Best HD right now?

[Lowe]

What's the best 1gb (or thereabouts) drive I can get right now?

Seems to be lots available at the moment and not a lot to choose between them.

[nightkhaos]

I am a fan of the Western Digital Caviar Black drives. I personally recommend them.

Good reliablity, decent speed, decent price. Good all round drive.

(I assume you mean 1TB not 1GB?)

[peterb]

A good question, and one that is so hard to answer because people tend to defend their choice of drive with an almost religious fervour! Certainly the WD Scorpio must be near the top, I personally like Samsungs (although people have reported compatability issues with the earlier 1TB drives - presumably fixed now) and Hitachi seem to have a following, along with Seagate. the only ones that seem to be less popular are the Maxtor drives - they are owned by Seagate and so may be a budget range.

The other question is waht is meant by "best"? Best power consumption, reliability, speed, longevity, cost/byte?

In terms of reliability all makes of drive can have random failures, but it is hard to tell if they are the mfr quality control or damage in shipping. One person on Hexus said he had had a series of Samsung failures - which makes me suspect it isn't a drive problem (unless they were all all from the same batch) but one of handling during transport (one I could accept, 2 or three seem statistically unlikely).

In terms of performance, I'm not sure how much drive performance influences a run of the mill system. Cache size can make up for slower write/read speeds, but unless you are looking at something significantly fast (Velociraptor, SSD) a mS here or there is (IMHO) largely irrelevant, and since the seek times are averages, other factors such as fragmentation, bad sector mapping will skew those averages and the performance of a single instance of drive can't be guranteed.

So probably anyone of the big 4 (WD, Samsung, Hirtachi, Seagate) but it is probably as well to look at the Warranty and support, and who you buy it from. Scan bubble wrap extensivley, people say ebyer skimp (although I have just bought a couple of WD 2.5" drives which were adequately packaged).

So my answer is pick a couple of makes (and I'd choose Samsung and WD) and see which fits your particular requirement. But someone else will say choose brand x or y.

Whichever you choose, at some point it is going to fail (it is a mechanical device) so don't forget to consider your backup strategy.

[jim]

A good question, and one that is so hard to answer because people tend to defend their choice of drive with an almost religious fervour! Certainly the WD Scorpio must be near the top

Isn't the Scorpio a 2.5" drive?

Anyway, regarding the thread, I'd go for a Western Digital Black 1001FALS at the 1TB mark - it's a very reliable drive of the same ilk as the Raid Edition 3 (RE3) Enterprise drive, and excellent performance, although noise and heat aren't the best.

[nightkhaos]

If you want quiet and don't care about performance however, there is the Western Digital Caviar Greens, which althrough not as quiet as some of the other "EcoDrives" there doesn't tend to be as much of a performance hit for having a quiet HDD.

Of course, if you want noise reduction the best course of action is hard-drive suspension, but that can be tricky, I haven't done it yet for my system, and doubt I will need to until I upgrading the cooling.

[Lowe]

D'oh typo - yeah 1 TB, oops!

I've currently got 2x 500gb Samsung F1's in a RAID 0 array but it appears one of them's packed in and my Windows installation's now shot. I've got to get this machine running properly by Monday morning so it looks like I'll be taking a trip to the Purple Shirts later and seeing what they have on the shelf. At least I should be able to find one of the big 4 there. I think I'm leaning towards a Hitachi (despite their reputation, I had a IDE Deathstar that lasted for absolutely years!)

Backing up - oh the irony, I ordered an external drive the other day since it's my birthday on Tuesday. The drives died last night, with my birthday present wrapped up upstairs!

Looking into the current HDs warranty it appears the F1s are guaranteed for 3 years so if something's really seriously gone wrong I'll have to RMA it. Oh well, you can never have too much storage right?

[peterb]

Isn't the Scorpio a 2.5" drive?

Anyway, regarding the thread, I'd go for a Western Digital Black 1001FALS at the 1TB mark - it's a very reliable drive of the same ilk as the Raid Edition 3 (RE3) Enterprise drive, and excellent performance, although noise and heat aren't the best.

Yes (scorpio at the forefront of my brain - it was what I bought last!)

[ashikamlani]

As said earlier, either choose a WD Caviar Black, or, if you're on a budget, the Samsung Spinpoint F1

[gamesaregood]

D'oh typo - yeah 1 TB, oops!

I've currently got 2x 500gb Samsung F1's in a RAID 0 array but it appears one of them's packed in and my Windows installation's now shot. I've got to get this machine running properly by Monday morning so it looks like I'll be taking a trip to the Purple Shirts later and seeing what they have on the shelf. At least I should be able to find one of the big 4 there. I think I'm leaning towards a Hitachi (despite their reputation, I had a IDE Deathstar that lasted for absolutely years!)

Backing up - oh the irony, I ordered an external drive the other day since it's my birthday on Tuesday. The drives died last night, with my birthday present wrapped up upstairs!

Looking into the current HDs warranty it appears the F1s are guaranteed for 3 years so if something's really seriously gone wrong I'll have to RMA it. Oh well, you can never have too much storage right?

If its a Raid 0 of two drives and you need to get the system back up and running and all data is lost anyway then why not split the array, diagnose the faulty drive and reinstall on the good one. You can then use the single drive while sending the second off under warranty as your correct when you say they have 3 years warranty. You will just need to then decide what to do when the replacement arrives!

[Lowe]

I'm worried they're from the same batch so don't trust the other drive. Cutting a long story short Agent has had my machine for two days and has been doing a brill job of trying to recover what he can. He's popped in a Samsung 1.5TB F1 and then the other drives will be used for test/spare drives.

[mohoshin]

As said earlier, either choose a WD Caviar Black, or, if you're on a budget, the Samsung Spinpoint F1

Yes i seconnd the Samsung Spinpoint, very good value for money.
Can be had for as little as £70.

[Blastuk]

Samsung F1 £55.99 delivered on offer atm http://www.ebuyer.com/product/168123
I got one for £54.99 a week or two ago
Definately best value for money.

But if money is no object, I would go for WD any day.

[!TIMMY!]

I am looking to get 2 1TB for Raid 1 and would get the Samsung F1's if I were to buy now. But I am going to wait until the Samsung F3 reviews come out. Read some reviews on the Seagate 1TB 7200.12 and they were a mixed bag performance wise.

[AD-15]

hello,

Apologies if this is pointing out the obvious, but did you check out the tomshardware charts?

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/3...hmarks,24.html

Whenever I purchase a new drive, this resource is excellent for finding out which qualities/downfalls each series of hard drive can have.