Hard Drives... What is now reasonably priced but just behind "cutting edge"?

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nada

Hey all!

I presently have 2 SATA HD's of 300 Gigs and 2 IDE HD's of 300 &
200-something Gig - and i can't tell the difference between the sppeds
of each. All are typical CompUSA/Best Buy WD Caviar or Maxtor units
and are 7200 with 4 or 8 meg buffers.

I'm gonna upgrade and spend a little extra this time. I don't want
the newest-high end (especially in price) HD's but I'd like what is
now reasonable in price and better than the advertised units in the
paper. What do I need to look for? Newegg has a WD Raptor that's
10,000 RPM 16MB Cache that's Serial ATA-150 for $200. 200 bones is
fine but it's only 150 Gigs! Yikes!!! I NEED capacity.

Any suggestions on fairly new tech and speed without getting soaked
for being the first one on your block to get the cutting edge stuff?

Thanks!!!!! And any "education" on HD's would be appreciated!

Thanks for your help!!!!
 
Hey all!

I presently have 2 SATA HD's of 300 Gigs and 2 IDE HD's of 300 &
200-something Gig - and i can't tell the difference between the sppeds
of each. All are typical CompUSA/Best Buy WD Caviar or Maxtor units
and are 7200 with 4 or 8 meg buffers.

I'm gonna upgrade and spend a little extra this time. I don't want
the newest-high end (especially in price) HD's but I'd like what is
now reasonable in price and better than the advertised units in the
paper. What do I need to look for? Newegg has a WD Raptor that's
10,000 RPM 16MB Cache that's Serial ATA-150 for $200. 200 bones is
fine but it's only 150 Gigs! Yikes!!! I NEED capacity.

Any suggestions on fairly new tech and speed without getting soaked
for being the first one on your block to get the cutting edge stuff?

Thanks!!!!! And any "education" on HD's would be appreciated!

Thanks for your help!!!!
Click to expand...

I guess it varies in different parts of the world but here in NZ the best
bang-for-buck is Seagate 320GB '10' series 7,200rpm SATA drives with 16MB
caches and perpendicular tech. (Model Number:ST3250823AS) NZ$120 each, under
US$100. Good, fast drives (in their class). Reliable and cheap.
 
Hey all!

I presently have 2 SATA HD's of 300 Gigs and 2 IDE HD's of 300 &
200-something Gig - and i can't tell the difference between the sppeds
of each. All are typical CompUSA/Best Buy WD Caviar or Maxtor units
and are 7200 with 4 or 8 meg buffers.

I'm gonna upgrade and spend a little extra this time. I don't want
the newest-high end (especially in price) HD's but I'd like what is
now reasonable in price and better than the advertised units in the
paper. What do I need to look for? Newegg has a WD Raptor that's
10,000 RPM 16MB Cache that's Serial ATA-150 for $200. 200 bones is
fine but it's only 150 Gigs! Yikes!!! I NEED capacity.

Any suggestions on fairly new tech and speed without getting soaked
for being the first one on your block to get the cutting edge stuff?
Click to expand...

To be blunt, the answer is no. You want better performance
but that always entails spending more (if we rule out the
duds from any particular era and just focus on mainstream
performance vs a significant upgrade from that).
Thanks!!!!! And any "education" on HD's would be appreciated!

Thanks for your help!!!!
Click to expand...


As always, define the budget and the required parameters
(capacity). From there, pick the most suited candidate.
FWIW, having both capacity and performance many people like
the Hitachi 1TB, though personally I'd prefer a larger # of
drives with fewer platters each, per same $$$, and some
people just think bigger is better so it's not so clear cut.
FWIW, I don't put any large drives in desktop systems
either, there's much to be said for having a RAID5 or at
least 1 across GbE and accepting some poerformance loss, as
these days DDR2 memory is dirt cheap and quite a lot can be
cached. IOW, hard drive performance is no substitute for
boatloads of main memory unless you do a lot of video
editing.
 
Hey all!

I presently have 2 SATA HD's of 300 Gigs and 2 IDE HD's of 300 &
200-something Gig - and i can't tell the difference between the sppeds
of each. All are typical CompUSA/Best Buy WD Caviar or Maxtor units
and are 7200 with 4 or 8 meg buffers.

I'm gonna upgrade and spend a little extra this time. I don't want
the newest-high end (especially in price) HD's but I'd like what is
now reasonable in price and better than the advertised units in the
paper. What do I need to look for? Newegg has a WD Raptor that's
10,000 RPM 16MB Cache that's Serial ATA-150 for $200. 200 bones is
fine but it's only 150 Gigs! Yikes!!! I NEED capacity.

Any suggestions on fairly new tech and speed without getting soaked
for being the first one on your block to get the cutting edge stuff?

Thanks!!!!! And any "education" on HD's would be appreciated!

Thanks for your help!!!!
Click to expand...

If you put the OS, any scratch space (like a Photoshop scratch disk
or a paging file) on the small Raptor, that might speed up things
you do frequently.

At least for me, I have a lot of seldomly used files, and if they
are sitting on a second, slow and large drive, I'd be happy.

So you could use two disks to do the job, if you want to experiment
with a 10000 RPM disk for a while. You can even make a backup image
of the Raptor, onto the other big disk, in case of a problem with the
Raptor.

