HDD recomendations

After clearing out the dust from my pc and realizing that the two deskstars in my pc are 6 years old (2x160gb 5200rpm raid 0) and the pair of 500gb (5200rpm) storage ones are from 07 and 08, I think it might be best to replace them all with a pair of 1tb drives or equivalents.

However I have not kept up with hard drive technology, I know ssd's are mighty fast in seek times, but are still a little expensive for my tastes, so was hoping that someone could recommend a new set of drives for me, and also if it is worth my while spending a little more and getting say 2x500gb for my os and putting them in raid, or if drives have improved in performance enough that that is no longer necessary?

Anything from Samsung or Western Digital IMO. I wouldn't bother with SSDs for storage purposes. For main OS drive SSD is the way to go. But for everything else, just a standard HDD.

For 1tb drives, the Samsung F3 1tb can be got for around £40
good value and a nice drive.

I'm still using a western digital 250gb Caviar Blue AAKS for my OS & software that must be at least 6 years old.
I find that unless they overheat most hard drives ether fail in the first 6 months or just keep going.
I know I've got an old susi 18gb IBM drive in a cupboard that still works fine, I've had it for over 10years and it was 2nd hand (it came from a broadcast TV ad server, so it's seen some heavy and continuous use over its life)

Pob I tend to agree, and with the 120mm intake sat next to them they stay nice and cool but one of the reasons I checked them out was one of the deskstars is making a grinding noise, only slight and smart checks out ok, but I suspect it will be on it's way out, wouldn't loose anything as I backup regularly but I am a bit worried as it is only raid 0, so no redundancy.
As for old hard drives, in my cuboard is an old Amiga with a video toaster system with a 60mb drive, that was used for video editing and effects, that still works fine :)

Don't bother with RAID 0 - for home use they tend to be slower (well, they take longer to initialise etc. and the most benefit is seen at high queue depth).

Any of Samsung, Western Digital, Seagate or Hitachi are great. They're all high volume sellers so you can find horror stories for all of them but it's very unlikely you'll have a problem.

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Originally Posted by kalniel

Any of Samsung, Western Digital, Seagate or Hitachi are great. They're all high volume sellers so you can find horror stories for all of them but it's very unlikely you'll have a problem.

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+1 for this. It doesn't really matter.

I have started buying Seagate HDDs when I got into computing but after a while I had many problems with that brand. I switched to Samsung drives which were good but again after a while most of them died in 1 year. :(

One of my friends had very good experience with WD overall (0 faults in years), so I have started using them from about 2007 and up until the second part of last year I was very happy with them.

I have upgraded computers with the Black and Blue models and didn't have to replace any of them so far.

I can't say positive things about the WD "Green" drives though. In the last 6 months I had !4! RMAs with wd, one which is currently in progress.

For the next set of drives I'll either go with WD black or Samsung drives and personally I'll avoid the green ones for a bit. :)


/off topic

I'm using raid 1 for storage for a while now and thanks to that I managed to keep all my data in the events of drive failures (often occurred in-between scheduled backups). So I recommend this to everyone...it's worth the additional cost imo.

So effectively all mechanical disks are much the same these days, and whatever is cheapest next week are the ones to get?
Not 100% about the Seagate barracuda greens myself, though they claim a 8ms seek time they are running at 5900rpm rather then 7200rpm (though that is an improvement on the 5200's I have now) and the faster drives have 8.9ms seek times I think I smell marketing bs from Seagate unless they are doing something extra special to help seek times.

Edit: WD are at it too, claiming 8ms on a 5400rpm drive, and I wondered why I was confused lol

The green drives all run at lower RPM, making back some performance loss with higher platter density.

I wouldn't recommend Seagate drives. I've got a few Seagates and quite a few Samsungs. The Seagates consistently run around 10C hotter than my Samsungs. And the ventilation is exactly the same.

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Originally Posted by ehhhhhhh

I'm using raid 1 for storage for a while now and thanks to that I managed to keep all my data in the events of drive failures (often occurred in-between scheduled backups). So I recommend this to everyone...it's worth the additional cost imo.

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Raid is not a backup. Raid is not a backup. Raid is not a backup. Raid is not a backup. Raid is not a backup. :)

Daily backups from one internal drive to another is far safer.

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Originally Posted by Golden Dragoon

So effectively all mechanical disks are much the same these days, and whatever is cheapest next week are the ones to get?

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Yes!

Only difference is platter density and rpm. For OS, both higher is better. For storage, low rpm is better.

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Originally Posted by Singh400

I wouldn't recommend Seagate drives. I've got a few Seagates and quite a few Samsungs. The Seagates consistently run around 10C hotter than my Samsungs. And the ventilation is exactly the same.

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Perhaps just an issue of sensor location/calibration?

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Originally Posted by sadbuttrue

Raid is not a backup. Raid is not a backup. Raid is not a backup. Raid is not a backup. Raid is not a backup. :)

Daily backups from one internal drive to another is far safer.

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This * 100

Raid 1? that's direct copying so should be fairly safe, however in general raid is incase one drive fails your whole system doesn't die at once, it's not a back up it's redundancy.
(except raid 0)

We could still come up with a good few ways in which a RAID 1 file could become corrupted/inaccessible on both drives though, direct copying or not.

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Originally Posted by sadbuttrue

Raid is not a backup. Raid is not a backup. Raid is not a backup. Raid is not a backup. Raid is not a backup. :)
.

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Who said it's a back up? Who said it's a back up? Who said it's a back up? Who said it's a back up? Who said it's a back up?

:D

It just needs repeating, regularly :p

Just checked out my OS drives with HD tune and there is something very wrong with the figures I am getting:
Transfer rate:
Min: 20.7mbs
Max: 57.7mbs
Average: 46.0mbs
Access time: 12.1ms
Burst Rate: 99.7mbs

I have a feeling they have either gone into an acoustic management mode, or are very much screwed, made a proper back up of the work that is on them and will see what happens, but I will think about replacing them with a 60gb SSD for my os and a couple of 2tb drives for storage very soon.

2TB HDD's are now £50 : )

Just mind that green drives are quite a bit slower than 7200 rpm drives but they generally are quieter. If you are only intending storing media on drives then greens are the way to go. If you're going to be using programs as well then I'd recommend a samsung F3, they are excellent drives.

Rather than start a new thread for basically the same question would going with a Samsung F3 be most suitable for Fraps recording? (high write speeds needed)

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Originally Posted by Kurshu

Rather than start a new thread for basically the same question would going with a Samsung F3 be most suitable for Fraps recording? (high write speeds needed)

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Yes, and if you are still write limited at 100MB/s then consider two in RAID 0 - sequential write is the one desktop application that has a clear benefit from that.