Samsung Spinpoint F1 or Seagate 7200.11

[o0oPhreako0o]

Here I am again.. With another question, haha

In my new system, I will have 2 OS HDD's (waiting for the new velociraptor ;>), and 2 Data disks. I will put all my 'backups' on the Data disks. I cant decide which Harddisk to take....


Samsung Spinpoint F1 500gb 16mb or Spinpoint F1 750 32mb (Is the 750 that much faster than the 500gb?)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 32mb 500gb


The 2 HHD's will be placed in a Raid01 for fast transfer rates. So any one knows which one is the fastest, and best HDD to buy ?... I really cant decide


#phreak

[peterb]

It doesn't really matter - hard drives are like religion - some swear that x are by far and away the best, others will say they have had bad experiences with them.

Strategy one - go for the cheapest.

If you really want someone to maker a decision for you - and you don't have a coin to flip -

Stategy 2 - do what I do - buy the Samsung. Reason? I like them.

As for the size - there is a school of thought that says get the biggest you can afford 0- the other is that you buy the cheapest per gigabyte and upgrade as the prices fall. I go for the latter, so if you want an answer...

Buy the Spinpoint 500Gb.

(And remember that RAID 1 is not a backup solution)

[o0oPhreako0o]

Oops i meant Raid0 xD.. Yes i know its not a backup solution .. Thanks for the info !

[hermeticist]

I keep harping on about these drives:

Western Digital Caviar SE16 640Gb 16Mb Cache Hard Disk Drive SATAII 300MB/s <8.9ms 7200rpm - OEM : wd-640aaks

But do look at the reviews, people are comparing them to Raptors (rightly or wrongly), but they are as fast as Samsung 1TB F1, hopefully with better reliability & they carry no price premium.

[Behemoth]

I've always been very happy with Western Digital drives, so the 500AAKS drive which I have would be a great little performer. Had mine for almost a year now, and *touches wood* it's been fine

[Jay]

the Spinpoint F1 750 32mb are as fast as a Raptor150 in most tests.

[peterb]

Unless you are running database apps or other specialised software, don't bother with RAID 0. The read speed increase is marginal in most situations and the write speed can be worse unless you are using a dedicated high end controller card. You certainly should not be using it for data areas without fully understanding the risks and implications. There 'might' be a case for using it on OS and Application storage areas - but again marginal unless you are using a dedicated controller.

RAID 1 IS worth it where resiliance and/or uptime is important - particularly server applications.

[Jay]

I agree, unless you are using huge files RAID 0 isnot worth it, for a video editing system RAID 0 is fantastic due to the huge size of the files. Due to how RAID 0 works it can show little to no improvment for general use due to the fact that most files are not big enough to be writen across both drives. In theory most of the time only 1 drive will really be used but you have twice the chance of losing it all.

I would splash out and get 4 drives and RAID 5 it you do not lose as much disk space as you would if you used RAID 1 but you still have the resiliance you require. If you can only splash out on two drives I would use them stand alone if you need the space or RAID 1 if you don't mind losing 50&#37;.

[moogle]

samsung all the way. I agree with peterb's 2nd method Plus they have AAM for those quiet seeks.

[Blitzen]

I use 2 x 500GB Spinpoints in RAID 0 and it moves big video files around very quickly.

(I did only use RAID 0 though as i havent seen anyone else Raid two 500GB drives before so i thought i would giov it a go).

These drives are all but silent aswell which is very nice.
They were only &#163;50 each aswell

[GSte]

Some issues with the Samsung:

Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives

[rufeo]

There have seemed to be a lot of people with problems with the 1TB samsungs, but haven't heard of many problems with the 750gb and 500gb drives. The 500 and 750gb (afaik) drives have a different platter denstiy to the 1tb version. so even though they have the same model no, they are different.

I've got two t166 500gb samsung hdd, they work perfectly fine and are very quiet

[moogle]

I'll be willing to test out these 1tb f1 failure rates if anyone is willing to donate £99
No seriously I'd really want to find out if it really has problems and had I not already bought enough drives recently I would have tried it out as I got nothing majorly important on my drives.

anyone who got a 1tb f1 here and it's working fine?

[r_j_k_p]

yep got it few days ago and am using it as a backup
and transfered 500gb of stuff to it and no problems as of yet

[GSte]

There have seemed to be a lot of people with problems with the 1TB samsungs, but haven't heard of many problems with the 750gb and 500gb drives. The 500 and 750gb (afaik) drives have a different platter denstiy to the 1tb version. so even though they have the same model no, they are different.

I've got two t166 500gb samsung hdd, they work perfectly fine and are very quiet

Half asleep when I read (or rather, didn't read fully) the first post. 500GB version seems fine as you say .