do the drive until I find more work.

 

[TheInternal]

Well, I got my hours back up, so I went ahead and got the Seagate 1.5 TB. It started getting SMART errors in under 24 hours, as well as very loud (probably platter impact) clicking and insanely slow performance. Seagate website told me NOT to update the firmware on the drive.

I RMAd, and got the WD Black 1 TB. It gets I/O errors when I try to install Ubuntu (and won't install the OS). It passes the WD diagnostics though. I'm really not sure what to do, having never gotten I/O errors randomly from a hard drive in recent memory. Heck, I don't recall getting I/O errors back when I was building and maintaining university computers...

 

[LokutusofBorg]

You either have bad luck with hard drives, or something else is killing them on you (think mobo, maybe PSU). Worth trying to determine...