New Hard drive?

[Hicks12]

My hard drive seems to making much more noise than it used to, it clicks(although not to the extreme amount, still audible) when seeking, my boot time has significantly increased for some reason but yet the drive comes back clean of any bad sectors.

Now its still working but ideally i dont want to lose ALL of my data when it does go and i dont want this slower performance so i was wondering whats the best drive to get? I really want a SSD but the budget aint there yet, so im guessing a mechanical drive like a samsung F3? I dont need a 1TB drive but ill take it if it offers better performance than the 500gb F3. What over alternatives are there? 500GB is a sweet spot for me, its going to be used as a boot drive and then any needed backups like my work and stuff will stay there but everything else on this 640gb AAKS. Ideally a drive thats below £50


Any suggestions are appreciated, thanks

[Skulltrail]

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts...hmarks,50.html

Gives a good overview. The general trend is Samsung giving the best read / write rates with WD better seek times. For your budget though the 500GB F3 is probably the best bet (the WDs are a bit expensive), although the 1TB is a little quicker and may sneak under budget.

[Hicks12]

Thanks for the link . Its a tough decision, i want to get a SSD later this year so spending as little as possible would be nice but at the same time a 1TB drive would be great.... this is annoying .

Both are on scan today only, 500gb is £32 and 1tb is £48 i think.

[Pob255]

500gb
samsung F3 £36ish
WD Caviar Black £45ish

heck even another AAKS Caviar Blue they are still good drives 500gb £36ish, another 640gb £40ish

[Hicks12]

I do like the WD drives but i have always wanted to try out samsung , i think i will get the samsung 500GB as its cheapest and offers pretty decent performance still along with being quieter than the 1tb and most other drives .

Will have a look else where for a cheaper price but i feel scan are the best so they will have an order soon haha.

edit: Ok forgot that i have no 3 1/2 " bays left since i cut them off . Im gunna get some sewing elastic to solve that as i have 5" bays left, anyone know where i can get some?.

[mrt9888]

Why not just get a 3.5 to 5 inch adaptor while your getting the hard drive.

[Saracen]

.... but ideally i dont want to lose ALL of my data when it does go a.....


Any suggestions are appreciated, thanks

Yup. Implement a decent backup strategy.

If you have one, use an old PC as a server, and duplicate data. Or get a NAS. Or just get a large external HD. Or, take out a subscription to an online backup site. And then partition your HD (or HDs) in such a way that things that can be replaced/re-installed are on separate partitions form data that can't be replaced, or cant reasonably and feasibly be replaced, anyway. And religiously duplicate and back up that which you can't afford to lose.

For instance, an OS can be re-installed, as can apps. It's a nuisance, can be a major pain and can take a lot of time getting everything back, but it's feasible. So they could go on one partition.

If you've downloaded stuff you shouldn't, you could probably do it again, and if you've ripped your CD collection, you could re-rip it. But it'd probably take a lot of time and effort. So prioritise that accordingly, and have that on a partition.

But what about emails? Perhaps business contacts? Accounts data? Proposals or contracts? School or uni projects? Development projects and code? Personal artwork? Your digital photo collection? And so on. Put that on a separate partition and make sure it's copied. So ... to that spare PC, external HD or NAS, set up a sync program like AllWay Sync or the MS sync app, and make sure you've always got important data in more than one place. Then, if an HD does die, at least you don't lose irreplaceable stuff.


My attitude with HDs is that while they're far better than they used to be, with any HD it's not if it will fail, but when. Typically, they last a long time, but they can also be taken out at very short notice by a variety of external factors ranging from a PSU fault or a mains spike, to a burglary, fire or flood.


So if you have data you don't want to lose, take proactive steps to make sure you don't. It then comes down to balancing just how much you don't want to lose it with how much it'll cost to ensure you don't.

And if you're getting noises from your HD, do it sooner rather than later.

Oh, and in addition to backing up the more important data, stick a TrueImage backup of the OS and app partitions on that large external drive (or whatever). Then, even a total hard drive failure can be dealt with in as long as it takes to get a new HD and the few hours it takes to restore the images. If you really want to be up and running quickly, keep a spare HD in a drawer ready for this ... like I do.


A typical strategy might look something like :-

C: OS
D: apps
E: Games
F: Multimedia
G: Main data (don't want to lose data here)
H: Secondary data (less important, or less frequently changing, data here)

Backing up G: is the critical one. You might back up H less often, perhaps not back up F at all, and do TrueImage images of C, D and maybe E.

[Hicks12]

Mrt, the adaptors are like £6 which seems a bit silly for something that doesnt reduce noise... just got a 5 meter roll off ebay for £1.5 so im sorted there .

And Saracen, trust you to provide the longest post with quality information . Yeah dont have an extra PC to use nor hard drive (at the minute), thankfully my data is generally work projects and school projects so nothing big in size. I have a big collection of dvd's so may burn them onto that, loosing the rest of the data aint a problem at all because its literally is just games off steam haha which is ok since im upgrading to 50Mb Broadband shortly so cant download any time.

Will see about an external hard drive but for now the money doesnt permit it as insurance and stuff is due shortly, next month i can though .

Thanks for the comments guys, ive had a look and scan are cheapest so will grab it from them now.

[EarlGrey]

I'd get the 1Tb version of the F3 - you'll be glad of extra space sometime soon

[Hicks12]

Well ive had more than 2TB at some point with 1TB hitachi deskstar and 2 640gb AAKS, didnt use the space at all and sold them :L. 500GB ordered, will be plenty for me .

[Attila the Bun]

I was just going to start a thread with just this question.

Saracen's advice and Skulltrail's link was just what I needed.

Chancing across this site a couple of months ago has saved me months of unnecessary research.

[g8ina]

Take a look at retrodata's website. My friend Odie Ferrious (Duncan Clarke) is a bit of a HDD god in my book and is well in touch with all makes. He maintains a reliability chart for most available makes with historical trends too.

hth

[Attila the Bun]

Blimey g8ina,

That makes cheerful reading...now I'm in an even bigger quandary on what to purchase...do you know when your mate is next updating his list.

Otherwise it looks like a Hitachi for me.

[g8ina]

If u need specific advice, just ask him. He doesnt (usually) bite

[peterb]

I've been running a WD and a Samsung 1.5Tbyte pair in a Raid 1 array. FWIW - the Samsung runs aboout 6 to 10 degrees cooler than the WD (axccording to the SMART data. Less themal load on your system, and I guess lower power consumption.

[peterb]

I've been thinking about retrodata's comments. While I don't doubt that what he says is true - he has seen a rise in returns of Samsungs and WD's, the data as it is presented is meaningless. He doesn't know (or say) how old the drives are or the mode of failure. And he doesn't say (because he can't know) what the total user population of the disks is.

If I say that in a month I had 10 brand x disks sent in as faulty, and in the same month 20 brand y - then you could say that brand y is less reliable than brand x. Hoever if that 10 from brand x was from a user base of (say) 100, and the user base of brand y is 1000, then that is a failure rate of 10% for brand x, but only 2% for brand y.

A slightly different story.

As I say, I'm not saying the retrodata is wrong - but I am saying that you need to be careful in drawing conclusions from the data he has presented.