Western Digital WD40E31X 4000 GB Internal

[richard49]

I've just got a new desktop computer and at first thought of buying a new Samsung SSD drive together with a WD 4TB internal hard drive,

I've now see one of these Western Digital WD40E31X 4000 GB internal hard drives and wondered (as I'm not too technical on this 'stuff') how it would compare to the SSD and HD combination?

Do you think it would be nearly as fast as using an SSD for the OS?

Would it work as the HD to go with an SSD?

What do you think is my best combination of drives?

Thanks

[jag272]

Thats a pretty cracking deal if I do say so myself, having just looked at it on Scan.

2 things to keep in mind, SSHDs usually arent as fast as fully fledged SSDs as they're not built specifically for that purpose, though its not too big a difference judging by the few benchmarks I've seen.

The other thing to keep in mind, and Scan doesn't explicitly list this, and its a 3.5" drive so you wouldn't necessarily expect it, but based off of this sentence:
"An optimal amount of built-in NAND flash SSD technology enables WD Blue SSHDs to perform at up to four to five times faster than traditional 5400 rpm HDDs,"
This is infact a 5400 RPM HDD, unlike the 7200 RPM standard for desktop drives. That means anything that doesn't get shifted to the NAND is going to run slower than it would on a standard hard drive.

Those 2 points aside, thats a cracking deal for the price.

[richard49]

Jag,
Thank you for a very quick response; I hadn't noticed that this was only a5400 RPM drive.

I think I'll probably go with the Samsung 850 Pro 128GB SSD and a WD 4TB drive.

[Bonebreaker777]

Jag,
Thank you for a very quick response; I hadn't noticed that this was only a5400 RPM drive.

I think I'll probably go with the Samsung 850 Pro 128GB SSD and a WD 4TB drive.

That's probably the best option. In a desktop.
In a laptop a SSHD would've been better. Due to space restrictions.

[EndlessWaves]

I think I'll probably go with the Samsung 850 Pro 128GB SSD and a WD 4TB drive.

I wouldn't waste money on an 850 Pro 128GB. A BX100 250GB will be just as good, twice the capacity and at least £5 cheaper.

[richard49]

Thank you all for your input.

I don't state that I know a lot about computers but I did a quick search to see how the 128GB Samsung 850 Pro rates against the 120GB Crucial BX100 and found that (as far as I can tell) the Samsung runs about 40% faster than the Crucial drive.

I used the UserMenchmark site; I can't post the web address here as I'm a new user.

[Bluecube]

The thing is that once you get an SSD, unless there's a massive bottleneck somewhere on your PC, the real life speed difference is negligible - ALL current SSDs are fast. I've got a 250Gb Samsung 840 Evo in one PC and a 480Gb Crucial one in another. On paper, the Samsung is faster. In use, I've not noticed a bit of difference between the two. I agree with EndlessWaves - save some money, gain more space and get a BX100.

[KeyboardDemon]

Thank you all for your input.

I don't state that I know a lot about computers but I did a quick search to see how the 128GB Samsung 850 Pro rates against the 120GB Crucial BX100 and found that (as far as I can tell) the Samsung runs about 40% faster than the Crucial drive.

I used the UserMenchmark site; I can't post the web address here as I'm a new user.

In Benchmark tests the Samsung 850 Pro drives tend to do very well, in actual installations that extra performance would probably make about 2 to 3 seconds difference in your startup times at best, so if the 250gb BX100 takes 22 seconds to start up the Samsung might do it in 19 seconds, your programs, games and file loading times would be just as fast on either SSD but the extra space you can gain on the BX100 and the £5 saving on the drive costs over the price of the Samsung 850 Pro suggest it would be worth going to the Crucial drive. It's also worth noting that a 250gb drive has more NAND chips which will help to speed up performance on the larger capacity drive.

Don't get too hung up on the numbers shown in benchmarks, it's easy to become a specs maniac, read user reviews of the drives on Amazon or Trustpilot etc... or even do some research on YouTube.

Samsung 850 Pro 128gb
Crucial BX100 250gb

*** edit ***

I found a third option, Samsung 850 Pro 256gb - Sorry, I just spotted to ludicrously high postage charge for this drive but thought I'd leave it in. After the delivery charge this drive still works out marginally cheaper than other sites standard retail price with free delivery.

[EndlessWaves]

In Benchmark tests the Samsung 850 Pro drives tend to do very well, in actual installations that extra performance would probably make about 2 to 3 seconds difference in your startup times at best, so if the 250gb BX100 takes 22 seconds to start up the Samsung might do it in 19 seconds, your programs, games and file loading times would be just as fast on either SSD

In addition to the other two points made (larger SSDs are 'faster', only really big improvements are noticeable in reality) another item worth raising is that SSD performance is pretty multi-faceted. Better performance in simple benchmarks like userbenchmark uses isn't going to be reflective of all real world workloads.

For example, when it comes to startup time the BX100 is faster than an 850 Pro of the same capacity:
http://techreport.com/review/28446/s...ssd-reviewed/5
It's also worth pointing out the Plextor M6e's position on those graphs, a drive that scores poorly in some simple data transfer tests.

In short, SSDs are best bought on price or after sales support. If you do want to support the manufacturer producing the highest performance drive then you need to look at the more in depth comparisons and see where the strengths and weaknesses are.

[richard49]

Thank you everyone for your very valued input and on reading what you say about the speed of the drives in 'real life' situations I must say that I'm very inclined to go with the BX100.

Is there a forum on here with regard to setting up the SSD for the Operating System and using the 'regular' HDD for everything else.

I did see a video on this on You Tube (How to properly configure the SSD as boot drive and HDD as storage drive by NCIX Tech Tips) and found it very useful.

Thank again everyone for your advice, it's very much appreciated

[Professor Frink]

http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare...6GB/3145vs2385

The Samsung 850 Pro 256GB is £76.79 atm at Amazon

[artcon]

Is there a forum on here with regard to setting up the SSD for the Operating System and using the 'regular' HDD for everything else.

Haven't been on here long enough to know if there is. So hopefully someone else can link you if there is one. But from my experience (and assuming you're using Windows)...
Make sure your HDD isn't plugged in when installing your OS on your SSD (this isn't essential, some just do it in case there's data on the other drive that will intefere with installation, or if parts of the OS get installed on the HDD and then you'll always need it in order to boot)
Then you can change the default locations of 'My Documents', 'My Videos' etc. to your HDD [link].

You can change your default install location for programs too, but it depends how you want it. I left it as my SSD then when installing stuff I change it to my HDD if I don't use that program as regularly (as most programs, when installing, let you choose where to install it).
But to do so, go into the registry (regedit). HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion, then change the ProgramFilesDir, ProgramFilesDir(x86) to wherever - so probably you'll just change the drive letter. And do the same for Start->Run->%systemroot%\sysWOW64\regedit. Reboot your computer. I've never personally tried this, but bear in mind some people have had trouble with programs not working after doing this (but that might be because they changed it after already installing programs), so it might just be easier to manually change it when installing programs.

[richard49]

I plan on installing the SSD with a fresh copy of Windows 10 on it and then transferring all of the personal files from the original HDD to a new WD Black 2TB drive.