I used to run a computer with seven disks in it, but the noise got
to me. I generally try to run only one disk now, for better
noise and electricity usage. You could try two disks for a while,
and see if you like the split of "small and speedy" for some stuff,
and "large and slow" for archival storage (MP3/movie).

Paul
 
Hey all!

I presently have 2 SATA HD's of 300 Gigs and 2 IDE HD's of 300 &
200-something Gig - and i can't tell the difference between the sppeds
of each. All are typical CompUSA/Best Buy WD Caviar or Maxtor units
and are 7200 with 4 or 8 meg buffers.

I'm gonna upgrade and spend a little extra this time. I don't want
the newest-high end (especially in price) HD's but I'd like what is
now reasonable in price and better than the advertised units in the
paper. What do I need to look for? Newegg has a WD Raptor that's
10,000 RPM 16MB Cache that's Serial ATA-150 for $200. 200 bones is
fine but it's only 150 Gigs! Yikes!!! I NEED capacity.
Click to expand...

What is your goal for the upgrade? Do you want capacity, speed, silence,
power reduction?

If capacity, then you can get SATA 750GB drives now. If you want speed, then
you found it with the raptors. If you want silence, then there are a few
options - Samsung Spinpoint is the big name, but the new WD5000AAKS I just
bought is nearly silent (and 500GB). If you want budget, then stick around
the 300GB mark, but you won't end up with more space than you have now
(assuming you are replacing).
 
GT said:
What is your goal for the upgrade? Do you want capacity, speed,
silence, power reduction?

If capacity, then you can get SATA 750GB drives now. If you want
speed, then you found it with the raptors. If you want silence, then
there are a few options - Samsung Spinpoint is the big name, but the
new WD5000AAKS I just bought is nearly silent (and 500GB). If you want
budget, then stick around the 300GB mark, but you won't end up with
more space than you have now (assuming you are replacing).
Click to expand...
I have to agree on the WD5000AAKs. I just bought four of them for two
Raid0 arrays for A/V work and for price/performance they are very good.
Working with large files between the two arrays is noticeably faster
than any two drive combo with the possible exception of the Raptors
which would be cost prohibitive for 2tb. The large capacity allows me to
keep projects on the drives (I have everything on CD/DVD too) for easy
access if I need additional copies. Keeping critical data on Raid0
arrays is definately not reccomended. The drives are also very quiet.

Ed
 
What do I need to look for? Newegg has a WD Raptor that's
10,000 RPM 16MB Cache that's Serial ATA-150 for $200. 200 bones is
fine but it's only 150 Gigs! Yikes!!! I NEED capacity.

Any suggestions on fairly new tech and speed without getting soaked
for being the first one on your block to get the cutting edge stuff?
Click to expand...

I'd look at the WD Caviar SE16 series and the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 series.
They both have perpendicular recording technology in the large capacity HDs,
that gives higher data density and better performance.
 
John Weiss said:
I'd look at the WD Caviar SE16 series and the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10
series. They both have perpendicular recording technology in the large
capacity HDs, that gives higher data density and better performance.
Click to expand...

I don't believe my new WD5000AAKS (SE 16) has perpendicular recording,
although I may be wrong. I think only the seagates have that at the mo.

Doesn't really matter!
 
Hey all!

I presently have 2 SATA HD's of 300 Gigs and 2 IDE HD's of 300 &
200-something Gig - and i can't tell the difference between the sppeds
of each. All are typical CompUSA/Best Buy WD Caviar or Maxtor units and
are 7200 with 4 or 8 meg buffers.

I'm gonna upgrade and spend a little extra this time. I don't want the
newest-high end (especially in price) HD's but I'd like what is now
reasonable in price and better than the advertised units in the paper.
What do I need to look for? Newegg has a WD Raptor that's 10,000 RPM
16MB Cache that's Serial ATA-150 for $200. 200 bones is fine but it's
only 150 Gigs! Yikes!!! I NEED capacity.

Any suggestions on fairly new tech and speed without getting soaked for
being the first one on your block to get the cutting edge stuff?

Thanks!!!!! And any "education" on HD's would be appreciated!

Thanks for your help!!!!
Click to expand...

Maybe performance depends on lots of things but the simple answer is SATA-
II, 500-750Gig @ $100-200USD and single drive USB enclosures for $20-40
each current drive, or USB/eSATA HD server case) for all current drives.
If you have wireless and use a server you could put the server in the
basement or garage. Check out Network Attached Servers.
 
GT said:
I don't believe my new WD5000AAKS (SE 16) has perpendicular recording,
although I may be wrong. I think only the seagates have that at the mo.
Click to expand...

WD has it in their 750
(http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=311):

Key FeaturesTop performance for Windows Vista - WD Caviar SE16 SATA and EIDE
drives are certified for Windows Vista and are top performers on the Windows
Vista Experience Index.

16 MB Cache - Bigger cache means faster performance. A massive 16 MB
cache combined with advanced acoustic and power-reducing technologies make
these ultra-fast drives the perfect solution for the fully loaded PC.

Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) - The latest generation of WD
Caviar SE16 drives employs PMR technology to achieve even greater areal
density.
(750 GB only)

IntelliSeekT - Calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption,
noise and vibration.
SecureParkT - Parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin
up, spin down and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never
touches the disk surface resulting in improved long term reliability due to
less head wear, and improved non- operational shock tolerance.

StableTracT - The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce
system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during
read and write operations.
(750 GB only)
 
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