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Which: Samsung F4 2TB or WD Caviar Green 3TB for Storage?

Which HDD should I buy?

  • Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB

  • Samsung F4EG EcoGreen 2TB

Results are only viewable after voting.
K

Karura

Junior Member
Hi, I already got a Vertex 2 120GB for OS/Apps and now I need a HDD for storage.

Which one is better, can someone list a comparison pros/cons?

I realize the 3TB is slightly overpriced because it just came out, but please overlook that when giving comparisons, I want performance. Price does matter, but if it can justify it, then alright.

Note: I'm running Windows 7 x64

It seems like the F4 would be a good drive to get, but the Caviar Green has higher platter density, but more platters. Which would be more cool/quiet? I'm also trying to minimize noise in my rig.

Thanks.
 
The WD 3TB drive uses 750gb platters vs the 667gb platters on the F4. The WD drive should perform a little bit faster, plus it has a better warranty. My vote is for the WD, especially seeing as you're not too concerned about the price.

In terms of which is cooler and more quiet, I'm pretty sure they both do well in those areas. I know that the WD drive is much cooler running than the 3TB Seagate drive.
 
BTW do you actually need 3TB of storage space? If you don't, then I'd say just get a 2TB drive. If you're just using the drive to archive your media and such, you're not going to need something blazing fast. The 2TB WD Green and the 2TB F4 are both good options. Again, keep in mind that WD drives have better warranty, and better reliability from what I've been reading online (newegg reviews and such).
 
There are no tests out there comparing these two products, but unless you need the extra space, there's no question the Samsung is the better buy. It's less than half the cost, and will use less power, run cooler, and should have higher performance (you can't just look at platter size - the Samsungs are simply faster drives). My Samsung F4 is faster than my WD Caviar Blue. There's no way a Caviar Green could touch it.

Before buying a 3TB drive, you should definitely read these words of warning on the 2TB limit: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3981/...b-and-my-book-essential-3tb-drives-reviewed/2
 
SickBeast said:
Again, keep in mind that WD drives have better warranty, and better reliability from what I've been reading online (newegg reviews and such).
Click to expand...

Sorry, that's simply not correct. They both have 3 year warranties, and reviews of the larger WD drives have not been entirely positive, while the Samsung F4 2TB is the highest rated drive on Newegg other than the WD Blue 640 and Samsung F3 500, both of which I also own: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007603&IsNodeId=1

Again, unless you need the space, no contest: Samsung F4.
 
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what are your backup plans? For a secondary drive on a main system I would get a caviar blue or black. For mass storage I Would use nas with multiple green drives.
I wouldn't use the 3TB drives, they require 64bit LBA controller (which is bundled with the drive) which is dumb, and are also very expensive per GB, you can buy 3 seperate 2TB drives for the price of one 3TB drive and still have some money left over.
 
Karura said:
I realize the 3TB is slightly overpriced because it just came out, but please overlook that when giving comparisons, I want performance.
Click to expand...
Huh what? You're looking for performance in the lowest performing drives you can get on the market (i.e. 5.4k rpm drives)?

What are you planning with those drives? If you really need performance (which isn't that farfetched for a secondary disk) a 7.2k rpm drive would be a much more sensible choice. If you only want to store movies or backups on it, I'd go with the cheaper drive because you won't notice any difference at all anyhow.
 
Voo said:
Huh what? You're looking for performance in the lowest performing drives you can get on the market (i.e. 5.4k rpm drives)?

What are you planning with those drives? If you really need performance (which isn't that farfetched for a secondary disk) a 7.2k rpm drive would be a much more sensible choice. If you only want to store movies or backups on it, I'd go with the cheaper drive because you won't notice any difference at all anyhow.
Click to expand...

excellent point... if you want PERFORMANCE buy a caviar BLACK drive, not a GREEN drive.
its not "green" because of magic greenifying technology they crammed into it and not other drives (they do have energy saving features, but those are available top to bottom)...

it used to be that they called it the "value" drives, aka, the "cheap slow drives"... now they renamed those green as a marketing stunt but basically its just slow cheap drives. I use them for bulk storage on my NAS, they are not bad drives... they are just not performance drives.
 
Spindle speed isn't everything. With 667GB platter density, the F4 can probably beat out 7200rpm drives with 320gb or maybe even 500gb platters. You'll lose a bit in terms of seek times, but transfer speeds should remain quite good.
 
I currently don't have any backup plans. I have never backed up a system, although I know I should.

What are some good ideas? RAID 1? External HDD? Another HDD in the system but keep it "off"? Is there a way to turn on/off HDDs easily?

Sorry about the confusion regarding performance. What I meant to say was, which one has better qualities over the other, such as being relatively quiet, which one was faster, if there was a significant difference, etc.

For this system, what I plan to do is simple.

Run games, apps, every program on the SSD.

Get a HDD for everything else, such as storing, BT downloads, videos, music, documents, etc etc.

One quick question. BT completely destroys drives, I know that. Should I be using another cheaper/lesser/old drive to use to torrent specifically? Or is it fine to use this drive?
 
The higher the capacity the more overhead more work has to be done and more platters.

More mechanical platters equals higher chance of failure. The higher 2TB and 3TB drives will not be something you can trust you need a image or a backup.

This is why going over 1TB as a drive your just raising your chances of mechanical failure in the future.
 
Should I just buy two F4 2TBs, one for use, one for backing up? How would I back them up properly? What are some common setups?
 
Karura said:
Should I just buy two F4 2TBs, one for use, one for backing up? How would I back them up properly? What are some common setups?
Click to expand...
If you set them up in a RAID-1 array, they will automatically back themselves up. Essentially every time you write something to one of the drives, the file goes to the 2nd drive as well. You can usually do this in your motherboard's BIOS. Otherwise, most modern versions of Windows can create a "dynamic disk"; I'm pretty sure it can create a RAID-1 array.

The pair of 2TB drives is probably a better solution than the 3TB drive, plus it gives you the option to have 4TB of storage if and when you need it.
 
Another setup is to have one drive inside your computer, with the other being in an external enclosure connected via USB. That way, you can make incremental backups using a variety of software solutions.

I personally think that RAID-1 is less hassle, but if you only need to back certain things up, then you might get more mileage out of the USB solution.

You don't *have* to put the 2nd drive in an external enclosure; you could just leave them both in the case.
 
SickBeast said:
Spindle speed isn't everything. With 667GB platter density, the F4 can probably beat out 7200rpm drives with 320gb or maybe even 500gb platters. You'll lose a bit in terms of seek times, but transfer speeds should remain quite good.
Click to expand...
Yep, which is exactly why I asked WHAT he's planning to do with the drive. If he only wants to store video/mp3 whatever the sequential speed of a 5.4k rpm drive is more than enough, if he also wants to store games (pretty large for a SSD), rarely used apps and pictures/video for editing imo a 7.2k rpm drive would be more reasonable.

Which to speak: considering what he said he wants to use the drive for, every modern 5.4k rpm drive will be perfectly fine. Both drives should be rather quiet and have "good enough" performance, so I'd really take the cheaper drive AND invest the saved money (uh well and a bit extra) in some kind of backup.


SickBeast said:
If you set them up in a RAID-1 array, they will automatically back themselves up.
Click to expand...
RAID is no backup, RAID is no backup, RAID is no backup. I think I can't repeat that often enough.. Fishak posted taltas guide that should be answer the basic questions.
 
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