best hard drive for gaming

Ginger-Menace

Ginger-Menace

Ginger-Menace

Associate
Joined
9 May 2010
Posts
1,669
Location
sheffield
hi all im wanting a good hard drive for gaming, this hd will be for the OS
im not all that interested in ssd cause of the price!
what would you recomend? raid 0? or a single hdd? what size? and which one would you choose for either option
thanks in advance
the ginge
 
I would suggest going for this HDD (or the 1TB version) or a WD Caviar Black. These drives are big, well priced and fast for a HDD. You won't get SSD speeds, but for games an SSD is not needed.

I would suggest going for a single drive arrangement and if you have the funds, RAID 1 is a pretty simple and useful setup. A RAID 1 arrangement will mean you have a mirrored drive - so if one drive fails then your data will be OK, it should also increase read speeds a fair bit. RAID 0 is another RAID option, but I would suggest against it as it provides no mirroring, in fact you are much more likely to loose all your data - as if either of the drives fails then all data on both is lost.

One problem with RAID arrays is that the boot times are longer than single drive systems.
 
I would suggest Sammy F3 with 500gb platters, either 500gb or 1tb. All the reviews seem to place them well and they are the cheapest option in most cases. The Velociraptors are a waste of money considering size and speed oncrease, and SDD's are just too expensive and will continue to be overpriced as people feel the need to have that tech.0

I would not bother with Raid 0 as from every thread and tech view I have read it offers absolutely no benefit in real world apps. Raid 1 is another poor option as it slows down boot times and such. Just as easy to have a second drive and make a full backup to it every so often?

I myself had a Sammy F3 1tb drive as my OS/games drive only ever used about a quarter of its available space as I have a 1.5tb WD Green drive for all documents movies and music.
I just bought two 500gb Sammy F3 drives to replace the larger drives in my PC's as OS units, will do me untill SSD is at realistic and not proffit based prices.

I would have bought a 320gb drive but a few quid more gets an extra 180gb so why bother?
 
it's cache - when you read data from the drive it gets stored in cache, so if you have to read the data again, then the drive can fire the data right over with out having to physically read it off the platter again. this is much faster.

and when writing data to the disk the drive can 'buffer' the data to maintain write speeds.

or something
 
+1 on the WD Caviar Black, look for high RPM and high Cache, the WD Caviar Black has the best cache and rpm against a lot of drives.

I am running a 640GB WD Caviar Black 32MB Cache 7200RPM and it is still very fast.
 
whitecrook said:
it's cache - when you read data from the drive it gets stored in cache, so if you have to read the data again, then the drive can fire the data right over with out having to physically read it off the platter again. this is much faster.

and when writing data to the disk the drive can 'buffer' the data to maintain write speeds.

or something
Click to expand...

That's right. Having more does about zip in practice.
 
personlly i only use WD or seagate drives,

i have a VR but a 300gb at a good price,

just go for a WD 7200rpm drive at 500GB+ with a second for non raid backup, thats what i have
 
A better hard drive won't help that much unless you're really low on RAM, although it will speed up loading. Hard drives can differ in capacity and performance. I think that you should search on internet for more informations.
 
Another vote for the Samsung F3's. I just bought two of them, fast* and quiet, couldn't ask for more at the price.

*Almost twice as fast write speeds as my older WD 500GB sata. Impresssive stuff.
 
hamehax said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the best performance you get with a single mechanical drive from one of these?

http://www.h*e*x*u*s*.net/content/item.php?item=24768

I know its cheating but it's an awesome idea
Click to expand...

Aye, it does sound interesting - it certainly seems to help game load times and windows boot up times, however this review doesn't show things are quite as rosy.

I think this a situation where you would be better off getting a cheap SSD and a Samsung F3 for almost all tasks. It will be a bit more expensive, but not massively.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom