Best HDD for under £100

[calidar]

I'm looking to setup two new HDDs in RAID0 and was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for an HDD for under £100. The larger the better.

Thanks.

[Bonebreaker777]

You are after TWO HDDs for £100 or you are willing to pay up to £100 each?

Are they going to be in a PC or rather NAS/home server?

[calidar]

The budget is £100 each, they are going in my PC.

[AETAaAS]

If you are going RAID0, I would prioritize reliability above space, which means network or enterprise grade drives. Hitachi Ultrastar or Western Digital Red. You will find 2TB versions for about £90. Striping them into 4TB should be quite a good amount of space. If you wanted to stretch, you could find 3TB models but that is up to you.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hitachi-Ultr...bs_computers_2
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2tb-w...q-oem-24x7-use

edit: That Amazon listing is a little weird. Its cheaper than competing retailers and the model number and advertised space don't match. Ultrastar 7k3000 is a 7,200RPM drive with 3TB. Not the 2TB they advertise. The seller has a good history and Amazon usually takes care of disputes reasonably well if the retailer doesn't do it themselves. Otherwise just go with the WD Reds on Scan, good performance drives and WD gives priority support to Red customers. If you can find an additional £50, you may as well go and grab two 3TBs at £115 each. Its only a 25% additional outlay for 50% more space.

[calidar]

Ill look into the Western Digital Reds.

Thanks for your help.

[Bonebreaker777]

Agree on the WD Reds. Don't have take aways for a week but make sure you don't settle for some shabby 2TB HDDs.

[dave87]

What are you planning to use the storage for?

4TB of RAID0 is a lot - especially as it would take a substantial amount of time to back up. I've had a RAID0 array spanning a pair of WD Raptors fail (totalling 300gb) and that was enough of a pain despite it only being programs installed on it (all of which could readily be reinstalled).

If it is for scratch purposes (i.e. very short term editing of photographs or video) it would make sense. If not, could you look at an SSD plus a 1 or 2tb drive for storage?

[calidar]

It will be used primarily for game storage, and after thinking it over I agree that I may be overbuying somewhat. Are HDDs in RAID0 typically any less reliable than those which aren't?

[calidar]

The old one is 3 years old 500gb and still being used in my laptop.

[deejayburnout]

Have you considered buying a SSD for your games???? You will find them a lot faster for gaming, but you will compromise speed for space.

Not clued up on the prices of SSD's just now but can imagine £200 would buy you a good SSD for gaming.

[calidar]

I had thought about that but for an ssd of any decent size is just too expensive for me.

[AETAaAS]

It will be used primarily for game storage, and after thinking it over I agree that I may be overbuying somewhat. Are HDDs in RAID0 typically any less reliable than those which aren't?

It is not that RAID0 negatively affects the actual life of any one individual drive. However because of the way RAID0 splits data, when one drive dies, any data on the other is completely worthless. So in a way, you are doubling your risk of data loss by going RAID0.

If by 'game storage' you mean having a copy locally to run (but still have additional copies such as on disks or on Steam), RAID0 is fine if a bit inconvenient if things go belly up. But anything without backups or is mission critical should be done on RAID1 (or any of the higher RAIDs) or with regular backing up.

[calidar]

Almost all my games are either on steam or disks so I'm not too concerned about losing the data. Saves and anything that is not relatively easily replaceable will be backed up.

[mikeo01]

Games do more "reading" than writing, and RAID 0 won't help there much. RAID is best for backups and heavy writing.

You want lower access time if you want quicker game performance, or things "loading" quicker. So really best bet would be to go for an SSD

If size is a concern you could use an SSD with lower capacity for most used programs and have a good old HDD for games and long term storage stuff.

[dave87]

256GB enough for you?

http://www.ebuyer.com/410474-samsung...sd-mz-7pd256bw

540MB/s sequential read, 520MB/s sequential write - faster than you are likely to get in RAIDing standard hard drives. Not to mention the random seek time is a lot lower than a mechanical, spindle based drive.

[calidar]

Not really my laptop is currently full with a 225gb and a 500gb drive and I've got less that half my steam library on it, albeit I do have a lot of films, music etc. I'm realistically looking for upwards of 2TB storage minimum. Although my new system will have 1 SSD in it for the operating system and often used programs so I'll probably find some space on that, although it's only 120gb.