Which Hard Drive to buy!?

[tjhamstar]

And here's where my lack of knowledge with computer technology comes into play. What advantage is there in spending more money for less storage space?

 

[PP Mguire]

The obvious speed difference in the video above that you commented on. The technologies are way different, and HDDs have been around since the 70s, hence why you can get 4TB drives for less than 200 bucks.

Words can't exactly explain how much faster SSDs are simply due to latency alone. That's why I found the video to start showing people. There are no spinning parts, no heat, and less power consumption.

 

[tjhamstar]

Alright, I'll take all of this information into consideration. Definitely will shop around and see what kind of prices I can find on SSD's and how much storage I can get. I intend to put a lot on the drive so I want to make sure I have a lot of storage. Thanks for all of the input, give me some perspective on things.

 

[PP Mguire]

Don't buy a cheap crappy SSD. That's one thing you don't want to do. Also, don't buy refurb open box, or used.

Brands to stick to:
Corsair, Samsung, Crucial, Intel.

I also wouldn't buy anything lower than SATA2 drives.

 

[Celery]

You'll be fine with a decent hard drive.

WD Blue seems to be pretty popular even though some bought WD Black for the 5 year warranty. I bought a Seagate Constellation not only for the 5 year warranty but for the rep as being very reliable, it's a server drive but not really cheap.

By the way, On my old system I have a WD Green which is a slower drive but still going since 2009. I believe that one only have a 2 or 3 year warranty.

 

[PP Mguire]

Blues are popular because they are cheaper. The 64MB cache in the black drives really does help. It's like the difference between my Samsung F3 and my Seagate Barracuda XTs.

Black drives also have a 5 year warranty and WD will cross ship where as with Blue drives they won't.

 

[tjhamstar]

Hmmm, maybe I'll look at a Black then. I'm thinking maybe this one...

Amazon.com: Western Digital WD1002FAEX Caviar Black 1 TB SATA III 7200 RPM 64 MB Cache Internal Desktop 3.5" Hard Drive: Electronics

It's a SATA III, I know PP had mentioned to not get anything less than SATA II. The cache is also 64 MB (not really sure what that does, I've learned to just assume that when it comes to computers....most of the time bigger numbers are better?). Plus it's within my budget sort of, definitely could see myself spending that much money for 1 TB than hundreds of dollars for the other alternatives for now. I thank you guys for the feedback, really helping me out a lot here.

 

[PP Mguire]

On the SATA2 and 3 thing, I was speaking on about SSDs. It makes no difference on a HDD as it can't even saturate the SATA1 bus.

 

[tjhamstar]

Ahhhh, okay. Well, regardless. I think I'm going to take a look at the WD Black hard drive, since it should be better than the Blue? Still in my price range sort of and plenty of storage for me.