Single Platter 500GB Hard Drive

[jamiesalter]

Am running out of space on my current 500GB so am in the market for a another hard drive. Looking around, it seems the best performance you can get for a decent size is 500gb with Western Digital, Samsung and Seagate all offering 500GB platter hard drives.

I've tracked down the Samsung to this one:
Samsung HD502HI 500GB Hard Drive SATAII
Its 5400rpm and only 16mb cache.

The Seagate:
Seagate ST3500418AS 500GB Hard Drive
Its 7200rpm but still only 16mb cache.

Western Digital:
There are a number of reports that WD have released 500gb single platter hard drives but I can't find any. Apparently there are two types of their flagship 500GB Caviar Black drives, with the WD5001AALS-00L3B2 model having a single 500GB platter, 32 MB cache and 7200rpm. This sounds like the best performing single platter 500GB drive, it just seems its going to be a pain tracking them down.

Anyway, have you had any experience with high density single platter hard drives? And do you think scan will let me buy only the WD5001AALS-00L3B2 model?

[ice_chill]

What's wrong with bigger drives ? 750GB, 1TB and more. I know ebuyer lists the drive part number, have a look there.

[arthurleung]

And what is wrong with 16MB cache? I've used drive with 8M/16M/32M cache. I can't feel any difference at all.

[jamiesalter]

I don't need more than about 750GB and 500GB is fine especially as need to save as much as possible for the summer
I'm not an expert on platters or harddrives, but I was under the impression that fewer platters led to better performace with a harddrive that is cooler, quieter, quicker and more efficient. Is this not noticeable or unjustified?

Wait, here's a quote I just found from tomshardware (- I know its slightly out of date)
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...-hdd,2109.html

First, the capacity per platter, and hence the storage density, increases, which may result in improved throughput. We will reveal more details in this review, but the throughput experiment was a successful one. Second, the reduced platter count results in fewer moving parts, which has a positive impact on drive power consumption.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

[kalniel]

I'm not an expert on platters or harddrives, but I was under the impression that fewer platters led to better performace with a harddrive that is cooler, quieter, quicker and more efficient. Is this not noticeable or unjustified?

Fewer platters does not increase performance by itself, however a higher platter density does have a large effect on performance. So 1x500gb platter will perform better than 2x250gb platters, but no faster than a 2x500gb platters drive. Fewer platters does lower the temperature a little, and also has a minute effect power consumption, but you're unlikely to notice either of these effects realistically.

So, go for the highest density you can.. and if the cheapest way of doing that is 1x500gb then that's certainly what I'd recommend. Like arthurleung, I wouldn't worry about the difference between 16 and 32mb cache - again it's something you're not going to notice realistically.

[peterb]

The review doesn't quantify the difference in power consumption - which I would expect to be minimal. The heads all move together, so there would be a small increase in the mass of the head assembly, and similarly the platters, so there would be marginally more energy used in spinning them up. As for performance, I doubt you would notice much difference in practice. There is an argument that says that multiplatter could be faster because you only need to switch heads to read across successive tracks on different platters, but that depends on how the file is stored, how fragmented the disk is, and how any bad sectors have been mapped out, either during manufacture or subsequently in service.

There is, IMHO, a lot of unsubstantiated tosh spoken about HDD performance. True, specific tests can show speed improvements, but those tests are usually on a new drive where files are likely to be contiguous. As I say, real world performance, after the drive has been used for a while and the MFT (or equivalent) has expanded I suspect (but have no data to back it up) that there will be little difference.

[ice_chill]

As for the cache, the only time you'll see performance increase is if you are copying or moving files internally (within the hard drive).

[vicar]

buy what you can afford and get the most your money can deliver.

[arthurleung]

As for the cache, the only time you'll see performance increase is if you are copying or moving files internally (within the hard drive).

Windows have its own cache and having more drive cache is unlikely to help.
The cost of putting more cache in is minimal for manufacturers consider how cheap those ram chips are.