2TB Hard drive choice?

pioneer2000

pioneer2000

pioneer2000

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Best cheapish 2TB HD? :)

Western Digital WD20EARS --> £108

Western Digital WD20EADS --> £117

Samsung HD203WI Spinpoint F3EG --> £119

What one am I best off with? The WD20EARS is the newer of the 2 WD's if I am not mistaken.... and comes with 64MB of cache, so would have thought it is either that or the Samsung..
 
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Just be aware that the WD20EARS is an Advanced Format drive so if you're planning on running it with XP then you need to jump through a few hoops to get it working correctly. It's nothing arduous and the instructions are on the anti static bag.
 
Ah, cheers - did not know that. May eventually be used in a WHS.... would WHS be problematic? Either way it would be going in a Windows 7 machine for a while so not a deal-breaker!

If the WD20EARS is so new (and on paper more advanced) why is it cheaper than the others?
 
If the first machine it's partitioned and formatted in is Win 7 then there's no need to worry, Win 7 copes with advanced format out of the box.

Pricing of PC components is weird. It could be that OCUK only bought a small batch of the EADS drives because they were end of life and hence didn't get as good a deal. WD could be offering decent deals on the EARS drives to get them into the retail channel quickly. Could be something completely different related to sunspots and the strength of the wind in Tahiti... I've given up trying to understand it myself.
 
Haha, very good. So I guess it's between the WD20EARS and the Samsung F3. Always been a fan of Samsung but the WD seems the "newer" tech and is a good £11 cheaper.

Any idea how they compare performance / noise wise?
 
bought one of the EARS drives the other day for 99 (2TB)

I already have a 1.5TB one which is superb - they are pretty nippy for a 5400rpm I can tell you - and run nice and cool
 
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