2-3TB storage HD for games. Any recommendations?

Happy holidays everyone. I'm after some suggestions for a hard drive to mainly store games on, in the range of 2-3tb. Currently boot drive is an Evo SSD, I have a WD Green 2tb for games and documents etc and an old seagate 1tb external drive for media which is on its way out, hence the new drive.

I've been looking at the WD Black drives for the faster speeds (over say another Green drive which is good but not the fastest). Are the blacks worth the extra money over say a Seagate Barracuda or will I not see much difference in performance? I'll be using it for games mainly.

I've also been looking at a Seagate SSHD but the cache doesn't seem to do anything for game load speeds so they might not be a good choice.

So what do you guys think? WD Black? Seagate Barracuda? Another WD Green? Seagate SSHD?

Cheers in advance.

Low power drives (such as Western Digital's "Green" range) typically run at 5400-5900rpm, so are slower than the standard 7200rpm drives.

Loading times will be affected by that, so a 7200rpm drive will likely be a better option than a 5400/5900rpm drive. As for WD's "Black" range - whilst they market them as being the high-speed options, they're still the standard 7200rpm and I doubt there's a dramatic difference between them and a Seagate drive of the same speed. Even if someone is able to show differences in benches, I'd be really sceptical about it translating into a noticeable difference in load times.

I doubt the SSHD would help much - generally I think you're better off saving your money and getting a normal HDD, then using the money in the future on a pure-SSD solution when they're cheaper.

Cheers Jim. Looking at basic 7200rpm hard drives then there's WD Black (5yr warranty, expensive), Seagate (cheaper but short warranty, had their drives die on me before too), there's also Hitachi and Toshiba drives though I know very little about them? Any experience with the latter makers?

I used to be a Seagate only person, but of late all of my Seagate drives have started failing to a point where I have no confidence in the brand at all. Out of a batch of 4 1TB drives I bought together only one of these drives is still functioning with no signs of issues, one that I have but don't use clicks when it is powered up and the other 2 failed after developing a quiet occasional click that developed into a loud rhythmic click. The one that still works fine is now being used in an external enclosure solely for the purpose of dumping stuff onto it to move file between locations, I would never trust it to hold the data that's important or that can't be replaced.

My 4x500GB Seagate drives have not had issues as yet though, so it might only be the larger capacity drives or that I was unlucky and got a bad batch.

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Originally Posted by Buztafen

Cheers Jim. Looking at basic 7200rpm hard drives then there's WD Black (5yr warranty, expensive), Seagate (cheaper but short warranty, had their drives die on me before too), there's also Hitachi and Toshiba drives though I know very little about them? Any experience with the latter makers?

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Hitachi is now owned by WD, so the key players are WD, Seagate and Toshiba.

Personally, I think the Black drives cost a lot, unnecessarily. You can compare the WD Blue to the Seagates for a more accurate comparison. (EDIT: Seems the blues have all but disappeared from the retailers, so I take that back)

You can ask a hundred people about their experiences, and get a hundred different opinions. Loads of people used to complain about Samsung drives dying (before they were bought by Seagate (IIRC)), I never had many problems with them. Now I have all Seagates, and they've all been fine. I think KBD has hit on the issue - people can buy 4 disks at once, all come from a dodgy batch, all break, and they never touch the brand again.

Since we've settled on 7200rpm, for me, the two remaining key factors would be price and warranty. I really wouldn't worry about anything else.

All sort of HDDs died on me (last one was a enterprise grade Hitachi with a supposed 5y of warranty, arrived dead).

Toshiba DT01ACA200 3.5" 2TB 7200RPM - £58 - 2 Years Return To Base Warranty
Seagate SV35.5 ST2000VX000 3.5" 2TB 7200RPM 24x7 use - £71 - Backed by the Seagate 5-year limited warranty

Toshiba DT01ACA300 3.5" 3TB 7200RPM - £80 - 1 year RTB + 2 Years Direct Toshiba Warranty
Seagate SV35.5 ST3000VX000 3.5" 3TB 7200RPM 24x7 use - £92 - Backed by the Seagate 5-year limited warranty

Should be just fine to use these HDDs. I had Hitachi before (5900RPM drives), had behind 20.000 hours when I sold them without a single error. Also had Hitach which arrived DOA. If you find some cheap SSHD, go with it. But the price difference is not usually warranted by the performance difference (or the other way around).

Cheers all. Price isn't a big factor, it's offset by Christmas money and I'd rather get something with a longer warranty and as big as possible. The Toshiba and Seagate 3tb's mentioned above sound good. A lot cheaper than the Blacks I've seen as well.

Usually HDDs with 2year+ warranty worked out fine for me. 1 year warranty HDDs tend to die (for me) 14-16 months after purchase. I have slightly more respect and confidence in the 24x7 units (meant to run 24x7, all the time on). But if you store only easily replaceable data, go for the cheaper/cheapest one. > which would be the Toshiba.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-DT01...6&keywords=3tb plus try to reduce the price via Flubit (8-12% extra discount).

I second the flubit comment. I purchased the seagate 2tb and saved £7 - not loads I know but that money then goes towards my pulse eight adapter (paying towards 25% of its cost). Have read a few reviews about seagate hdds after I purchased mine and am worried now that I may have made a mistake. What is the cheapest/best way of backing up large amount of data? I seem to remember something like norton ghost as an option for backing up - any good?

What do you mean backing up? Like make an exact copy of the existing data (like a snapshot?) or rather make regular back-ups? Or just make a disk wide image (disk-to-disk transfer)?

Went for a 3TB Toshiba DT01ACA300 hard drive in the end. £78.60 including free postage from Scan was a steal i think.