Single platter 500GB drives?

[staffsMike]

Hi guys, I need a new drive and I've lost touch of the progress in them.

Preferably Western digital but open to Samsung and Hitachi also. Any sure things (500GB Single platters) or am I better off sticking to the 640GB drives which I have now?

[shaithis]

The 1.5 and 2.0TB drives are all 500GB platters but 5400rpm....there is very little between them and the 320GB platter drives due to the speed difference.

[kalniel]

Hi guys, I need a new drive and I've lost touch of the progress in them.

Preferably Western digital but open to Samsung and Hitachi also. Any sure things (500GB Single platters) or am I better off sticking to the 640GB drives which I have now?

Samsung F3 500GB is a solid single platter 7200rpm disk. 1TB version is two of them.

[staffsMike]

Cheers, I don't need a big drive so I'm not looking at 1TB+ just a basic 500GB drive (7200rpm).

So no sure things from WD?

[kalniel]

So no sure things from WD?

I think the caviar black comes in 500GB platter sizes too, but not sure they've released a single platter version, instead the 500GB is usually 2x250. I'm not very good at decoding WD model numbers though.

[staffsMike]

Me neither, I had a 2x250GB which is why I'm trying to avoid it again because it was quite noticeably slower than other drives. Think I'll probably end up playing safe with a 640GB

[bigben1021]

Samsung F3 drives get my vote... and some support from others also:

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...500gb-hdd.html

[staffsMike]

Ended up getting another 640GB Caviar blue (and ordered a 1.5TB Green )

[Lourdes]

The Blue is far slower than the F3. :/

[s3ds]

last one i used in a build was a sammy F3 and like you i prefer WD but the sammys ive got/used seem good ( 3 x320 F1's + 3 x 1.5TB F2 ) in various builds

[nightkhaos]

The Blue is far slower than the F3. :/

Not really. The F3 has better burst speeds, and slightly higher (5-6MB/s by last reasoning) linear read/write, but their seek times are almost identical, which means random read/writes are about the same. F3 is a better drive, no doubt, but we're getting well close to the physical limits of mechinical drives here. SSD is the only way we can go for performance improvements now.

[Lourdes]

Not really. The F3 has better burst speeds, and slightly higher (5-6MB/s by last reasoning) linear read/write, but their seek times are almost identical, which means random read/writes are about the same. F3 is a better drive, no doubt, but we're getting well close to the physical limits of mechinical drives here. SSD is the only way we can go for performance improvements now.

The random reads/writes and IOPS may not be that much faster as the rpm is a limiting factor but everything else is significantly quicker due to the platter density.
Scroll down here to see them compared:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?t=18063209

It's a bigger difference than I thought actually, especially on the smaller reads/writes where things usually level off.