Samsung 500GB HD501LJ or Western Digital 500GB RE2 WD5000YS ?

I'm building a new system and have nearly bought all my components, apart from CPU, HD and video card. Depending on the money system, I pretty much know the CPU and video card I'll be getting (For anyone that's interested - Core 2 Duo E6600 if I can afford it, otherwise the E4300 or E6400, and a GeForce 7600 GT or 7900 GS). For the Hard drive I can't decide between two:

- Samsung SpinPoint T166 500GB HD501LJ
- Western Digital RE2 500GB WD5000YS

I wwas also considering having 2x Samsung SpinPoint 250GB SP2504C in RAID 0, but changed my mind as you can never have enough storage so eventually I'll end up with about 4 x 500GB in RAID 5 giving me 1.5TB with redundancy.

Both the Samsung and WD are cool and quiet, and about the same speed. The WD costs about £15-£20 more than the Samsung, and I've read there was a bad batch going around. However, for some unexplained reason I am swaying towards the WD.

Anyone have any advice on which one I should go for and why ?

BTW, I know the WD has a 5 year warranty, but I would prefer a drive not to fail at all in the first place.

Many people bang on about how great Seagate are, but there are so many people who have had problems with them. Sure, they may be replaced free of charge, but I don't want a replacement - I want a drive that will run without problems in the first place.

As I mentioned, WD had a bad batch recently if comments on Newegg are to be believed. Samsung seems to have the least problems of all drives.

t-series spinpoints are very slow

My personal preferenece would be this http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=451529, the Seagate 7200.10 Baracuda 400GB.

It might not be *quite* as big as the drives you're looking at, but performance wise it's really quick if you switch the jumper to SATA 3GB/s.


Between the two offered, I'd be inclined to go with the WD model for the better manufacturers warrenty

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Originally Posted by Lucio

My personal preferenece would be this http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=451529, the Seagate 7200.10 Baracuda 400GB.

It might not be *quite* as big as the drives you're looking at, but performance wise it's really quick if you switch the jumper to SATA 3GB/s.


Between the two offered, I'd be inclined to go with the WD model for the better manufacturers warrenty

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Agreed, I have used WD for sometime, never had a failure. The one time i did switch it was to Maxtor. Never again, failed after 2 months.

Re. the SpiunPoint T's being slow, I would have to disagree based on the benchmarks I've seen. It appears to be slow on some of the synthetic benchmarks, but on tasks like file creation/copying (both large and small) it tends to be one of the fastest. I'll post a link to the benchmarks I'm referring to when I find it again.

I was originally considering a Seagate 7200.10 500GB drive, but have read there are two types - one is very noisy and the other is quiet. If I could guarantee that I'd get a quiet one, then I may re-consider them.

Would Scan accept a return if I got a noisy one, even though it works perfectly OK ?

Has anyone bought a Seagate 7200.10 from Scan recently, and was it noisy or quiet ?

I'm looking forward to Seagate's next HD series (ie. 7200.11 ?) as Segate recently bought Maxtor, whose drives have the best NCQ algorithm.